Category Archives: culture

Brad Pitt as Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane. Photo Credit: Sony Pictures

There’s a moment early on in Bennett Miller’s impeccably made new film ‘Moneyball,’ in which Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt) realizes that everything must change. His team is losing three major stars to free agency, and he doesn’t have the purchasing power to keep them around or to buy replacements of similar caliber. In a league with no salary cap, Oakland is like David up against The Yankees’ Goliath. Wealthier teams comfortably drop $110 million on players each year while Oakland can only manage to pay less than half of that. Or as Beane explains to the team’s inner circle ”there are rich teams, and there are poor teams. Then there’s 50 feet of crap. And then there’s us.”

Beane knows that the game is geared to favor the rich, and he’s either going to have to get creative, or else watch next year’s team chase the ball around the field. Beane decides that he will assemble a team based on statistical goals rather than star power. He will fill his roster with a bunch of no name players, grabbed at a bargain.  The problem is, the scouts and team manager aren’t seeing his revolutionary new vision. They insist on what has always been done. Surely their skill, intuition and coaching are better than a computer filled with metrics and data. A protest spreads through the head offices of the Oakland A’s, and consequences aren’t far behind.

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