Padres Editorial: Friars On Base Ranks Their Favorite Baseball Movies Part II

Mandatory Credit: HBO.com

Co-editor Jason Evans discusses #5-Moneyball

When the book Moneyball came out, it was revolutionary. You got an inside look at a forward-thinking front office and about how the Oakland A’s went through their process. I read it when it came out because both my father and I were curious to read it as baseball fans. I then read it again in grad school after the movie came out.

Was the movie the best ever made? No, but it was entertaining. I thought it was interesting casting to have Brad Pitt as Billy Beane and Jonah Hill as basically Paul DePodesta. I don’t know much about Beane, but I could see Beane doing that kind of tirade as things went south. I imagine Beane not being able to watch the games.

Some of it seemed to go along with the book with the trades and other moves that were made to put together the team. They didn’t really talk about the draft, but I guess that didn’t really play to non-baseball audiences.

If you’ve read the book, some parts of it were hard to make into a movie. I think they should have looked a little more into his past.

I think for what it was as a baseball movie, I thought it was pretty good. A non-baseball fan could get the point of the movie without reading the book. I thought Pitt and Hill did an excellent job in bringing the characters off the page and onto the screen.