“People are overlooked for a variety of biased reasons and perceived flaws. Age, appearance, personality. Bill James and mathematics cut straight through that.”
– Peter Brand (Moneyball)
Moneyball is not your typical sports movie. Yes. There are scenes where they show the player on the field practicing or playing, but that is not what the movie as a whole was about. It was about the method for picking a team under circumstances that were not considered to be ideal at the time.
Based on a true story, Moneyball follows a team manager trying to put together the next season’s team, with a budget that was considered laughable. They had just lost three of their best players and the money being allotted to assemble the next years’ team was a joke. 70% of the teams had a $50M+ budget and the A’s were operating with barely over $40M. What came next caught everyone by surprise.
Billy Beane had to come up with something different and imaginative and with the help of what most people would consider to be a super dork, he did the impossible. He put together an all-star team using a theory that was frowned upon by the rest of the baseball community for no better reason than “it was different.
For me, Moneyball is a reminder that just because you aren’t a player, doesn’t mean you are ignorant to the sport, just because you have never written a best-selling novel, doesn’t mean you would be a terrible writer, and just because something has never been done, doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
Journeyman's Legacy 