A Sticky Floors and Salty Popcorn Review-Moneyball

*I would like to apologize for the lack of updates in the Shallow End recently. My grad studies have migrated my blogging vigor to misplacedjayhawkreporter. Expect a few more frequent updates when my editing/reporting duties die down next semester.*

"It's hard not to be romantic about baseball."

So says Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) at a pivotal moment of the denouement in Bennett Miller's "Moneyball." Writ large, we might say the director and film have a hard time not being Romantic about American individualism.

Like Michael Lewis' book that inspired the film, baseball is merely a narrative overhang in Moneyball, a kind of distraction for the sports crowd while more subversive plot threads are un-spooled within. At the center of this narrative web is Beane himself, who is presented as a fractured former player whose impulse to be smarter than the game is endeared emotionally to the audience in a series of biographical flashbacks. This produces the effect of a biopic without an emphasis on the bio, and provides the framework for a climactic merging of timelines that underscores the metaphoric significance of the film as a whole.

Pitt embodies Beane with such perfection that even the tired clubhouse tirades become matters of high drama. Pitt's Beane broods, but Bennett deftly unfolds a narrative that makes this brooding palatable. Voices early in the season about the failure of the A's inundate both the audience and Beane on-screen, exacerbating the "us against hte world" mentality that is established in the opening moments of the film. Actual footage of the 2001 American League Divisional Series dances across the screen, devoid of any type of sociopolitical slant aside from the flashing of the respective payrolls of the two teams before the game's final out. The Yankees, who would eventually lose the World Series to the Arizona Diamondbacks, triumph over the A's in a scene that has the potential to be tasteless in its disregard for post-9/11 sensitivities until it flashes the smiling mug of Rudolph Giuliani. Beane still smashes a transistor radio into tiny bits, and the frame of Moneyball is born.

The other half of the "us against the world" mentality is filled in (literally, the character Peter Brand is merely an amalgamation of several associates Billy Beane worked with at the A's in the early 2000s) by Jonah Hill. Hill plays the part with his usual pathetic charm and naivety, which is entirely called for in his depiction of 25-year-old statistics expert Brand. As the film progresses, a clear rapport develops between Hill and Pitt that keeps the heartfelt moments between them from becoming melodramatic. In particular, a scene near the end of the reel has Beane and Brand reviewing film of a game with Brand's intent to show Billy just how important what he's done to the game of baseball is. Aaron Sorkin is incredibly evident in this scene, as Brand's admission that the game film they have just watched is a "a metaphor" astutely deflects the schmaltzy weight of the scene. Sorkin's writing never lets you forget that this is a sports film, just as "The West Wing" was a show about White House politics, "A Few Good Men" was a courtroom drama and "The Social Networks was "the Facebook movie."

As teased above, though, Moneyball is about much more than the game of baseball. It's equal parts biopic, conventional sports story and Ben Franklin-esque American autobiography. In no scene is this more apparent than when they all come crashing together at the end of the A's record-breaking winning streak in September of 2002. I had a very real moment of cognitive dissonance watching my beloved Kansas City Royals attempt to figuratively destroy the dream of a process they themselves probably should have been employing at the time (don't forget which green pasture Johnny Damon left first, movie-goers), but the importance of this sequence was in no way diminished by my boyhood biases. As Scott Hatteberg (Chris Pratt) rounds the bases after a walk-off home run to win the A's 20th consecutive game, images from Beane's distant and recent past flicker across the screen in a very Roy Hobbs-eseque moment. The success of a man has translated to the success of a team and, by extension, an idea.

Moneyball succeeds in remaining neutral on the analytic/Romantic debate about baseball, as we leave Beane choosing loyalty over prosperity and to the strains of his daughter's guitar and lyrics identifying Beane as a "loser." In an analytically cold sense, maybe this is true. But the Romantic story of American ingenuity expertly draped over this sports film is much more satisfying.

Verdict: 4.5/5 stars

New Is Always Better...?

So says Barney Stinson. And the American people in 2008. But like all versions of democratic consensus, this mantra doesn't come without qualifications. Last night, I attended "Throwback Tuesday" as my first adventure to Kauffman Stadium of 2011, and watched the Royals drop their American League-worst 42nd game to the Arizona Diamondbacks, 7-2. The experience was as jarring as you would expect a retrospective housed in a newly renovated (for $250 million taxpayer dollars) stadium to be. The t-shirts handed out at the turnstiles featured the 60s-inspired Mr. Royal steam-pressed across the back (or, if-like me-you see a too uncanny resemblance to a human egg in Mr. Royal, a strange and abstract link to the Reagan Youth abstinence movement of the early 80s); a 1980s cover band played in the bar in left field (was a little Talking Heads too much to ask for, really?); concession prices ($2 small soft drinks and hot dogs) hearkened back to the early 90s (though, of course, beer still required a donation of a large portion of one's liver-an ironic bit of autonomous self-destruction in-and-of-itself); and the $7 outfield seats were, I suppose, a throwback to the mid-2000s, because Hy-Vee seats were still $5 well into my high school days.

Maybe I'm nitpicking a clear promotional move intended to get fans out on a Tuesday night for an interleague match-up against a team that is younger than Justin Bieber (the ploy worked, sort of-attendance was less than 50% of capacity, but much higher than the usual 12,000 the team manages to scrape together on average for weeknight home games). But last night indicated, to me, a team without a sense of its own historical identity. Picking and choosing what elements of the past the team wanted to play up to attract fans indicates, to me, a puzzling disconnect with the surprisingly strong historical roots of this franchise. Instead of the organist playing the tunes of the summer of '85 and beyond, I got some sort of attempt at Kings of Leon played over classic videoboard games like the baseball race around the fountains and the "What's the Call?" game that I remember vividly from my youth (when Frosty Malts cost less than a semester at Brown)
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Do you guys remember this? Yeah, neither do I. And I still didn't see any of it last night.
(Image by Allan Chow.)

All of the trappings of the new K, and of the new marketing strategy employed by the executives, seems to be geared toward one purpose-updating the baseball environment to take attention away from the product on the field. The Royals were one of the most successful franchises in baseball from their inception in 1969 to their World Series title in 1985. The city and the fans still remember this. Every year, when the Royals start well, an intoxicating level of excitement grips this town and its media. Yet, there always remains a sense of "when is this all going to go wrong"? It's kind of like hedging your bets on the latest Adam Sandler movie-you know it's going to ruin your evening, and somehow Steve Buscemi is going to be involved, but you're not quite sure when it's going to hit you. Last night's Steve Buscemi was Wily Mo Pena, whose name indicates he should be attempting to drop an anvil on the Road Runner instead of hitting a 400 foot blast that all but negates a stellar night at the plate from Alex Gordon.

There was nothing wrong with spending a gorgeous, mild Tuesday summer evening in Kansas City taking in a ball game. But new didn't mean better to me last night. Perhaps, for Kansas City fans, the message should be, "New is always mind-numbingly sensational." To use an anachronism (which seems especially poignant for this entry), the horses pulling the carriage won't make a lick of difference if that carriage is still a pumpkin. The fans deserve more than squash on the field. A lot of Royals (Gordon, Mike Moustakas, Eric Hosmer, Billy Butler) have bright futures ahead of them. Let's hope new starts to actually mean better, and the Royals can finally focus and merge their old, historical identities and that of this new team. I don't think I could stand a disco club in right-center next year.