IBC

Posted: **Thu Feb 05, 2009 6:18 pm**

Brad Pitt and his Ocean's Eleven director Steven Soderbergh are set to reteam for a movie adaptation of Michael Lewis' bestselling book Moneyball: The Art Of Winning An Unfair Game. Soderbergh is in talks to direct the film, in which Pitt is slated to star as Oakland Athletics baseball coach Billy Beane.

Lewis' book chronicles the complicated computer analysis system Beane used to create a team that regularly contended for baseball's World Series.

Posted: **Thu Feb 05, 2009 6:51 pm**

Gabe, have you been reading the Onion again?

Posted: **Thu Feb 05, 2009 7:22 pm**

I guess this was only a local story but I thought it got more national press, they've been talking about it here for more than a year. I'm not entirely sure what the angle of the movie is going to be, but if they can get McLovin to play Paul DePodesta I'm in.

Posted: **Thu Feb 05, 2009 9:17 pm**

As a joke, this is hilarious. As a serious news item... kind of sad. This has to be the worst idea for a movie since Gigli...

Posted: **Fri Feb 06, 2009 1:10 am**

You Don't Mess With the Zohan was a much worse movie idea than this. This is actually fairly easy to fit into the sports movie mold, beginning is Beane failing as a baseball player and working his way up the scouting food chain, bulk of the movie is people aligning against him and saying he's the underdog, triumph of making the playoffs in spite of the obstacles, tragedy is slide Jeremy, slide plus Giambi signs with the Yankees, denouement is Beane is still at it finding new ways to win in spite of the odds.

Posted: **Fri Feb 06, 2009 9:11 am**

Yea, I'm not sure how this is the worst idea for a movie since Gigli. Have you seen some of the bullshit out of Hollywood lately? Any sports movies that aren't about cheerleading or Will Ferrell? I'm all for it...

Posted: **Fri Feb 06, 2009 11:08 am**

Maybe it depends on your perspective on Moneyball. I never thought the book was that good (was bored after the first chapter and stopped reading it) and I've long thought Beane was overrated as a GM (largely due to Moneyball).

Posted: **Fri Feb 06, 2009 11:16 am**

We had this big ice storm the past 2 weeks and I guess hell froze over because of it, cause holy shit I agree with Bren on something. Moneyball is a very boring read. 200 something pages of "Billy Beane is great because he signed Chad Bradford, Billy Beane is great because he drafted Jeremy Brown, Billy Beane is a genius because he traded Jeremy Bonderman."

Posted: **Fri Feb 06, 2009 12:20 pm**

Cardinals wrote:We had this big ice storm the past 2 weeks and I guess hell froze over because of it, cause holy shit I agree with Bren on something. Moneyball is a very boring read. 200 something pages of "Billy Beane is great because he signed Chad Bradford, Billy Beane is great because he drafted Jeremy Brown, Billy Beane is a genius because he traded Jeremy Bonderman."

This seems to be happening a lot more since I stopped being Commish/ExCo. Causation is hard to prove, but I've definitely been less stressed in regards to the IBC, so a correlation seems to make sense.

Posted: **Fri Feb 06, 2009 3:07 pm**

It's not surprising that you two found Moneyball boring. It isn't a baseball book, it's a business book that happens to be about baseball. If you're expecting something like Summer of '49 you're going to be very disappointed in it.

Posted: **Fri Feb 06, 2009 4:52 pm**

I have no problem with the business aspect of it, I always read BP's business columns and frequently flip through the WSJ and local/market-specific business stuff at work. I just didn't think it was all that well written and Beane's ego shone through. It's not that interesting a read if you don't buy into the "Billy Beane is a genius" perspective.

Posted: **Fri Feb 06, 2009 4:53 pm**

Athletics wrote:It's not surprising that you two found Moneyball boring. It isn't a baseball book, it's a business book that happens to be about baseball. If you're expecting something like Summer of '49 you're going to be very disappointed in it.

Yup...that's all I got.

Posted: **Sat Feb 07, 2009 12:58 am**

RedSox wrote:I have no problem with the business aspect of it, I always read BP's business columns and frequently flip through the WSJ and local/market-specific business stuff at work. I just didn't think it was all that well written and Beane's ego shone through. It's not that interesting a read if you don't buy into the "Billy Beane is a genius" perspective.

Sure, but those articles are written for baseball fans. Moneyball isn't, it's just Liar's Poker with baseball characters. Also, Beane definitely isn't an overrated GM (he's certainly nowhere near as overrated as Theo), what I think is much more interesting is that the two low payroll teams who have consistently competed since the Yankee spending went crazy, the A's and the Twins, seem to have exactly the opposite sort of philosophy to do it. With all the attention placed on Oakland's statistical analysis I've been curious why there hasn't been much written on why the gamer-ness of the Twins has continually resulted in success while the gamer-ness of other teams (like a certain Bay Area baseball team that was so gritty it put gamer into the slogan) has not.

Posted: **Sat Feb 07, 2009 10:50 am**

The WSJ isn't written for baseball fans either, at least Moneyball has baseball as a setting.
You may not have noticed, but the a's aren't competing against the Yankees. They're competing against the Rangers and mariners (two badly run orgs) and the Angels, who only recently got decent management and the A's haven't won a playoff series in 18 years. getting to the playoffs is pretty meaningless in that context.

Posted: **Sat Feb 07, 2009 11:56 am**

RedSox wrote:The WSJ isn't written for baseball fans either, at least Moneyball has baseball as a setting.
You may not have noticed, but the a's aren't competing against the Yankees. They're competing against the Rangers and mariners (two badly run orgs) and the Angels, who only recently got decent management and the A's haven't won a playoff series in 18 years. getting to the playoffs is pretty meaningless in that context.

Did Billy Beane piss in your cereal? Did you ever really read the book?

The book isn't so much a handjob to Beane, as it is talking about finding undervalued skills and paying to get the most out of the dollar amount available.

So Billy Beane was smarter and better then the Rangers, Mariners, and Angels - isn't that what he's paid to do? This whole argument over, "it doesn't work in the playoffs" is bullshit for two reasons.
1) He is up against teams with upwards of 3x the amount of payroll who are built to dominate in short series playoff settings...
2) It's the goddamn playoffs - The Marlins won the World Series, the Cardinals were awful and then played in the World Series...etc etc etc...

You sound like Joe Morgan and the other 3,500 hundred people who think Billy Beane wrote the book...

Posted: **Sat Feb 07, 2009 12:17 pm**

Royals wrote:Did Billy Beane piss in your cereal? Did you ever really read the book?

RedSox wrote: I never thought the book was that good (was bored after the first chapter and stopped reading it) ...

Perhaps not asked ... but already answered ...

Posted: **Sat Feb 07, 2009 12:58 pm**

Royals wrote: 2) It's the goddamn playoffs - The Marlins won the World Series, the Cardinals were awful and then played in the World Series...etc etc etc...

That was not a bad Cardinals team. Game 1 of the NLDS against the Padres was the first time since the BEGINNING OF MAY that the team had a fully healthy lineup. There were times that year that, due to injury, So Taguchi hit cleanup. So Taguchi!

Posted: **Sat Feb 07, 2009 2:04 pm**

RedSox wrote:The WSJ isn't written for baseball fans either, at least Moneyball has baseball as a setting.
You may not have noticed, but the a's aren't competing against the Yankees. They're competing against the Rangers and mariners (two badly run orgs) and the Angels, who only recently got decent management and the A's haven't won a playoff series in 18 years. getting to the playoffs is pretty meaningless in that context.

Come on dude, the A's swept the Twins in the 2006 divisional round (that's more recently than the Yankees have won a playoff series). Jim, great catch on Bren only reading the first chapter. The first chapter of Moneyball is all about Beane's playing career or lack thereof. That's like judging the New Testament based solely on the Creation story. The Mariners have been a mess during the Bavasi era, but during the years Moneyball covers they were very credibly run by Pat Gillick. Arte Moreno bought the Angels in 2003, but they were credible all the way back in 2000 when Scoscia took over. Oh well, never let the facts get in the way of Bren disliking something other people like.

Posted: **Sat Feb 07, 2009 2:32 pm**

Jake, the Creation story is in Genesis, which is in the Old Testament

Posted: **Sat Feb 07, 2009 2:34 pm**

It's rare that a non-fiction sports book is written about a team that never won a championship under this strategy, and many of the players hailed as great finds had yet to be proven. While it's an interesting strategy that has no doubt changed the face of baseball, Billy Beane's success was not what I would say is deserving of a 300 page biopic/praise of the job he's done in Oakland

Posted: **Sat Feb 07, 2009 3:21 pm**

Cardinals wrote:Jake, the Creation story is in Genesis, which is in the Old Testament

now c'mon Aaron ... confusing "begats" and creation is not a stretch in a thread that originally dealt with a proposed movie

Posted: **Sat Feb 07, 2009 3:51 pm**

I thought MoneyBall was an alright read. Wasn't horrible, wasn't great. It was okay. Interesting enough for a read at the beach last year.

Posted: **Sat Feb 07, 2009 4:06 pm**

Each generation has its own book(s) looking at the business of baseball ... for better or worse Moneyball is one of those books for a generation just as Veeck as in Wreck was for my generation. Neither are the gospel ... neither are the be-all to end-all. Both exaggerate the influence of the respective main character - however, both main characters deserve to have a book written about their exploits and efforts.

Both were nice one time reads for me that are a part of baseball history as was Roger Kahn's Boys of Summer, David Halberstam's The Teammates and countless other books.

Posted: **Sat Feb 07, 2009 11:24 pm**

Cardinals wrote:Jake, the Creation story is in Genesis, which is in the Old Testament

Aaron, that's precisely my point. Bren judged Moneyball on the chapter discussing Billy Beane's playing career, a chapter which has little to no bearing on the rest of the book except that its on the first page, kind of like how the Creation story has little to no bearing on the New Testament.

Posted: **Sat Feb 07, 2009 11:28 pm**

Oh okay, I thought you just had a brain fart

IBC

umm....what?

umm....what?