Moneyball movie misses chance to be as important as the story it tells

If you enjoyed the Moneyball book without reservation, you're really going to like the movie (opening Sept. 23), which revives the tale of the 2002 Oakland Athletics run by general manager Billy Beane. But if some of the context of the 2003 bestseller by author Michael Lewis left you put off, you're probably going to leave the theatre entertained, but disappointed by a film that could have been more. The eight years since Moneyball hit bookshelves have shown baseball fans plenty of where Lewis hit and missed in his written pages, which detailed how Beane used statistical analysis to find cheaper players whose skillsets were undervalued by other teams. Baseball fans don't really need a refresher course on Moneyball, since its pros and cons have been heatedly debated in real life for years. For non-baseball fans, being introduced to Beane for the first time through actor Brad Pitt, they will be presented the story of a Little Team that Could through the lens in which cat...