Okay so who loves a good sports movie raise your hand. Well money ball falls right into that mold. It has everything you look for in this type of film good charters , story line, and you leave the theater feeling good. It stars Brad Pitt, Johan Hill, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and Robin Wright. This wonderful drama/ biography about Oakland's Gm run 133 minutes and is directed by Bennet Miller.
This baseball story is about the rise of Billy Beane a 5 tool player and his time in the big leagues and his frustration with being classified as a can't miss prospect to a bust, and his rise in the A's organization as a scout to the GM. The landscape of professional baseball has always for years the riches teams get the best players. After the 1992 season he realizes if he wants to win in Oakland he has to adapt to survive 0against the big boys in baseball. Billy bean set out to change the established order of doing business of baseball. The thing that set Billy off to change the way things are being done was a meeting with his scouts and they were talking about 1 prospectand his girlfriend and how ugly she is and how he will have no confidence to play baseball.He stopped them in mid sentence and said there are the big boys the Yankees, red sox, the mid level teams and then there is us below crap, if we don't adapt we will die. His first stop to start rebuilding his team was Cleveland for a trading partner to rebuild his team after the defection of his 3 biggest stars.While in office of the Indians general manger he notices a guy peter brand (Johan Hill) giving advice to some people in the room regarding the trade they were trying to make. Billy bean was so impressed that the Indians gm took his advice so quickly he goes about hiring him away from the Indians. Peter brand happens to be a Yale grad and an ecomincs major and well versed in the art of sabermertics focusing on relatively undervalued players to rebuild teams based on statics and undervalued players. When he came back to Oakland with his new plan he was meet with resistant from everybody from scouts to his manger. His manger refused to play Billy's guys because they are just not that good, so what does he do he trades the players his coach was playing in order to make him play the guys he brought in.
I haven't seen many biographies before that made me stop and watch until know. The acting was just outstanding from everybody especially Brad Pitt and Johan hill they had some great chemistry together as the gm and his assistant gm. Phillip Seymour Hoffman was good as Art Howe the manger of the Oakland A's.The use of Oakland as stadium was given and Fenway Park when Billy took a business trip to talk to the red sox owner about becoming their GM was a great scène. He felt that all of his work and cristism of his new way of doing things finally had played off when the sox's owner made him an offer to be the highest paid gm in baseball. They are a few teams who follow his way of thinking, the red sox 2 World Series, marlins 1 World Series, and twins are a very completive team.I guess he has something here to be proud of.
The sport of baseball hasn't completely converted to sabermetrics to build a team .There are still the big boys and the little boys in baseball but at least it a little more fun. All in all if your fan of the game of baseball you defiantly will enjoy this telling of how one man help changed the established order of baseball. I give money ball 4 stars .
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