Moneyball: After All These Years In the Game, Do You Really Understand It?

There are moments in the recent film, Moneyball, that have the characters acting on something with total uncertainty, or at least without any logical steps. Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt), the progressive general manager of the Oakland A's and Peter Brand (played by Jonah Hill) are changing the way their team functions off theoretical conclusions, ignoring the experience of the scouts who have been in the business for decades. There is a scene that brilliant exemplifies this. It is where Billy, Peter, and the other scouts are sitting at a table discussing how to rebuild after their three best players were bought up by teams with enormously larger budgets than Oakland. When the experienced scouts try to ask Billy what his reasoning is behind all of his arbitrary strategies, Billy points to Peter who states shyly and monotonously, "Because he gets on base." The scouts can't believe what is happening before their eyes. This is the central conflict within the film's plot, one that continues incessantly throughout, but this conflict transcends the plot into something much more human and universal. What is brilliant about this film is the way it subtly observes the way humans look at each other and communicate each other, the ways in which we try to figure each other out as well as how we figure ourselves out. Thus, this film transcends a conventional sports story and becomes an observation of human adaption through changing times.

When I first watched Moneyball last October, I have to say my whole mind was unwaveringly focused on the film. I become emotional, but for more reasons than just the progression of the plot. This film intricately displays human interaction with honesty and intrigue. Though there are really two main players in the film, Pitt and Noah, their interactions with the other characters in the film are all very careful, and we see how their philosophy towards the game of baseball is reflected through their communication. In the end, their standpoint is anything but certain, meshing together the analytics and business of the trade with the emotional and intuitive qualities of its tradition. The pivotal scene that constructs the new philosophy Beane takes a hold of is when Peter Brand explains his observations on how certain players are under-utilized and others are overpaid; essentially, an economic way of spotting efficient players. The film marvelously explores the consequences of such a philosophy through explicit shots of the players Brand and Beane view and describe; there is a reduction of a wholly emotional quality that makes way for a more mechanistic approach.

Coupled with many of the bits and pieces of monologue of Peter Brand, we see that this philosophy strips much of the humanity of these players, "It's about getting things down to one number," he says. Now, I don't see them and the film doesn't see them as villains of any sort, not at all. As Beane explained, the Oakland A's need to find a way to compete with the teams with a substantially higher payroll. Forces out of their control cause them to shift perspective and mold a new outlook on America's pastime. Brand has figured out such a mathematical methodology of scouting players with maximum efficiency and minimum cost, something that does away with much of the intuition, or the 'gut feeling', that traditional scouts display when making an assessment on a player.

From this point on, the way Brand and especially Beane have to perceive these players runs according to this philosophy. This comes into full conflict with the manager, played so brilliantly by Phillip Seymour Hoffman. The manager sees Scott Hatteberg as a man who can't play first base; Beane sees efficiency. The players themselves have to adjust to this strange happening, Hetteberg had an injury to one of his nerves in his arm and cannot throw really at all but he must adapt to the chance that he may play and he was picked for a reason. Peter Brand continues to explain to Beane, "People are overlooked for a variety of biased reasons and perceived flaws: age, appearance, and personality."

This philosophy also comes into conflict with Beane's daughter, who seems to always put each and every situation of Beane's into a simplistic and general perspective, causing her father to reflect on what is transpiring in the game that he loves. Moneyball works so well with these functions because of the truthful interactions between the characters which would, thus, set apart the function of Beane and Brand viewing players through the lens of mathematical description.

The film does not end on a definitive moment or event, or even feeling. It is during a reflection of change. Beane gets offered to run the Red Sox and his decision is not made when the film ends (he stays in Oakland). The Red Sox want to change with the Oakland A's, and from then on is all history; we are left to contemplate the change that has effected not only the game of baseball but how we look at other people. There is much to be said about how this film, along with The Social Network and Up in the Air, seem to visualize and observe they way in which in this day in age people view and interact with each other. It is a way in which we seem to look upon others from a distance, even if physically we are close. Or, it is how we seem to value a whole new set of qualities and expectations within each of us. In fact, all these films end with a glimpse of this change and a reflection upon it. With Billy Beane, we see his passion shift within his own mind. For the duration of the film I marveled at Pitt's ability to mirror such reflection and show us what it is like to fuel such human change. The final piece of dialogue between Beane and Brand may establish the ideal mindset they carry at the end of the film, but there is no denying the transformation they started, one that embodies us all in such times as these.