All the best baseball movies are about making changes. A League of Their Own is about a league of women whose husbands are out fighting in a war. Field of Dreams features a protagonist who turns their life upside-down after hearing a mysterious voice. The Sandlot is about a kid who goes off on a life-changing journey. The 2011 Brad Pitt starrer, Moneyball, is the tale of Billy Beane’s unconventional methods in building a winning team.
Moneyball is one of the ultimate underdog films ever made. It covers events from the Oakland Athletics’ historic 2002 season and portrays one of the biggest shifts in how the game is played. And it marvelously balances head and heart while doing so. The sports drama is now streaming on Netflix and this is the time when the game of baseball is especially closely scrutinized so now is the time to make a case for the film.
Brad Pitt’s Billy Beane finds out exactly how hard it is to make changes when he attempts a shift in the way the game is played and goes about building his team in an unorthodox way. How the world reacts to this is a very important part of the film and this just adds to its strengths.
The film is essentially a love letter to the game. At the core of it, it is about how important the game is to people and about putting in every effort to make it and yourself better. It is also one of the greatest stories about the underdogs triumphing in the history of sports films. Moneyball is entirely about a team everyone underestimates and a gutsy manager who together, go on to make history.
One of the greatest movie moments of all time is the A’s 20th consecutive win. The entire sequence is almost magical, from the dramatic lighting to the background music to the performances by the ensemble cast.
It’s a film that still generates talk almost ten years after it was made and what else qualifies it to be an iconic baseball movie? There’s definitely a strong case for Moneyball joining the list of greats.
