You don’t have to be from Oakland, CA, or even like baseball, to love Moneyball. This film, different on many levels than most sports movies, hit home when it was released in 2011. The narrative would’ve held interest even if the lens focused on the Athletics was instead on the Philadelphia Phillies or the Texas Rangers, but its setting in the very neighborhood in which I was born lent resonance.
My family was glued to most A’s game during the remarkable three consecutive World Series years (1972-1974). The Raiders were winning big too; our working-class step-sister city to San Francisco and Los Angeles had clawed its way atop the Mount Olympus of major team sports. The A’s, Raiders, and Golden State Warriors were home teams in the fullest sense; it was us against the big-city teams, us against the world.
From the promising springs, through the embattled summers, and into those galvanizing pennant runs, A’s games that weren’t attended or televised played on the kitchen radio. There, only a mile from the Oakland-Alameda Coliseum, it was easy to imagine the action as Reggie Jackson came to the plate, or pitcher Rollie Fingers took the mound to dash opposing teams’ hope of a late rally. You could almost hear the cheers.
In the 2002 season made legendary when the A’s won a record-holding 20 consecutive games, the team won the American League West but fell to the Minnesota Twins in the American League Division Series. Most fans who celebrated the 20-win season under General Manager Billy Beane and manager Art Howe were unaware of the sabermetric system upon which the plot of Moneyball hinges. The efficacy of sabermetrics remained controversial thereafter, but the success generated by the approach has been widely acknowledged.
The film, released nine years later with Brad Pitt, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and Jonah Hill in pivotal roles, told a riveting tale about how new concepts and systems are often resisted by reactionary disbelievers in the old guard.
The film was nominated for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay (from Michael Lewis’ 2003 book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game), and Best Actor (Pitt) at the 84th Academy Awards. The soundtrack by Mychael Danna—a wash of cyber-urgency—should’ve been nominated. The reviews were generally positive. Criticisms about inaccuracies in certain portrayals surfaced, especially from Howe.
In the closing scenes of the film, a testament to Billy Beane’s pioneering success comes when he receives a big-league offer ($12.5 million) to general manage the Boston Red Sox. Had he accepted the offer he would’ve become the highest paid GM in MLB history. The denouement of the picture humanizes Beane with a suggestion that he declined the offer to remain close to a daughter in the custody of his ex-wife.
The film’s key scene comes when Beane is seen on Assistant General Manager Peter Brand’s (Hill) monitor, physically agonizing on the field in an empty stadium after the loss to the Twins. Speaking for my fellow Oaklanders, reflecting on those glory years, win or lose… we can relate.