10 Baseball Movies That Knocked It Out Of The Park

4. Moneyball

One of my favorite baseball films ever, Moneyball takes an unsentimental look at the modern game and many of the unseen deals that construct modern baseball teams. Brad Pitt plays real-life Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane, who challenged traditional baseball thinking in 2002 by turning to sabermetrics to build a successful team with little money.

Very much The Social Network of baseball films, Moneyball manages to dramatize statistics and contracts and all of the other back-room deals that form baseball teams today. Phillip Seymour Hoffmann is brilliant as stubborn manager Art Howe, and several real scouts play themselves as keepers of traditional baseball methods and theories. This clash between the old guard and the new provides the film with requisite tension.

Still, despite the emphasis on statistics and deals, Moneyball also stresses the magic of the game and the amount of luck that certain players have while others fade away. It is a complex and adult look at a child's game, one in which even the heroes must sell certain parts of themselves for the game they love.

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