Billy Beane of ‘Moneyball’ Has Given Up on His Own Hollywood Ending

By ADAM STERNBERGH
NYT

Billy Beane has a wonderful story. At 18 he was a strapping young baseball prospect, raised in San Diego by a Naval-officer dad and drafted fresh out of high school in the first round by the New York Mets. He was a sure star — until he suddenly wasn’t, his playing career faltering for reasons few could understand, least of all him. Then, at 27, a journeyman outfielder with a lifetime average of .219 who’d bounced from the Mets to the Twins to the Tigers to the A’s, he walked out of the dugout and into the team’s front office, looking for a job. He became a scout, and eight years later, he was promoted to general manager of a losing team. Under his watch, the A’s, a small-market underdog with a minuscule payroll, made the playoffs five times in the next eight seasons.

Let’s call that Chapter 1.

Then in 2003, “Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game” was published. The book, by Michael Lewis, dissected Beane’s success and lionized him as an innovative visionary in a field clogged with myopic traditionalists. It explained how he boldly discarded conventional wisdom and embraced the advanced statistical analysis preached by a small band of radical baseball outsiders, inspired by the self-educated statistician Bill James. The book was a monumental best seller. And now, in what seems like the crowning chapter to this saga, “Moneyball” has just been released as a movie. The starring role of Billy Beane is played by Brad Pitt.

Let’s call that Chapter 2.

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