Stars: Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Robin Wright Writers: Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin, story by Stan Chervin, based on the book by Michael Lewis Director: Bennett Miller Distributor: Columbia Pictures Release Date: September 23, 2011

Moneyball depicts the life of Oakland Athletics manager Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt), and his revolutionary new approach to selecting, trading and signing players in the MLB, with the help of Ivy League grad Peter Brand (played by Jonah Hill).

Let me start by saying this isn’t your typical sports movie that ends in a win for the main characters. Instead, the movie focuses more on the concept of “moneyball” than on baseball itself. So if you’re someone who doesn’t know what a 2-4-3 double play is, don’t worry, you’ll still love this movie.

The movie shows Beane’s struggles with divorce, rearing a child and putting his job on the line for the algorithms designed by Brand. Beane, a prodigious high school baseball talent who skipped college only to see a major league career never materialize, is one of the thousands who never made it in “the show,’’ and the experience has left him a little bitter but mostly realistic.

The concept of “moneyball” is the use of cold-hard stats to analyze a player’s possible impact for a given team. Instead of having textbook scouts, as the movie depicts, chewing tobacco with a clipboard sitting around and selecting players based on a hunch, Beane and Brand design a new way to approach signing players. Their idea was for a team to choose mediocre athletes who contribute something individually special to the team, that way as a whole the team will have everything it needs to win. The algorithms designed by Brand allow for estimations of how many times the player will get on base, hit a single, drive a ball to left field, etc.

Beane used a 25 million dollar budget (the Yankees budget is about 135 million) to sign average ball players. He faced the doubt of the team’s general manager, Art Howe (played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman) who believed in the conventional method of choosing the most popular players a team can afford.

With his job on the line, Beane used his new Moneyball methods in the 2002 MLB draft, and that year led the A’s through a 20 game winning streak, the longest by any team in American League history. Throughout the next couple years, he would lead the A’s as deep in the playoffs as the American League Championship Series, one step before the World Series.  Beane held an advantage in baseball until other teams employed his methods to sign players. Most notably the Redsox, who with a roster of average unpopular players, broke the Curse Of Bambino to win the 2004 World Series.

Straying from your conventional baseball movie, Moneyball is a hilarious, intelligent film that I would recommend to moviegoers, not just baseball fans. Pitt gives an Oscar worthy performance and is only slightly out-shadowed by Hill’s ability to make us feel like we are there in the room with them, debating who to sign and how to manage a business. And that’s what a baseball team really is: a business.

My rating: ****