Baseball Movies: The Top 10 Best in Cinematic History
By Bill Felber
9. Moneyball
9th on this list of best baseball movies, the 2011 film was adapted Michael Lewis’ best-selling 2003 book of the same name. It tells the story of how Oakland Athletics’ general manager Billy Beane used innovative SABRmetric techniques to manipulate the A’s to a 21-game winning streak, the AL West Division title, and eventually into the 2002 post-season.
Brad Pitt gave an Academy Award-nominated performance as Beane, one of six nominations that also included Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor for Jonah Hill, who played Beane’s nerdy alter ego and assistant.
At the time, team officials relied almost exclusively on traditional scouting methods to identify talent. Moneyball tells how Beane eschewed those methods as inefficient and costly, instead emphasizing overlooked traits, notably on-base average. Today every big league team has a statistical analysis office, but in 2002 such a strategy was considered heretical.
The movie cost $50 million to make and grossed about twice that much. Rotten Tomatoes gave it a rating of 94. As evidenced by the six Academy Award nominations, critics were generally effusive of their praise, both of Pitt and of the storyline.
Historians have been somewhat less kind, noting several factual omissions or inaccuracies. The A’s three most important players – pitchers Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder, and Barry Zito – are written out of the story entirely. Art Howe, who managed the 2002 A’s, has criticized his portrayal as a hard-headed, change-resistant field boss, a characterization probably done for dramatic effect. Some players have spoken out in Howe’s defense.