Baseball Movies

This weekend my friends and I went and saw "Moneyball," starring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill.  The movie follows the Oakland A's and their struggle to put together a winning team on a limited budget.  Full disclosure: I'm a Cleveland Indians fan.  I always have been, as both of my parents are from Cleveland and I have some hardcore Chief Wahoo fans in my family.

"Moneyball" does a great job of showing how much other teams hurt when there's a huge wealth disparity.  Or, at least, that's how it was, before Peter Brand started looking at the game like a Harvard educated economist.  Baseball statistics, as far as I know, have been recorded since the beginning of the game.  Because it is so cut and dry (strike or ball, single or double), teams with money have been able to look at a page of statistics and say "I want that guy, he's got a batting average over 300 and stole 20 bases last year."  What Brand did, however, was teach the A's to buy runs, not players.  If you can get ten players that can do as well as your three star players and cost 40% less, you've got yourself an efficient baseball team.

What made "Moneyball" great (and why it is currently sitting at over 93% on Rotten Tomatoes) is that it's more than a baseball movie.  It's the little guy challenging the establishment, and showing that new ideas can work, even in a sport with a history as long as baseball.  I have friends that went to see the movie that were not baseball fans.  After leaving the theater, one said, "Wow.  I thought that was going to be boring, long and drawn out, like a baseball game.  But even the baseball stuff was interesting!"  When you can get someone who hates baseball enough to refuse to watch the World Series to like a baseball movie, you've done well.

There are two other baseball movies that I love, "Fever Pitch" (don't make fun) and "Major League."  The rom-com style of "Fever Pitch" works for me because the whole time I was watching the movie, I wondered what it was going to be like at the end of the season.  As indifferent to the Red Sox as I am, the 2004 season was one for the record books.  And although "Fever Pitch" is not a movie for the hardcore Sox fan, it's a good baseball-centric story most people can get into.  And I don't think I need to say anything about "Major League" other than that as an Indians fan, I am required to love it.

Out of my (now) three favorite baseball movies, I'd say "Moneyball"  is easily the most accessible to baseball fans and non fans alike.  It does a wonderful job of being a movie with all the baseball quirks (dipping, anyone?) and phrases ("I like him, he's got a strong swing"), but it's easily connectable to those who aren't gearing up for October and the playoffs.  My recommendation: if you like baseball, this is a need to see movie.  If you're not a baseball fan, it's supremely acted and well written and worth your time anyway.