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I watched Moneyball last night at home via Amazon Video On Demand. I'm not a sports fan and consider baseball to be ridiculous and unwatchable, but Moneyball is not really about baseball. Like other sports movies I've recently watched, The Damned United and Invictus, Moneyball focuses less on the sport itself and more on the professional sports industry and culture.
I enjoy movies that make an effort to seem realistic and, to my non-sports fan perspective, Moneyball at least felt realistic so me. It's about the Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) who realizes that he can't compete with the other teams' player budgets, so he hires an Ivy-league economist who uses statistical analysis to hire affordable, unknown players. Admittedly, that description doesn't sound very compelling. What makes the movie interesting is Beane's struggle to implement his statistical approach against the passionate, traditional baseball management.
