It's Hard Not to be Romantic About Baseball...

For some reason, every year around December, I get an itch to watch some baseball. Being a lifetime Cubs fan, December usually marks the 6th month mark since Chicago has had a chance for the playoffs, so it must be some sort of Cosmic Baseball Cycle. With no MLB for at least another 4 months, I have to resort to movies about America's pastime. Luckily this year, I had Bennet Miller's Moneyball. Moneyball and the book by Michael Lewis (Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game), as most everyone knows, is based on the true story of Billy Beane and his work on restructuring a struggling Oakland Athletics team. A heart-warming tale in and of itself, Moneyball also manages to be a fantastic film. I would venture to say that it is the best baseball movie I've ever seen. Brad Pitt and Philip Seymour Hoffman give their usual best as Billy Beane and A's manager Art Howe respectively, but the real surprises come from Jonah Hill and Chris Pratt of Parks and Recreation fame. While Jonah Hill plays an awkward character as per usual, in Moneyball it seems more genuine in the character of Peter Brand. As for Chris Pratt, I'm only familiar with his hilarious, hare-brained work as Andy Dwyer in Parks and Recreation, so I was pleasantly surprised to find him in a rather serious role as catcher-turned-first-baseman, Scott Hatteberg. The great thing about Moneyball is that even if you know the facts by heart already, it still manages to catch you pleasantly by surprise, waiting eagerly for the next crack of the bat. If you haven't seen it, yet I definitely recommend it. Final grade: A-. Moneyball will be released on Blu-Ray and DVD on January 10th.