Supersmart “Moneyball” will raise your knowledge and intelligence about baseball. Although my money still says 1988′s “Bull Durham” is the best baseball movie of all time, even batting out Kevin Costner’s “Field of Dreams”.

It opens with a 2002 playoff game between the N.Y. Yankees and the Oakland A’s, who were defeated in that contest, but it was indeed a ballgame. The deeper your pockets, the better team you’re going to have, so they say. But in this rendition, it’s all about the man, his smarts and his bargaining.

The story is that of Oakland A’s G.M. Billy Beane’s (Brad Pitt, “The Tree Of Life”) who, with the genius calculator analysis help of his second hand man, Peter Brand (Jonah Hill from “Get him to the Greek”) worked on a third of the salary opposed to that of the Yankees or even the Cleveland Indians and did 90% of his wheeling, dealing and trading over the phone with his cockiness demands.

Johan Hill, who has since then slimmed down, shows a more deadpan, serious character than in his previous roles which consisted of comedies. Billy’s goal is to change the game with the budget and some of the misfits he has to work with. It goes into depth regarding the training camp, who’s in and who’s on their way out. You have to give credit to today’s modern technology, because without computers there would be drafting good players at least on their given budget.

Director Bennet Miller who took over the reigns from Steven Soderberg, had his bases loaded with this script but with the help from writers Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin, we have a ball game. Beane depends heavily on Brand though to back him up because those two make on hell of a team.

You even see the conflict between Art Howe (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) the A’s manager and some of the players, but there was little actually training footage. As for Hill’s character, he had great lines to work with and there is tons of dialogue but he wasn’t that fun to watch. He just spit out numbers when prompted, and his lines were humorous but not comedic.

The film captures Beane focusing more on the office and money aspects of the game than it actually does baseball itself. But as it is stated in the film, and I quote “How can you not be romantic about baseball?”

“Moneyball” opens everywhere on September 23, 2011 and is rated PG-13. The running time is 133 minutes and although a tad bit to lengthy, it is a film that will give you a behind the scenes of how baseball is handled both in and out of the dugout, but mostly out. It also stars Robin Wright.
Don’t forget the hotdogs for America’s favorite pastime.

By Hustlin Bob Higgins 4 stars