Saturday, January 28

I watched Moneyball last night on Demand.  It was beautifully photographed and sharply written with just a couple plot points that were not very clear.  The screen writer, Adam Sorkin, won last year’s adapted screenplay Oscar for The Social Network, and is nominated again this year.  He was also the writer/creator of the television series West Wing.  

As a baseball fan, it was fun to be reminded about how unlikely the 2003 Oakland A’s were to break the major league record for consecutive wins with 20.  They were a team made up of few star players, but selected using sabermetrics (baseball statistical analysis using mathematical logarithms to predict on-base success of any given player), as invented by Bill James.  

The movie was really about patterns versus randomness and understanding what you are seeing.  In other words, an athlete may look physically very gifted but may not actually accomplish much towards his team’s success.  You can apply this in many life situations involving teamwork.