Yesterday we told you about how Steven Soderbergh is in talks to direct an adaptation of Michael Lewis’ “Moneyball,” with Brad Pitt set to play the lead, Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane. As a die-hard baseball fan with the book sitting rather prominently on my shelf, I thought I’d take a second to explain how this all makes sense.
A former major leaguer with an undistinguished career, Beane is the General Manager of the A’s. For those who don’t know much about baseball, the GMs are the ones who make decisions pertaining to baseball operations. They are the ones who engineer trades, decide which free agents to get, that sort of thing (though the owner technically has some sort of final say, since he controls the pursestrings). The book throws a lot of credit Beane’s way for implementing a minor revolution, of sorts, and guiding the A’s to much more success than a system of its limited means should expect.
To give a brief background of “Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game,” the book details the Oakland A’s approach to building a winning ballclub. Their approach, considered novel by some, was to use advanced statistics and an understanding of basic economic theory (i.e. grasping the concept of scarcity and how it affected the baseball market). That was particularly important because they weren’t able to spend nearly as much as some other teams. The tome soon ignited a firestorm in the baseball community in a manner sort of recalling Martin Luther’s “95 Theses,” as people rush to defend Beane’s success (five postseason trips in eleven years) or attack his failures (zero World Championships).
The numbers were just a foundation for Beane’s rise. His success is based on his ability to both understand and manipulate people in the ruthless corporate world of baseball, reconciling any number of factions within his team and sweet talking other GMs into giving him bargains. After all, millions of dollars are at stake with his every move. Beane’s fortunes are sometimes seen as stemming from his unique backstory. A big bust as a baseball player, he’s a newcomer to the old boys’ club of baseball executives, decades younger than most of his peers and with considerably more of a wild streak. Beane’s famous response to his postseason failures? “My shit doesn’t work in the playoffs. My job is to get us to the playoffs.”
So is Brad Pitt as a baseball GM so outlandish? Billy Beane (at least as depicted by the excellent Michael Lewis) has become both a pariah and a savior. As an undeniable underdog, his teams struggled at first, but Beane’s unorthodox methods soon provided undeniable results, even as the ultimate goal was left just out of his reach. But Pitt can play Beane as a bit of a cocky hero who uses his undeniable charisma to enact a revolution. And that’s a character who clearly transcends baseball. Soderbergh is so prolific he could be attracted for any number of reasons, but if you squint a little bit the story does have echoes of “Erin Brockovich” and “Che,” though of course to a much more limited degree, and in a fun setting.