Brad Pitt may have immortalized Billy Beane in the Oscar nominated film “Moneyball,” but the harsh reality is the Oakland Athletics general manager hasn’t constructed a team with a winning record since 2006, and now he’s grasping at straws.
The excellent Bennett Miller film and the popular Michael Lewis book that it is based on made Beane into a somewhat of an icon and a pseudo-celebrity. This doesn’t happen to general managers of professional sports franchises. In fact, most casual fans have no clue who their “favorite” team’s general manager is.
It is for this reason that I was so impressed with Miller’s film. It is hard to make a popular and engrossing film about a general manager. It doesn’t matter how revolutionary his methods were, a baseball movie about salary limitations and statistics is boring. “Moneyball” was anything but boring; however, that has a lot to do with the gravitas of Brad Pitt. Anytime one of the most handsome and charming actors in Hollywood plays a role based on your life, people are guaranteed to think more highly of you. Sure enough, since the release of “Moneyball” back in September, Billy Beane has received a lot of attention and praise.
Back in the early 2000s, when Beane used a shoe-string budget to construct some of the best baseball teams in the American League, he was considered a genius for “changing the game.” While Beane was the one receiving the majority of the credit, the idea for what is now known as moneyball is derived from method created by statistician Bill James, called Sabermetics. Jonah Hill’s character Peter Brand (which is based off current New York Mets vice president of player development Paul Depodesta) is the brain behind this method in the film, and Beane gets the credit for saying “yes” to his non-traditional suggestions.
What I’m trying to say is Billy Beane isn’t some godsend who turns pennies into playoff appearances. He simply had the good sense to surround himself with really smart people who gave him great advice. The film and the book have built up Billy Beane into a mythical figure, but the truth of it all is he only built one team that ever made it out of the first round of the playoffs. For the last five years, the Oakland Athletics have been the epitome of mediocre, and Beane sometimes still makes some moves that leave fans scratching their heads.
Beane this week signed 39-year-old former Red Sox slugger Manny Ramirez to a minor league contract. Last season Ramirez played a grand total of five games before he was suspended 50 games for testing positive for steroids. His career isn’t simply on a down slope, it’s bottomed out, and shows no signs of returning. Rumor has it that the only reason Ramirez was signed was to appease Beane’s other curious off-season signing of Yoenis Cespedes, a Cuban defector who has expressed a desire to play alongside the Dominican outfielder.
The success of “Moneyball” has me wondering how much the film has positively impacted Beane’s career. How much good faith has translated from the big screen and Barnes and Noble bookstores to the ballpark? Earlier this month, Beane signed a contact extension though 2019, but his recent track record hasn’t done much to warrant that kind of deal. It makes me curious to what degree of Beane’s success is shaped by the entertainment industry instead of athletic results.
Don’t get me wrong, Billy Beane is a fine general manager, one of the better ones in baseball, but he certainly isn’t worthy of being deified, and without a World Series ring, he isn’t even worthy of Cooperstown enshrinement. But these facts don’t stop the mainstream from wanting to induct him in the Hall of Fame and saint him at the same time. Maybe if Brad Pitt plays me in a movie I could get nominated for a Pulitzer.
