Moneyball

I've seen a lot of comments online in the last few days about the movie Moneyball. I can only assume it's because of the movie's recent release on DVD. Whatever the reason, I thought it might be a good time to give you some of my thoughts on this movie. Spoiler Alert (if something that has already happened historically can be considered "spoiled").


I'll start with this: Moneyball is a very good movie. It's witty and very well-written (to be expected from Aaron Sorkin). It's much funnier than I anticipated. Brad Pitt's fantastic. Jonah Hill and Philip Seymour Hoffman are also great. The story is engaging and entertaining. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the movie, and would recommend it to others.

BUT. I find the movie to be factually inaccurate and historically misleading. Now, before you roll your eyes and tell me how every "based on a true story" movie is inaccurate, let me make my point by pointing out some other "based on a true story" sports movies and their relation to reality.

Movie: Miracle
Main point: The United States hockey team pulled what is probably the biggest upset in sports history by defeating the Soviets in the 1980 Olympics.
History tells us: Exactly the same thing.

Movie: Remember the Titans
Main point: A newly integrated Virginia high school must overcome a racial divide; the school's football team comes together as friends and wins the state championship.
History tells us: Exactly the same thing (well, I guess I can't confirm that anyone on the team was friends with anyone else, but they did overcome their racial differences to win state).

Movie: Rudy
Main point: A small, athletically and academically limited young man works his tail off to get a spot on one of the greatest college football teams in the country: the Notre Dame Fighting Irish.
History tells us: Exactly the same thing.

Movie: The Rookie
Main point: A high school math teacher & baseball coach in his 30s tries out for the major leagues. Against all odds, Jim Morris's arm gives him the opportunity to fulfill his dream of playing professional baseball.
History tells us: Exactly the same thing.

Obviously, each of these movies takes liberties with the truth. Reality was probably not as dramatic, or as funny, or as entertaining. But the main points of each of these movies is absolutely in line with historical reality. On the other hand, you have...

Movie: Moneyball
Main point: The GM of the low-budget Oakland A's changes the game of baseball when his team succeeds after he employs new techniques for evaluating players & finds a way to put together a winning team with one of baseball's lowest payrolls.
History tells us: Not really.

The film opens at the end of the 2001 season, as the A's (who had gone 102-60 that year) lose in the first round of the playoffs. In the offseason the A's lose a couple of their stars to big-money teams, and GM Billy Beane is forced to fill those gaps with very little money. He teams up with stat-keeping nerd Peter Brand and together they go against all the team's scouts and its team manager and hire misfits & nobodies who, they determine, are undervalued but can help them win. At one point in the 2002 season, the A's win something like 22 straight games to set a major league record (which is true, by the way). But then near the end of the movie, you watch as the A's (who had gone 103-59 that year) lose in the first round of the playoffs. So what did the "moneyball" strategy accomplish? Well, the A's won exactly one more game with it than without it. And they got just as far in the playoffs.

Of course, then the Red Sox try to hire Beane because they're so impressed with what he did with his Oakland club. So maybe in the long-run the "moneyball" strategy is the way to go? Well, Beane stayed with Oakland and here's what went down over the next decade:

2001 (year before Moneyball): 102-60, lost LDS

2002 (year of Moneyball): 103-59, lost LDS

2003: 96-66, lost LDS

2004: 91-71, no playoffs

2005: 88-74, no playoffs

2006: 93-69, got swept 4 games to 0 in ALCS

2007: 76-86, no playoffs

2008: 75-86, no playoffs

2009: 75-87, no playoffs

2010: 81-81, no playoffs

2011: 74-88, no playoffs

So, perhaps "moneyball" isn't the silver bullet the film makes it out to be?

Tellingly, the movie never mentions the fact that the 2002 Cy Young winner, Barry Zito, played for Beane's team. It also doesn't highlight that year's league MVP, Miguel Tejada, who also played for the A's. It focuses on the undervalued "misfits" like Chad Bradford and Scott Hatteberg, who were far less instrumental in the A's success than Zito, Tejada, and two other great pitchers, Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder.

The biggest problem I had with the stretching of the truth, however, came at the film's closing when a written sentence on the screen claimed that two years later (2004) the Boston Red Sox won the World Series "using Beane's philosophy." The claim is a boldfaced lie, and it disappointed me. The 2004 Red Sox had the second-highest payroll in the league (behind only the Yankees, who basically swim around in gold coins like Scrooge McDuck). Their roster included big-timers like Derek Lowe, Pedro Martinez, Curt Schilling, Tim Wakefield (and that's just the pitchers), Jason Varitek, Orlando Cabrera, Nomar Garciaparra, Kevin Youkilis, Johnny Damon (one of the stars the A's lost to the Red Sox after the 2001 season), Manny Ramirez, and David "Big Papi" Ortiz. If that's the "moneyball" strategy, then the movie does a pretty poor job explaining it.

I know I sound like a "scrooge" of some kind myself. But like I said above, I would recommend this movie for anyone who likes to be entertained, or anyone who thinks Brad Pitt is good-looking (*ahem* Elizabeth *ahem*). Its success, however, seems to play largely on the general population's unfamiliarity with the truth about recent Major League Baseball history.

A few books you should read

I think I read more books from October thru December of 2011 than I'd read in quite some time. Here are the ones I liked:

Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager by Buzz Bissinger.
Bissinger, the author of Friday Night Lights, spent much of the 2003 baseball season in the clubhouse of the St. Louis Cardinals, where he got to know the atmosphere of the team, its players, and its coaches. Three Nights in August chronicles a 3-game series from that season against the Cardinals' arch rival Chicago Cubs. The games are viewed through the eyes of Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa. It's a detail-packed book that gives new insight into baseball strategy. I'm a life-long baseball fan and still I learned things I never knew about how far ahead of the game a mind like LaRussa's is constantly working during a game. You don't have to be a Cardinals fan to enjoy this book, but you do need to enjoy baseball. (I was particularly engrossed in this book because I began reading it the day before the 2011 World Series, which the Cardinals would win a few days after I finished.)

Free to Choose: A Personal Statement by Milton & Rose Friedman.
I discovered Milton Friedman (by accident) when I came across some youtube videos of some of his lectures from the 70s & 80s. The Friedmans (Friedman & Friedwoman?) are economists who have championed free-market capitalism more influentially (perhaps) than anyone else in the last 50 years. Having never read anything on economics before, I found Free to Choose to be quite accessible. It basically makes the case for a small-government free enterprise system. If you're not already an economic conservative, these two might make you one!

Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever by Bill O'Reilly & Martin Dugard.
No matter what you think of Bill O'Reilly's politics, you won't find them in this book. It's worth reading for anyone remotely interested in the events of April, 1865. Even though I was pretty sure I knew the climax of the story (Lincoln gets assassinated -- sorry for the spoiler), I felt suspense all along, like I was reading a thriller or a murder mystery. I also learned a lot. Maybe I was just completely ignorant before picking it up, but all I really knew was that Lincoln was shot at Ford's Theater by John Wilkes Booth. This book will take you behind the scenes of the conspiracy that unfolded in the week prior to the assassination, including the last few days of the Civil War itself. When I finished, I picked up another book on Lincoln, because it got me interested!

How, then, shall we raise kids?

It seems that everyone these days knows exactly how to raise kids... even if they don't have any kids of their own. I'm not talking as much about more specific things (should you spank your children? should you allow your kids to drink pop?), but more about bigger-picture things.

Secularists think that raising kids religiously is akin to child abuse. They call it "brainwashing" to teach your children that going to church and obeying God are important things. Abortion supporters believe that an unborn child's life should be ended if they are found to have (or even have a chance of having) mental or physical disabilities. Many would also support the abortion of an unborn child who is likely to be born into a family with few economic resources, and who might be raised in an impoverished home.

So why aren't there outcries against more things that could lead to discomfort in life? Cubs fans are allowed to teach their children to root for the Cubs without objection, even though the last 104 years has shown us that such children are likely in for a lifetime of sports-related hardship. Or what about Raiders fans? At a Raiders preseason game last August, two people were shot! Isn't it dangerous to raise your child to be such a monster? Aspiring artists and actors and musicians tend to not make very much money (a very small percentage succeed in hitting "the big time"). Should we forbid parents from allowing their children to sing in choirs, or major in art in college?

Just curious.