Moneyball: The Art of Filming an Unfair Game

Brad Pitt as Billy Beane

Three names go conspicuously unmentioned in the new film adaptation of Moneyball: Tim Hudson, Barry Zito, and Mark Mulder. There are two ways to react to this omission.

The first is to think that their exclusion is unacceptable for a film that purports to tell the story of the 2002 Oakland A’s. After all, the trio combined to win 57 games and pitch 675 innings to a combined 3.05 ERA that year. Zito in particular led the league in wins, en route to a Cy Young Award. Without those three, a team that won 103 games would have almost certainly missed the playoffs.

The other way to react to their absence, though, is to realize that it is entirely appropriate. Moneyball is not really a movie about the 2002 Oakland A’s—it’s a movie about Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt) and his radical reinvention of the game. And it doesn’t take much reinvention to stick with a trio that was coming off a 2001 season in which they won 56 games and pitched 678 innings to a 3.43 ERA.

Monday Medley

What we read on our $200 million-per-day Indian vacation…

• The titular mission of one of NPI’s favorite former blogs has finally been accomplished, as ESPN has decided not to bring Joe Morgan back to Sunday Night Baseball (Jon Miller’s gone too, but we’ll miss him). Morgan himself claimed he wasn’t surprised by the move. Deadspin’s Tommy Craggs reprinted a 2005 story he wrote for SF Weekly on Morgan. And, of course, Joe Posnanski offered his thoughts on the farewell.

• Rachel Maddow had an extensive (and interesting) interview with Jon Stewart.

• Could you have solved this Wheel of Fortune puzzle with only one letter? Chris Jones of Esquire explained how Caitlin Burke actually did.

• Why are Publius, Rick Reilly, and Bill Simmons discussed in the same article? Find out!

• How Slate has failed to keep up with the Internet. Meanwhile, Charlotte Magazine takes an in-depth look at the state of the Queen City’s newspaper, the Charlotte Observer.

• The Onion basically sums up all the problems with democracy that John S tried to explain in his long post. Meanwhile, the evidence that democracy doesn’t work keeps on mounting…

• We would try to avoid linking to something as super-specific to our (read: Tim and Josh’s) tastes as an analysis of divisive Mets’ managerial candidate Wally Backman, but Ted Berg’s starts with a David Foster Wallace epigram! As a counterpoint, a study on what we all know: Managers don’t mean much of anything. And, another statistical analysis on the importance of managerial experience.

• Not quite Caden Cotard. Paul DePodesta, now assistant GM for the Mets, explains why his character will not bear his name in the Moneyball movie.

• Manny Pacquiao, Boxing’s Great Hope for Continued Relevance, was dominant again on Saturday night at Cowboys Stadium in beating Antonio Margarito. That reminded us of Andrew Corsello’s April profile of the Philippine for GQ.

Monday Medley

What we read while deciding not to publish our own story about not having sex with Christine O’Donnell…

• As New York baseball fans, we were stunned and saddened by the news of the passing of legendary scorekeeper Bill Shannon. Tim, who was fortunate enough to meet Bill, wrote a brief tribute on his Tumblr. The best tribute, not surprisingly, came from MLB.com’s Marty Noble, with others pouring in from fellow scorer Billy Altman, Wallace Matthews, Ed Coleman, and Tom Boorstein.

• As for some other sports links, David Schoenfield tries to answer who the best postseason pitcher in MLB history is (hint: it wasn’t Cliff Lee even before Game 1). In direct contrast to what Tim McCarver said during Saturday night’s Game 3, here’s statistical backing for using a three-man rotation in the playoffs. And in other counterintuitive statistical analysis, Peter Keating argues that it is possible to give 110 percent.

• Speaking of statistical analysis, the Mets hired sabermetrics-advocate Sandy Alderson as their new General Manager this week. Here is an extensive (and excellent) interview of Alderson back when he was CEO of the Padres. Rumor has it that he’s going to bring along Paul DePodesta to the front office, who was prominent in Moneyball (a book we’ve invoked a few times so far), and has his own blog.

• With Conan O’Brien’s new TBS show just a week away, Vanity Fair published an excerpt from Bill Carter’s book about January’s Tonight Show fallout. As usual, Jay Leno and NBC do not come off well. Also from Vanity Fair, a profile of the real Sean Parker, a/k/a Justin Timberlake’s character in The Social Network.

• In the spirit of Halloween, Tim and Josh posted about the best candies. New York City candy shops have some interesting selections. This is a good time to link to Candy Blog, which, you know, is a blog about candy.

• Some pseudo-sociology about the rise and fall of the modern hipster.

• John S wasn’t the only one to take on Malcolm Gladwell’s social media bashing. The Hairpin did it this week, from the perspective of Gladwell.

• We don’t usually link to college newspapers/magazines that we may or may not have used to write for, but Kevin Lincoln’s feature on Mike Posner and what Lincoln calls “the college-white-boy rap phenomenon” in Duke’s Towerview is worth the read.

• We don’t think it should be too hard to interest you in the best cover versions of ’90s TV theme songs. If nothing else, this just made us appreciate the Duck Tales theme all the more.

• We’re against negative campaign ads — unless they reference Billy Madison.

• Speaking of campaigns, here are some of the signs from this weekend’s Rally to Restore Sanity/Fear.