Upcoming Movie Highlight: Money Ball

Divorced, has-been major league player, Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), is the general manager of the Oakland A’s. In 2001, he sends the A’s off to the divisional playoffs, where the lose dismally to the New York Yankees. There is more bad news as he loses three of his best players to higher bidders. With a very limited budget, Billy has to find a new way to keep in the business of baseball.
Billy stumbles across an Ivy league graduate and computer geek Peter Brand (Jonah Hill). The Yale economics student develops a system of rating the players based not on the home runs or their batting average but rather on the numbers of walks and runs scored. Traditionally other major league recruiters would stay away from cheaper players who they viewed as flawed, but Billy and Peter begin signing and training a team based on computer generated. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays a disgruntled Oakland A’s couch who is sceptical and negative about their new system until they start to win big.

This is not necessarily a film for sport lovers but a rather inspiring tale of challenging the status quo, and developing new systems of management.

Release date:25th November 2011

Written for Showbizz.co.za

by N.Zindi