Sport Movie

I skipped class tonight to see a movie. It was Moneyball, and I highly recommend it. I love movies and I love sports (more than the average girl, but not as much as a guy). It was like combining two things that I love to make an awesome hybrid of movie entertainment and sports intensity. The movie is about Oakland A's manager Billy Beane and how he reinvented baseball. It would've worked better if they had won that last game.

I've never been a huge fan of baseball; it's long and sometimes boring. It is very much a mental game, which can be difficult for the casual watcher. But this worked to my advantage, as I had no idea how this story ended (it's based on a true story) and was therefore completely caught up in what would happen. Would the team win? Would they get that twentieth straight win? Did Billy jinx the team? Did the idea of applying statistics to the sport really work? I watched it like I was watching a Jazz game. It was exciting.

The movie actually made me care about baseball. The behind the scenes machinations of a baseball organization was interesting, and made me actually appreciate the mental-ness of baseball that I before had found boring. Baseball has always been full of nostalgia and a certain sense of romanticism, more so than other sports, I think. Billy and his Yale-educated economics right-hand man Peter tried to take that away and make it about numbers and winning. While numbers don't lie (but anyone who's taken a stats class will tell you that they do...distort what they want) they can't override emotions, human error, or the romanticism of baseball.