Moneyball

This week started out pretty busy. With two presentations yesterday and an exam today, I felt a bit down to start the week. But now that I have those things behind me and a fat pastrami sandwich and cream of potato soup from Schmaltz's in my belly, I'm feeling much better.

So before I head off to the SLC for a tense game of racketball with Matthew, I wanted to talk a little bit about the film I saw this past weekend.

Moneyball is the story of Billy Beane's attempt to put together a playoff baseball team with a very short budget. It is based off Michael Lewis' book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. If you are unfamiliar with Michael Lewis, he is a great writer. This is the second film made based on his books, the other being The Blind Side. He has also written a couple financial books such as Liar's Poker (that I'm reading now) and The Big Short. His books are very well written and in Moneyball he managed to combine two of my favorite things, sports and business.

The film begins with a very well put together short narrative of the end of the 2001 ALDS in which The Yankees beat The A's. Oakland had put together one of their best seasons with big time players like Jason Giambi and Johnny Damon. Unfortunately after that season they became free agents and the loss subsequently was the catalyst to The A's loosing them. From there the story unfolds. The A's were a very low budget team and needed to find a way to compete with the teams with exponentially larger budgets. If you watch any TV then you've most likely seen a trailer for Moneyball and if you've seen the trailer then you know the story line. So I won't waste time explaining the entire plot.

Brad Pitt does an outstanding job, as he usually does in character roles, playing the A's GM Billy Beane. With a supporting cast of Jonah Hill, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and others, the acting is certainly not a hindrance on this film. A bit of information I was unaware of until the credits was that Aaron Sorkin aided in the writing of the screenplay. Anything Mr. Sorkin is involved with is usually a winner. Bennett Miller was the director of the film. If you've seen the film Capote then you know his work. An all around great effort was put in by the entire cast and crew to produce a very enjoyable film. It was especially exciting to see Moneyball with October upon us and The Rangers heading to the post season with their second straight AL West title. I would certainly recommend this movie to anyone, especially if you are a baseball fan. It gives a great look into the inner workings of a baseball team but also has some great characters that keep the movie interesting and even incorporates a little humor.

So there you go. I was watching College Football Live while writing this and I have got to say, God these Longhorn Network commercials are so horrible. Everyone has been asking me what my thoughts are on all this conference realignment tom-foolery. I considered posting my thoughts on this blog but I would just be adding another unimportant opinion to the internet that won't make a difference in what happens. But I will voice my opinion on how terrible the UT commercials are. If you want to make a network so that all your bandwagon Walmart fans can watch UT stuff and hope no one asks them if they actually went to the school, that's fine, but please find someone new to run your ad team. That'll do.