Reason Writers At the Movies: Peter Suderman Reviews Moneyball In The Washington Times
In today's Washington Times, Associate Editor Peter Suderman reviews the new adaptation of Michael Lewis's 2003 book, Moneyball.
What does it take to win at major league baseball? Drive, passion, certainty, conviction, intuition, experience, talent, practice, money—they're all important. But in "Moneyball," it turns out that the key to winning games is mostly just math.
Ostensibly, "Moneyball" is a sports film. But it's really a movie about management and decision-making, about business strategy and execution, about the power of numbers and our capacity to use them to our advantage. Even more than that, it's a movie about science, about information, about the triumph of rationalism over superstition.
That may not sound very exciting. How emotionally engaging could a movie about math and management really be? And yet despite—or perhaps because of—its nerdy analytical sensibility, "Moneyball" pulls out a big win without seeming too calculated. You might say it's statistically significant entertainment.