MoneyBall: The Man Beane

We really enjoyed Brad Pitt's portrayal of Oakland A's GM Billy Beane. The man is obsessed and focused, so much so that he won't even watch the games. Beane just can't take the stress. Heh, we're the same way about politics. When the Yankees bounce the A's out of the first round of the playoffs for the second year in a row, Beane is so frustrated he breaks his radio. We sympathize. Here's something else that really spoke to us. Beane looks back and regrets the way his pro-career panned out. He was a highly recruited prospect but didn't pan out. Beane is haunted by the decision and is racked by regrets. Maybe we all are, but man....talk about hitting the sweet spot.

Will's new Baseball Movie

So last week we finally saw Moneyball:

The trailer encapsulates the movie and baseball's problem perfectly. How do small market teams compete with the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers? Well, Oakland's GM Billy Beane came up with a way. We'll get into the actual theory and practice of Moneyball this week but first the movie.

We've always been a big fan of Brad Pitt. We loved him as Rusty in the Oceans trilogy, cool and detached but with sensitivity and just a hint of dorkiness. We really loved Pitt in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. He plays Cliff Boothe as an old breed stuntman, a cowboy really. Boothe is a tough  man in a rough land; a man with a code. In Moneyball, Brad Pitt manages to be Brad Pitt but without reminding us of his other characters. That is hard to do. 

Jonah Hill plays amalgamation of Billy Beane's army of stat-heads reinventing the way we look at the game. He's a fat, nerd of a young man who can calculate an earned run average in his head. The late Phillip Seymour Hoffman is interesting as Oakland's veteran manager, Art Howe. He doesn't like Moneyball at all and lets Beane know it. The two man clash daily over the lineup.

Moneyball has a very conventional sports movie plot and executes it perfectly, but with twists at the end. The great social scientist and statistician Steve Sailer has noted that Moneyball isn't really a sports movie but a stats movie. This is an important distinction. Baseball is it's stats. Baseball stats tell us about a player's career with depth and detail available in no other sport. Moneyball argues baseball had been looking at the wrong stats, for decades, generations. Moneyball is right, but it is also wrong. We'll get into that in another post.

Overall we really like this movie. 3/4

Once Upon a Time on Will's TV

Meet Cliff Booth. He's a stunt man and Rick Dalton's best friend.

Cliff's ex military, a combat vet. He's a tough guy, he beat up Bruce Lee. Cliff lives in a trailer with his loyal dog. He doesn't need much, he doesn't need the trouble. He seems happiest outdoors, fixing Rick's TV antenna or spear fishing. Cliff's friendly, easygoing and self possessed. In the modern lexicon Cliff is based.

These damn hippies are everywhere and they're really starting to bug Cliff. His encounters with the hippies tell us all we need to know about Cliff.

Cliff may like the ladies but he's not going to let his dick get him in trouble. When a hitchhiking hippie chick offers to blow him, Cliff demands ID and says no. When hippies try to keep him from seeing his old friend George Spahn, Cliff just does it anyway. When a dirty hippie slashes his tire, Cliff beats him up and makes him fix it. Cliff has a code, you see. 

Cliff Booth is a man's man.

You can't tell it's Brad Pitt up there. His is a Oscar worthy performance.

Maureen Dowd is Always Bad for Women

Via head Trumpologist Don Surber, Maureen Dowd is aroused...sexually:

"Bathed in a golden glow, Brad Pitt plays a world-weary stunt man and handyman to Leo’s Western star, Rick Dalton. Pitt’s character is a former war hero in the great mid-century tradition of American cinema. He reflects many of the values that America once proudly stood for: toughness without belligerence, charm without smarminess, loyalty without question. He is masculine yet chivalrous. The iconic performance evokes other movie exemplars of the American male: Humphrey Bogart in 'Casablanca,' Paul Newman in 'Cool Hand Luke,' Steve McQueen in 'Bullitt,' Clint Eastwood in 'Dirty Harry.' (Pitt’s significant other is a pit bull named Brandy — another contrast with Trump, who avoids dogs.)"

Dowd goes on to compare Pitt's character to...President Trump. Of course Trump is a real-estate mogul, television star and President of the United States. You're damn right Dowd has fantasized about the President grabbing her pussy.

Remember back in the 90's when Dowd struggled with that strange tingling she felt when Bill Clinton was on TV? Remember all that time she spent writing about Ken Starr? How about all those barbs against W's Texasness. She loathed it. Yeah, sure she did.

Ahhh...the Spinster Dowd, forever trying to understand why she is alone and childless.

Remember, Feminism is always bad for women.