Moneyball

This probably says something significant about me as a person: My first impulse when I initially saw a trailer for Moneyball was to think, “Hmm . . . a baseball movie? I’ll pass.” Then the trailer continued, and I thought, “Oh, it’s a movie about statistics; a movie that glorifies rational thought and the power of cold, hard numbers over intuition—yes, that’s a movie for me!”

First, let me address the baseball movie issue. I am not a sports fan in general and not a baseball fan in particular. And when it comes to movies about sports, baseball tends to leave me cold. I remember liking Hoosiers and The Pistol as far as basketball movies go. Rocky is fantastic, and The Fighter was quite good. And even all the football in Jerry Maguire got my blood pumping. But baseball seems to have a much bigger draw for fans when it becomes the subject of movies. And here’s my deal: I didn’t get Field of Dreams. It’s been years since I saw it, but I remember it being boring and without any real appeal. Then there’s Bull Durham, which I understand is highly rated as one of the all time great baseball movies. I watched it years ago and felt confused because I was under the impression it was supposed to be a great comedy, yet I didn’t think it was funny, and I also didn’t think it was interesting at all. Strangely, though, I did enjoy For Love of the Game, a movie that I think is rarely rated as highly as those other Costner baseball stories. The difference for me with that movie was that although it was about baseball, it felt to me to tell a sort of universal story about passion. It didn’t matter particularly that the main character was a pitcher striving for a perfect game; he could have easily been a poet struggling to compose a perfect stanza or a guitarist trying to move an audience with his playing or anything, really. The theme of loving what one does and trying to be great resonated with me, even though it was about baseball, which I don’t specifically care about.

Moneyball has the same type of appeal. It is specifically about baseball, but it’s about more than that. It’s about how one looks at the world and understands how events unfold. There are those who believe in going with their guts, in following intuition, believing that it will lead to the best possible outcome. Those people feel rather than think. This is a tempting way to live life. It can be exciting, and certainly when it comes to something like sports, it can be dramatic because the scout gets a good feeling about a young athlete, and then when the athlete delivers on the promise and hits the dramatic game-winning homerun, the crowd cheers, and the scout appreciates that his intuition led him down the right path. But the problem with this approach to life is that it’s not as reliable as a more rational approach. Those with a scientific worldview will have a better understanding of the real world around them, but that world will likely be less exciting because of that.

I try to live my life rationally. I believe science and statistics are the best way to understand our world. Intuition is inherently faulty. So the premise of Moneyball held strong appeal for me. And sure enough, it delivered.

The basic story is about Billy Beane, a former baseball player who never lived up to the promise he showed as a high school athlete. He is now the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, a team that can’t compete with most other teams because of its small budget and inability to attract star players. But Beane rethinks how to put a team together and focuses on the statistics of his players rather than the less tangible factors like what they look like or how much muscle they have or how attractive their girlfriends are or how they live their lives off the field—the factors that lead traditional scouts to have gut feelings about who will be a star and who won’t. Beane understands that a successful team isn’t about star power, it’s about adding up point after point after point, getting on base, no matter whether that’s achieved through homeruns or walks. By putting together a group of cheaper players who have consistent abilities to get onto base, he is able to compile a team that will win more consistently than those teams made up of pricey superstars.

The disadvantage to a story like this is that it’s inherently less dramatic than the traditional sports story. It has the underdogs-make-good plotline that often comes with this territory, but there’s no big hero. We don’t have the amazing player to root for. We have players who don’t swing at the ball and get walked onto first base. But that’s the power of this story: in the real world, the cold, hard numbers win. It’s exciting to think about beating the casino through an amazing streak of luck, but over time the casino will always win because the odds are in its favor. And Moneyball shows how the same idea is true in sports because it’s true in all aspects of life. Statistics trump feelings.

I’ve read a couple reviews of Moneyball that critique the sometimes slow pace and assert that the movie, though generally strong, has too many endings so continues on too long. I can understand this view, but I disagree. The ending wasn’t flashy with a victorious team. It was a slow winding down with some reflection. And that felt right to me. A big victory is exciting, yes, but to truly appreciate the way the world works, one has to slow down and think.