You'll never look at baseball the same again after watching 'Moneyball'

If you like baseball and movies, you need to watch “Moneyball.” It arrived at the house via NetFlix a few days ago, and I finally watched it. I knew it was supposed to be good, but to my surprise, I found it to be one of the finest baseball movies I’ve ever seen.

Released in theatres on Sept. 23, 2011, this PG-13 movie starred Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Robin Wright and Philip Seymour Hoffman. The movie is based on Michael Lewis’s 2003 book, which is about the Oakland Athletics 2002 season. That team won an American League record 20 straight games as the team’s management fought long odds and a low budget to field a very competitive team. They used a sophisticated statistical approach to find underrated, but affordable players to field a winning team. They didn’t win the World Series that year, but they shocked a lot of people by how far they made it with a bunch of relatively no-name players.

I knew this movie was supposed to be pretty good, even before I sat down to watch it. Earlier this year, it was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, making it the first baseball movie to be nominated for Best Picture since “Field of Dreams” in 1990. “The Artist” eventually won this year’s Best Picture Oscar, but it says a lot about “Moneyball” that it was even nominated.

The American Film Institute named “Moneyball” its Movie of the Year, and the film was also nominated for four Golden Globe Awards, including Best Motion Picture-Drama.

Also, back in May, one of my favorite Web sites, The Art of Manliness, named “Moneyball” one of the “15 Best Baseball Movies” of all time. The other baseball movies on that list included, in no particular order, “The Sandlot,” “Pride of the Yankees,” “Field of Dreams,” “Bull Durham,” “The Natural,” “The Bad News Bears” (1976), “Major League,” “Eight Men Out,” “Bang the Drum Slowly,” “Baseball” by Ken Burns, “Fear Strikes Out,” “A League of Their Own,” “The Rookie,” “Up for Grabs” and “61*.”

I thought “Moneyball” was cool because it offers baseball fans a dramatic look at the inner workings of a professional sports team. When it comes right down to it, sports, especially baseball, is a game of numbers, regardless if you’re talking about a player’s batting average or the team’s overall budget. To make it all come together, you’ve got to make the most out of all of it to be successful. Thanks to “Moneyball,” I’ll never look at pro baseball the same again.

I enjoyed the movie and, naturally, it made me want to read the book. The full title of Lewis’s book is “Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game.” It was published in 2003 and was a successful best-seller. It’s on a number of recommended reading lists, including the U.S. Navy’s Professional Reading Program’s recommended book list.

In the end, how many of you have seen “Moneyball”? What did you think about it? How many of you have read Lewis’s book? What did you think about it? Let us know in the comments section below.