Moneyball

I was convinced to watch Moneyball last night, and I'm SO glad I did! It's definitely one of the best films of the past year! It's drama with just a teensy bit of very welcome comic relief sprinkled about. Jonah Hill is really good. Brad Pitt is... well... Brad Pitt and amazing of course. The story is complex and kept me engaged and completely riveted for two hours. It's about the business of Major League Baseball, and also about the people and their stories. Just awesome.

One of the things that really struck me throughout was what a roller coaster it is to be in sports management. Several times during the film, they run incessant commentary from announcers, fans, people in the business, etc. over footage of games or players or coaches and managers trying to direct their very tenuous career paths as best they can. Sometimes the chatter is positive, which is far easier to take than the negative, but remains a never-ending review of how these people are perceived to be performing in their roles at a given point in the season.

The comments are also always jam-packed with emotion. "Smith should have never hired that guy! He's out of his mind!" "Jones should have gotten out of the game years ago!" Blah blah blah blaaaaaaah.... I cannot imagine having thousands of people on TV, radio and internet, giving me a daily earful on how they think I'm doing my job. It was annoying me, on behalf of a movie character, just listening to it for ten seconds. I guess in the real world you learn to tune it out for the most part and just do what you think is right.

If you haven't seen Moneyball, see it. It's about sports, business, self-doubt, life choices, personal responsibility, second chances... and it will keep you watching until the end. I'm telling you, this is one that you will pause if you have to take a bathroom break.