"Moneyball" was OK, I guess

I certainly didn't hate "Moneyball." I didn't dislike it, so I guess I liked it. A little anyway. I don't think it's a great movie by any stretch and certainly not a great baseball movie. Bull Durham and Eight Men Out, those are great baseball movies to me and this is not in that class. It is still very much worth seeing and sure better than a lot of movies I've seen recently, which, in the confines of baseball season, is not very many. I would have loved to see the movie get even more in depth with how Billy Beane used sabermetrics to produce a winning team and compete with the big salary teams. If I were a movie critic, I might say the movie tried to serve too many masters and didn't get that done. They wanted to tell the story of rebuilding the A's, develop the David versus Goliath angle and also show the relationship between Beane and his daughter and what that meant to him. That may have been too much to take on. As a baseball guy, I wanted to know more about Jonah Hill's character, which was supposed to be Paul DePodesta. He would not let the filmmakers use his real name and Hill's character went by the name Peter Brand. It would have been interesting to learn more about DePodesta's background and exactly what formulas and methods he used to pick players. But then, maybe the film would have been less about Beane. Also, the movie then would probably have less appeal to a larger audience (including Brad Pitt fans) if it spent too much time on the sabermetrics angle. I've never been in the room when a major league general manager made a trade, but I will guess that the movie scenes depicting that were quite unrealistic. But, hey, it's a movie, not a documentary or newscast. By the way, full disclosure here, I have never read the book. Yes, I am the one. Planning to get that done before next opening day. The movie chronicles the 2002 Oakland A's and can't completely present that team as a real longshot since the previous two A's teams had made the playoffs. Also, while Beane is well-respected in the game, his teams have never even won a single playoff series and the A's last winning season was in 2006. But, hey, it's the movies and this was a story worth telling. Well, based on a true story as they say. In the end, Moneyball was fun to watch and I think most fans will enjoy it. I just don't figure many are going to consider this as any great baseball movie.