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Jason Gay of the Wall Street Journal took Mr. and Mrs. Yogi Berra to see Moneyball. Yogi liked the movie, although not Philip Seymour Hoffman's dour Art Howe. "'Art's a good guy,' he says. 'And I never saw him that fat. He's thin.'" [WSJ] More »
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We've heard from many of the figures on the periphery of Moneyball since the movie hit theaters two weeks ago, but one we hadn't heard from was Billy Bean, the former Tigers, Dodgers, and Padres outfielder who came out of the closet in 1999. Bean, because of that slight difference in names, has often been mistaken for the Athletics' GM, and vice versa. More »
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Until today, I'd seen no evidence that Tony La Russa had ever in his life been intentionally funny. I believe the funniest thing Tony La Russa ever said was probably, "Nah, I'm just tired, officer." Tony La Russa treats funny the way he treats a lefty reliever facing a righty in the sixth inning of an early-June game in Milwaukee. Tony La Russa doesn't do funny, and I think that's at least partly because Tony La Russa doesn't want to screw with his image as a thinker of a great thoughts. If he cracked jokes all the time, would he still be treated as baseball's towering intellect? Would people write about his batting a pitcher in the eight hole as a tactic on a par with Lee sending Jackson around the left flank in Chancellorsville? Would he still get to kick it with George Will? More »
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Michael Lewis isn't just a disturbingly prolific journalist who elevated Billy Beane to mythic status. He's also a one-man center of power who enriches and ennobles all those with whom he consorts, according to New York Magazine, which neglects to really examine why having so much influence concentrated in a journalist who signs autographs for senators might itself be disturbing: More »
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Although advanced baseball analysis had been around for years, Michael Lewis's 2003 book Moneyball, about the Oakland A's General Manager Billy Beane's using it to build their roster, helped to start an online industry of carping about player evaluation and team structure. The release of the 2011 film adapted from it has similarly started an industry of carping and re-carping about Moneyball itself. It's too bad, because it's a smart, engaging movie that vindicates the sort of thinking many of those critics would defend. More »
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Moneyball popped into theaters on Friday, and it did well, among critics and audiences alike. The movie's impressive with its depiction of that A's team—fake Chad Bradford conjures up Chad Bradford, fake Jeremy Giambi reminds you of Jeremy Giambi, and so on. More »
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Ever wonder if the men who run our professional basketball teams are as clueless as the men who were running our professional baseball teams (as depicted by Michael Lewis in his 2003 book Moneyball)? There is no definitive answer to that question, yet, but we do now know that at least one NBA GM does not yet know how to Google. More »
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Every morning, the fine folks at Sports Radio Interviews sift through the a.m. drive-time chatter to bring you the best interviews with coaches, players, and personalities across the sports landscape. Today: "Sabey Sabes" was a Hollywood invention. The real one was much worse. More »
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It's like Sabermetric Christmas: "Yes, he was driven nuts early and often, and he raged back with a sort of funny, blunt and often searing writing that appealed to an audience nobody had realized existed. Bill James was not the first person to search for knowledge in baseball, not even close, but unlike anyone, he could bring that search to life on the page." [Joe Posnanski] More »
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Moneyball the movie is in theaters on Friday. Eric Walker doesn't appear in the film, and he's mentioned only briefly in Michael Lewis's book, but he was central to the statistical revolution that Moneyball chronicles—the "pebble that started the avalanche," in his words. Two years ago, he told us his story. Originally published Oct. 7, 2009. More »
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A year ago, Levante earned a draw against Real Madrid, the best, wealthiest, handomest team in all of La Liga. It was a big moment for the Levante Granotes (that means frogs): Striker Rafa Jordá likened the 0-0 decision to "chewing the face off your girlfriend." (We'll blame shaky translation for that one.) Winning, however, would have been something else entirely—"like kissing Miss Spain," according to head coach Luis García. More »
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Moneyball, the long-delayed film adaptation of Michael Lewis's book about Paul DePodesta's TI-89 and Jeremy Brown's love handles, hits theaters next week. It's a big thing for baseball folks, because Moneyball helped bring a statistically inclined subculture to the mainstream. You'll notice this in writing—Bill James and Baseball Prospectus got big—and in front offices, where the Red Sox, Dodgers, and Blue Jays adopted versions of Oakland's strategies. More »
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Entertainment Tonight scored a preview of the Moneyball movie about Billy Beane and the A's that nobody thought would ever get made. It's the most teasing of teasers, with Brad Pitt (Billy Beane) slurring his lines, Jonah Hill (a character based on Paul DePodesta, who refused to let his likeness be used in the film) looking surprised to find himself in a serious role, and every single sports scene taking place on the dimly lit tableau of drama that is the Hollywood baseball diamond. Entertainment Tonight promises to have more footage from Moneyball this evening. More »
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Liverpool fans are worried that their new American owners will try to win on the cheap, replete with columnists fulminating about how statistics can't measure "temperament, courage, dedication." Someone needs to start up a Fire David Pleat blog. [Guardian, h/t Joey] More »
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The Michael-Lewis-book-turned-definition-of-production-problems finally started shooting. See for yourself how the baffling casting choice will look on the silver screen. It's really a shame Sam Kinison wasn't available to play the ghost of Connie Mack. [The appropriately named Accidental Sexiness, via The Playlist] More »
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Rob Neyer reports that the revived Moneyball movie has dropped Demetri Martin from the role of assistant GM Paul DePodesta and instead gone with Jonah Hill. Paul DePodesta just threw a chair at the wall. [SweetSpot] More »
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Bennett Miller, the guy who did the Truman Capote movie that didn't subject us to Peter Bogdanovich's acting, will direct. He replaces Steven Soderbergh, who was traded to the White Sox for three prospects and a reliever. [Variety, via NYMag] More »
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Buzz Bissinger, shit-pissing author of Three Nights as Tony La Russa's Sock Puppet, is back on his battered old Moneyball hobbyhorse, firing off angry fallacies left and right. [TNR, of all places] More »
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Read Part 1 here. More »
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He calls himself "the pebble that started the avalanche," the man who taught baseball analysis to Billy Beane. Gandhi, someone wrote, sparking MLK's revolution. Today, Moneyball remains a hotly debated phenomenon. Eric Walker is a footnote. Here's the footnote's story. More »
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Brad Pitt says that Moneyball: The Movie is still very much alive and he would very much like to play Billy Beane. So world-famous actors with beautiful movie star wives dream about being nerdy baseball executives? [MTV] More »
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That other baseball movie is flailing about, but the adaptation of 3 Nights In August, Bissinger's Moneyball diss track and paean to Tony La Russa and the manly virtues of lineup construction, is moving along nicely. The nerds can't win. More »
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Columbia has enlisted Sorkin, the sanctimonious West Wing creator last seen making Ed Asner say "Macau" over and over, to write a draft of the star-crossed Moneyball script. Such waste. Such inefficiency. Somebody could write a bestselling book about this. More »
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The Sony Pictures executive who pulled the plug on Moneyball says that Steven Soderbergh changed the original script because he didn't want anything in the movie that didn't actually happen. So Billy Beane isn't a sweaty, foul-mouthed, Hooters waitress slayer? More »
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It looks like Moneyball might not be coming to the big screen anytime soon because director Steven Soderbergh tinkered with the script and everyone realized that a movie version of the book made about as much sense as Joe Morgan. More »
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Break out the baseball puns! Columbia has dropped Steven Soderbergh's Moneyball adaptation like an overvalued, arbitration-eligible pitcher after a career year. Why, it's as if producers made a running, 20-foot backhand flip to cut down the movie at the plate. More »
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Under Billy Beane, the Oakland A's won by scraping together undervalued assets. Since the rest of baseball has started valuing assets properly, the A's are having a harder time. The same thing is happening to baseball's leading propeller-heads. More »
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An interesting Q&A with Michael Lewis covers Moneyball ("The A's have no intellectual advantage, as evidenced by their performance"), the Rockets, his books being turned into movies, and his new tome about being a father. Joe Morgan's kids have already panned it. [MSNBC] More »
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The cast of Steven Soderbergh's ridiculous Moneyball adaptation is starting to come together and it looks to be about as awesome as a dramatic feature about sabermetrics could possibly be. More »
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It took me the entire weekend and most of Monday, but I finally got through Michael Lewis' epic deconstruction of Shane Battier, also known as "Moneyball: NBA Edition." More »
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Soderbergh has almost committed, but Pitt's on board to star in film adaptation of "Moneyball". Scott Hatteberg was originally supposed to be played by Joaquin Phoenix. Dude went crazy, though. [Variety] More »
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