The American Spectator : Moneyball

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Moneyball

By James Bowman on 10.6.11 @ 6:02AM

Everything you thought it knows about baseball is wrong.

Manohla Dargis, opens her New York Times review of Bennett Miller's Moneyball by calling it "a movie about baseball in the digital age." The word "digital" can mean pertaining to fingers, numbers, or electronic devices that operate by means of computer code (that is, the numbers 0 and 1), and it is usually the last of these that is intended when the adjective is used to modify the word "age." As computers do not figure particularly prominently in the movie, however, Ms. Dargis appears to mean something a bit more vague by the term, something like "the world we now live in which is completely different from that of the pre-digital age." If so, she shows herself to be as susceptible to utopian romance as the movie's makers (including top scribe Aaron Sorkin) and its hero, Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), who at one point in the film proclaims it to be his ambition to transform the game of baseball -- not, as it happens, with computers necessarily, since the calculations behind the magic of putting together a winning ball club can be done with calculator, abacus, or pencil and paper, but with the analytical powers of the human mind.

You know those old-fashioned baseball movies -- or almost any other old-fashioned movies -- where the grizzled old-timer shows up the young hot shot who thinks he knows everything? Well, now the young hot shot who thinks he knows everything does know everything, and thus he obligingly shows up and humiliates the grizzled old-timer with his outmoded information systems. The superior think-power of Moneyball was supplied to Michael Lewis, the author of the book of the same title on which the film is based, by a self-taught statistician called Bill James who, at the time the book came out eight years ago, looked as if he really might be revolutionizing the game. Most people think it hasn't quite panned out like that, but the dream dies hard. Ms. Dargis writes that "Mr. Miller holds onto the romance of baseball that Mr. James and others helped strip away," but this is a mistake. Neither Mr. Miller nor Mr. James are stripping away the romance of baseball. They are substituting for it the romance of the intellect.

No baseball player in this movie comes across as a hero, but Billy and his fat, nerdy sidekick Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) do. And they do so by putting Mr. James's theories to work on behalf of the Oakland Athletics -- or "A's" as they now insist on being called -- during the 2002 season. Even our sporting heroes are no longer the guys on the field, who mostly appear here as oafs and knuckleheads, even without any allusion on the part of the film-makers to the doping that was apparently rife at the time in the A's locker room, as in so many others. No, it's the guys who reduced -- or almost reduced or seemed for a time to have reduced -- baseball to a science and players to automatons by their sheer intellectual candlepower. They're the heroes, and it's because they can be represented, however fleetingly, as having at last discovered, at least in one area of human endeavor, the Golden Fleece, the El Dorado, the Prester John of our time: namely that utopian system which, in the words of T.S. Eliot, is so perfect that no one will have to be good.

Of course, the players brought on board by Messrs. Beane and Brand are good, but they are good, as it were, by necessity. So far as the movie is concerned, at least, there is no virtue to them in their goodness because it is all there already in their numerical curricula vitae as compiled by Peter Brand. And numbers, as we all know, don't lie. In place of the old-fashioned kind of goodness, or greatness, that we admired in the ballplayers of old, we now have something calling itself fairness, which has something of the same resonance here that it has for President Obama, for whom it means equality. Mr. Lewis's Moneyball's subtitle was "The Art of Winning an Unfair Game," and the ghost of this idea of fairness haunts the movie version as well. What he meant, of course, was not that the game itself was unfair but that it was unfair (in his view) for there to be rich teams and poor teams -- like the New York Yankees, who could afford to buy up all the best players and so win year after year, and the lowly A's who might develop great players but would then routinely lose them to richer teams as soon as they became free agents.

The movie begins with the departure of Jason Giambi, Johnny Damon, and Jason Isringhausen from the A's to richer teams at the end of the 2001 season and implies that it was Mr. Beane's replacement of them with unregarded players identified as stealth stars by the fictional Mr. Brand's ingenious statistical methods which was responsible for their success in 2002 -- when they set an American league record by winning 20 games in a row -- and subsequent seasons. There is no mention of the contribution to this team of star pitchers Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder, and Barry Zito, all of whom were in place before the Moneyball era. That the team has not been so successful -- in fact has not had a winning season -- since 2006 is also unmentioned, though this is thought by some to be because now everybody in the league is playing Moneyball.

But the movie doesn't look so far ahead. Instead, it ends with Mr. Beane's turning down an offer to be general manager of the Boston Red Sox, a rich team, which nevertheless went on to win two World Series championships supposedly using his methods. The suggestion is that he is somehow sticking to his principle of "fairness" -- or, rather, his discovery (as he supposes) of an ingenious method of compensating for unfairness -- by turning down the sort of offer that his top players' inability to turn down was responsible for the invention in the first place. Whether or not this is true to the facts of Mr. Beane's career, the point is to add power to the movie's own lineup by idealizing the utopian quest for fairness.

In real life, as we ought to know by now, this ideal of fairness is a will-o'the'wisp, and neither baseball nor anything else is capable of living up to it. Neither luck nor ability will ever be equally distributed, but somehow we continue to enjoy the contests of unequals -- in part, perhaps, just because they are unequal. At more than one point in the movie, someone says semi-ironically "how can you not be romantic about baseball" and there is a similar attempt to draw back just a bit when a representative of the old school is allowed to put forward the view that you don't make a winning team "with a bunch of statistical gimmicks; nobody reinvents this game" -- as, indeed, the world of baseball outside the movies would seem to confirm. But the utopian quest for fairness, though as doomed as the A's championship hopes appear to be, likewise gains romance and emotional power for that very reason. The movie could be compared to Tom Stoppard's trilogy of plays called The Coast of Utopia, as both treat their egghead utopian projectors with infinite sympathy as romantic heroes of their already-lost causes.

I once wrote a book (Media Madness: The Corruption of Our Political Culture) in which I attempted a very brief catalogue of examples of that favorite media trope (you may recognize it) that goes: "Everything you know about x is wrong." It ought to be unnecessary to add that the statement is never even remotely true except of people who don't know anything at all about x, but it apparently continues to rope in the suckers as it continues to be a media favorite. The promise of access to privileged information, even about quite trivial things -- "Everything you thought you knew about grilling is wrong," I seem to remember one of them went -- must be nearly as irresistible as the promise of winning the lottery. Or the World Series. The subtitle of Michael Lewis's book ought not to have been "The Art of Winning an Unfair Game," but "Everything you know about interpreting baseball statistics is wrong." Mr. Lewis, inspired by Bill James, looked at the game like a journalist in quest of a scoop at least as much as he did like a baseball general manager in quest of a winning season. The same thing is true of the movie, which is to that extent a disappointment.

About the Author

James Bowman, our movie and culture critic, is a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is the author of Honor: A History and Media Madness: The Corruption of Our Political Culture, both published by Encounter Books.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (29) | Leave a comment

RT| 10.6.11 @ 8:12AM

I had a chance to see the movie but declined because I suspected it would be some kind of smug leftist propaganda - with the Hollywood regulars involved it virtually always is. Now I know that I was correct. Thanks for the confirmation and for the savings of money, time, and aggravation.

canuckistani| 10.6.11 @ 4:29PM

Huh?
I watched it and it was a pretty straightforward linear story. Well-acted and produced.

The most successful leaugue in the US is the socialist NFL: salary caps, revenue sharing etc etc etc.

As a baseball fan, the NFL formula should be considered as NY and Boston need some more teams than themselves to make a league.

The Moneyball theory was only considered since Oakland could no longer compete in the $200M payroll era.

donserge| 10.6.11 @ 8:20AM

The majority of Hollywood types denigrate, make fun of and downright display hate to conservatives and their values. I fail to understand why conservatives will make these people richer by going to their movies.

Seek| 10.6.11 @ 12:54PM

Name me these movies. I suppose it's a lot harder than to wallow in the boiler-plate cliche about poor, besieged conservatives being "mocked" by Hollywood.

Occam's Tool| 10.6.11 @ 10:19PM

Start with "Avatar," Seek.
Try "Starship Troopers," next, which totally turned the book on its head.
"Good Luck and Good Night."
"Syriana."
"Fahrenheit 9/11."
"Wall Street."
"V for Vendetta."
"Watchmen."

Come on, Seek. I'm not even trying here.

Roy| 10.7.11 @ 12:08AM

Wow, yeah. Seek really doesn't come from the same planet I do.

Mike Hawk| 10.7.11 @ 8:40AM

You name one that doesn't. Even tougher, name two. This Conservative doesn't waste his time or money with Hollyweird and their drivel.

canuckistani| 10.6.11 @ 4:31PM

Hollywood makes movies as a reflection of the people who watch them. If they did not resonate with the viewers, they would not part with their $12 each time.
Making fun of conservatives, if true, is a cash winner for the studios and they should not stop because of your bruised feelings.

donserge| 10.6.11 @ 7:52PM

I want to thank Seek and canuckistani for making my point that there are millions of people (conservatives included) who will increase the coffers of the multitude of Hollywood leftists, liberals and socialists.

PhilTheCapitalistPig| 10.6.11 @ 8:54AM

Beane should've paid more attention to the numbers.. Johnny Damon is a Moneyballers' dream!

Seriously, that's all moneyballing is about. Get on base, and don't steal bases. So a hitter batting .280 with an OBP of .350 is considered a better asset than a .310 hitter with an OBP of .340. And there may be truth to that. You sure can't score if you never get on base.

But, allow me to speak for the people who actually played competitive baseball. NOBODY GOES TO THE PLATE TO HOLD THE BAT ON THEIR SHOULDER. When there is bases loaded in the 9th and you're down 2 runs, who do you want coming to the plate? The guy who can put wood on the ball and send a scud off the wall in right center, or the guy who will take a walk and let the next crappy batter come to the plate.

I think the only good thing (which is debatable, even with myself) is the numbers on stealing bases. The odds of stealing bases aren't good (except for the fastest 1% of the league), and only runners on base can score.

And now allow me to contradict myself. I remember being little and watching Ricky Henderson steal 100 bags in a season. The excitement of baseball was so much greater then, when you KNEW he was going to steal. It was kind of like a wild wild west shootout.

Moneyball killed baseball.

Steve A| 10.6.11 @ 9:41AM

Rrickey Henderson has been the best player to watch perform in the game in the last 30 years. I remember watching him score from second on a chopper to short in Yankee Stadium & listening to Rizzuto comment, "Holy cow, you don't see that every day!" What was never really considered in his game was the impact he had on opposing pitchers when he got on base. The pitchouts called, the reluctance of the catcher to call breaking balls, the lost focus on the hitter are all intangibles along with his leadoff power that made him the greatest leadoff hitter to ever play the game.

Le Cracquere| 10.6.11 @ 9:46AM

Actually, Beane's principles were perfectly sound: go after the players whose skills the current market is undervaluing, and be prepared to take a pass on skills that the market is overvaluing. At the time the book & movie portray, the former included things like OBP, and the latter included stolen bases and average. The particular skills are not a constant--especially if a critical chunk of the market starts seeing the value of once-ignored skills and shelling out money accordingly.

And as for the poser you raise in your third paragraph: I dunno. What's the first player's groundball/flyball ratio? If it's high, a double play might be likelier than a double, and I'd want the second guy at the plate.

Chalkdust| 10.6.11 @ 9:27AM

Winning baseball, like all major play-for-pay sports are the sum total of three elements;
MEASURABLE
Speed, strength, agility, hand-eye coordination, ect.
THINGS YOU CAN WHINE ABOUT
good luck
bad luck
no luck
THINGS YOU CAN'T MEASURE
the will to win
intuition

Everything else is background static.

Moe Blotz| 10.6.11 @ 9:41AM

Where was Mil Famee when you needed him?

Bill| 10.6.11 @ 12:01PM

He was drinking the beer that made Milt Famee walk us.

Mac Jehoff| 10.6.11 @ 6:01PM

In the dugout piling up Schlitz cans as he emptied them.

Occam's Tool| 10.6.11 @ 10:20PM

From the land of sky blue waters....

Stammon| 10.6.11 @ 12:12PM

Not to dis an otherwise great article, but as a kid in San Fran in the 60's I called them the Oakland A's. They were my favorite team; even against all odds in a NE prep school in the 70's.

The best way to enjoy baseball, is to listen to it on AM radio, at twilight, at 65 MPH, in the South. It's still great 35 years later.

Chalkdust| 10.6.11 @ 4:00PM

...Radio, on the front porch, warm summer night, sipeing a beer with your father or grandfather or your brothers or your son. Precious moments.

Roy| 10.7.11 @ 12:13AM

One of my earlier memories is of listening to the 82 Brewers on the car radio with my dad and brother. Bob Uecker of course.

And now, being that the games are only broadcast on cable which I refuse to pay for, and I also refuse to pay $19.95 to watch them online - I'm doing the same thing 29 years later! :)

York Hawk| 10.6.11 @ 6:08PM

From 1960 to 1967 they were still the Kansas City Athletics,so yins only had two years in that decade to refer to the team as "Oakland As".

Occam's Tool| 10.6.11 @ 10:21PM

Yes, it is. In the South on the AM at night you never the hell know what you're gonna get.

grant1863| 10.6.11 @ 1:01PM

Not having watched the movie and having read the book some years ago the biggest impression I got was that Beane focused on performance and not appearances. and in looking at performances from players that didn't look like classic baseball types put together teams that won ball games against the odds. Players were also thankful because it meant they became worth more under the Beane system although it meant they had to leave the A's. If the movie isn't like that I don't want to see it.

canuckistani| 10.6.11 @ 4:34PM

It was like that. The film stopped after the 2003 season.
But for the time he had the edge, it was fascinating to watch a team of misfits get 'er done.
Zito, Mulder and Hudson were as golden as Maddox, Smoltz and Glavine for a brief period.

POST American| 10.6.11 @ 11:15PM

-----AGAIN-----

AS the fallout from FUKISHIMA is, in
good DEPOP OP fashion, bathing North
America (many hundred times more intense
than Chernobyl btw) ----and as Globalist
TREASON and EUGENICS agendas walk
in broad daylight -----------UH--------------
could we PLEASE put away the rectum
worshipping 'sports culture' concerns?

----------------------REALLY-------------------------

Roy| 10.7.11 @ 12:11AM

"the rectum
worshipping 'sports culture' " - love it.

Cpm| 10.7.11 @ 2:10PM

Paranoid Poetry Slam.

Brian B| 10.7.11 @ 11:18AM

Things were just as "unfair" in the seventies when the A's won three World Series, but who wants to see a movie about a staid, square, boring guy like Charles Finley, who couldn't possibly be played by Brad Pitt, by the way, when the exciting world of Billy Beane beckons?