MESSAGE IN THE MOVIES

Moneyball  Rated PG-13

Directed by Bennett Miller.  Starring Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill

Photo: Sony Pictures
Movie Review by Rev. Bruce Batchelor Glader

There’s a good reason why so many spots fans hate the New York Yankees.  They have the deepest pockets and can afford to pay the biggest salaries. The Yankees literally get the best players that money can buy.  There’s a line in Moneyball, the new sports film (based on a nonfiction bestseller by Michael Lewis), in which a character says that the Oakland Athletics are nothing more than the Yankees’ farm team.  Cleveland Indians fans know what that’s all about.

Moneyball is a smart and sometimes funny film about how General Manager Billy Beane (Pitt) managed in 2002 to rebuild a team that had lost their top three players in trades by buying players at bargain basement prices.  Beane used statistical analysis to recruit players with skills that most scouts would overlook.  Beane’s system would not only change field positions for his players, but rely on the combined talents to be greater than the individual members.

The film is at its best when it shows how resistant the system was to this new way of doing business. Beane meets up with opposition at every turn, but figures that when you really have nothing left to lose, you have to stick to what you believe in.  He is assisted by Peter Brand (Hill), a Yale educated sidekick (recruited from the Indians!) who loves baseball and number crunching.

There is a nice subplot about how Beane is also trying to reconnect with his daughter (nicely played by Kerris Dorsey).  This is the first film that I can remember in which an ex-wife and her second husband are depicted in non-judgmental and positive fashion.

The screenplay is co-written by Steve Zaillian (who wrote Schindler’s List) and Aaron Sorkin (who wrote The Social Network) and it does a good job explaining the business of sports, especially to those unfamiliar with the business.

My only gripe is that for a film about a comeback, there weren’t enough scenes of actual baseball games.   But, then, that is what makes Moneyball different from other “feel good” sports films.  Moneyball doesn’t want us to feel good at all, but to think about how unfair professional baseball can be.  Even though Billy Beane challenges the system for a season, the system stays essentially the same.

The church knows how to play this game, too.  Whenever we try to keep things safe and nice, we keep ourselves comfortable, but fail to be the venturesome church that God is calling us to be. Then we complain about a losing season. When someone suggests that we might need to think about things differently, it is easy to get defensive.  But what do we have to lose?

The church is the Body of Christ, and we are at our best when we can discern the gifts and possibilities in all people, including those whom a world might pass by.  “I believe that there is a championship team that we could afford”, says Peter Brand, “because everyone undervalues them, like an island of misfit toys.” 

I think that this could be your church’s year to rebuild the team.  Play ball!

Pitchfork/Halo Ratings:

Three halos The business and ethics of sports management, told in an interesting and provocative fashion.

One pitchfork: The guys like to cuss, and this PG-13 film gets in an extra F Bomb or two, since that’s really the only thing offensive about this picture.

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