Honored with no less than six academy award nominations, including for Best Actor and Best Picture, Moneyball has fast become a favorite among baseball enthusiasts. The film was an adaption of the well-received novel of the same name by Michael Lewis and stars the eternally youthful Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. The plot is at once historically grounded and heartfelt and explores the relationship of Oakland’s Athletic general manager Billy Beane and Peter Brand, a promising economics alumnus of Yale, as they pioneer a highly methodical and efficient system of choosing ball players.Plagued by crushing criticism from other experts, the two men succeed in transcending this adversity and creating an enduring method of team selection known as sabermetrics, still in use today.
Although personal preferences are bound to vary, Bob Cook of NBC Sports asserts that there are five essential markers of a universally adored drama in this particular genre. These include elevating underdogs, slighting established authority, providing ample quotes of a memorable nature, inspiring real-life athletes, and, last but not least, moving full grown men to tears. According to these parameters, cinematic newcomers like Moneyball may well achieve immortality in the popular imagination of sports fans in years to come.
Also in the cannon of sport movie masterpieces are such unforgetable films as Rocky, Field of Dreams, Miracle, Caddyshack, Hoosers, A League of their Own, and a multitude of others across the entire spectrum of sports.
Tags: Billy Beane, Brad Pitt, moneyball, Oakland A's, The Oscars
