Entertainment : From the Front Row of the Balcony: \'Moneyball\' is true, and inspiring

It’s hard not to be romantic about baseball.

So hard, in fact, that every baseball fan in Benton County should be in one place Tuesday evening: The Vinton Palace.

The Palace crew will have to forgive us if we didn’t show up yet; between the VS football season finale and the World Series, the only two showings of “Moneyball” that don’t conflict with those events were Monday’s matinee and Tuesday evening’s showing.

The Story

Moneyball was the title of a book by Michael Lewis as well as a cover story in Sports Illustrated before it became the movie playing through Thursday evening at the Palace.

Moneyball is the story of Oakland A’s baseball team General Manager Billy Beane, who was drafted out of high school as a top prospect, but quickly learned that his future in baseball was not on the field. (A general manager, by the way, should not be confused with a manager; the GM helps hire the players and works with the team’s farm system; the manager assigns the players during the games, and makes decision about who will play. The movie does a good job of explaining the difference.)

Moneyball refers to the effort by Beane to field a championship team, despite having much less money to spend on salaries than teams like the New York Yankees. He focuses on finding the players who could get on base the most, and tries to build winning teams around those players.

Why you should go

I loved “Final Season,” but was disappointed in how the writers omitted some of the coolest things that happed in ’91 in Norway and replaced them with Hollywood story lines about romances between the coach and the education official sent to convince Norway to consolidate with Benton Community.

“Moneyball,” however, is very historically accurate. It tells the story of Billy Beane, without adding or subtracting any major story lines. (One relatively minor exception: The movie depicts Beane as a divorcee; in real life he is remarried with twins.)

After his disappointing career as a player, Beane became a scout and eventually the GM for the Oakland A’s, the year they lost many of their best players to the Red Sox and Yankees (Johnny Damon and Jason Giambi were among former A’s to leave that year.)

Trying to rebuild the team with limited assets, Beane hired a former Cleveland Indian analyst to help him choose the most productive players the team could afford. The changes met with resistance with both players and team management; the season began very poorly. But by the end of the year, the A’s had made the playoffs, and also set a new record with 20 straight wins.

If you are familiar with the biography of Billy Beane, then the ending of the movie won’t surprise you.

With Hollywood favorite Brad Pitt as Beane, the movie tells a story about people using computers in an office in a way that is very entertaining, and even inspiring. It’s probably the only baseball movie since “Field of Dreams” with a main character who is not playing baseball.

With a mix of actors and old sports broadcasts, the movie captures much of the history of baseball in the first decade of the 21st Century. You won’t have to be an A’s fan – or even a baseball fan – to like “Moneyball.”

What you should know before you go

The movie is rated PG-13 for language; it’s also more than two hours long, so buy the large popcorn and Pepsi.

My favorite part

“If we try to play like the Yankees in here, we will lose to them out there.”