Along with Eight Men Out, this is the best baseball movie I’ve seen. I say this as a passionate baseball fan and a passionate movie fan. I was a little concerned when I stepped into the theater that these two worlds in which I have such an investment would collide and explode. But instead, I left with a greater understanding of what a movie can be and what the unseen realities of a major league baseball organization are all about.
For me, this is Brad Pitt’s best acting performance. That’s because this is the role of his that seems least like acting. There isn’t the distraction of a love interest to lead the script down predictable paths. Instead, it is the story of loss and defeated expectations and how a man responds by finding and defiantly pursuing a new way.
Even if I wasn’t convinced before (and I was) that Phillip Seymour Hoffman can do no wrong, what’s there to say? I can’t conceive of a more compelling portrayal of a major league manager than he, well, manages.
He’s in a sure hit group for me with William H. Macy and Ed Harris. In a sense they are the Moneyball of acting. They don’t have the classic look, but they carry the day.
Sure there are a few factual baseball mistakes that the critics will probably point out – like Jeremy Giambi has already been on the team a year before they are trying to bring him aboard in the movie, but so what. There’s inside knowledge here you could never find out any other way.
In a film remarkably about a statistical method, the question gets asked more than once: Is there romance in baseball? You decide.
