Denouement: Does Loving Baseball Make You Enjoy “Moneyball” Less?

When I sent out a link to my "Moneyball" review over Twitter the other day, I wrote, "I suspect the more you like baseball, the less you'll like this movie." Now, this is a suspicion that is easily disproven; all it required was one baseball fan to say they love the movie, and BOOM: blanket generalization shattered. But my point stands: I think the more you understand the actual principles of "Moneyball" the book, and the real stories behind the dramatizations of the movie, the more artificial the movie feels.

I did my absolute best to stow this information while watching "Moneyball," and I'll confess that I am unable to tell whether I was successful or not, whether my issues with the film's lack of consistent philosophy -- the philosophy that is the movie's propulsive narrative force, I might add -- are because I know too much of the real story, or because they're legitimate problems with the film. I mean, I think I did: I certainly attempted to, and there wasn't a moment when the Guy Who Knows The Real Story took over from Guy Just Watching A Story Be Told. And I still think the character of Beane never quite congeals into a well-rounded, logical character: He just sort of drifts around, thinking real hard, spitting, occasionally throwing a chair. And I would argue that the details of this sort of stuff do matter. "Moneyball" is a movie about an "idea" and its ramifications in a similar way that "The Social Network" is. But it is not nearly as consistent as that film. In "The Social Network," you understand what Mark Zuckerberg's viewpoint is, throughout, and he never wavers from it. In "Moneyball," Beane is all over the place: We never get a sense of what exactly his plan is, save for a couple of passing references to walks and on-base percentage. It would be as, a couple times in "The Social Network," Zuckerberg started talking to Eduardo Saverin about how his parents never hugged him and beginning a self-help group. You know what Zuckerberg's all about, what he's doing; you don't know the same about Beane.

But am I saying this because I care about baseball so much and study it? That if I just accepted it as a movie, like I do more easily with movie that are about subjects I know less about? I don't think so. But I suppose I don't really know for sure.

Critics struggle with this all the time. The job of the critic -- at least in view of this website -- is to attempt to be the platonic ideal of a viewer, someone who wants to love the film, someone who comes in without any preconceived notions about what he/she is about to see, or at least as few of them as possible. The critic should do his/her absolute best to check as much of his/her personality at the theater door, to watch and read a film objectively, and then report back to the reader (the audiences, our customers) what he/she discovered. If I came back from seeing, say, "Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark" with a report that had nothing more to say than, "Well, I can't stand Katie Holmes, so this movie sucked," then I am not doing my job. There is a sense that all reviews are opinion, and of course, at its core, that's true: All reviews are opinion. But the core driving influence should be a search for fact. This might sound strange to say, considering I write about movies (and sports, for that matter) for a living, but honestly: I try to keep as much of my personal opinion out of this stuff as I can. If I'm unable to do that, I attempt to disclose that. (For example: I hate dolphins.) But that's not the point of this. The point is to try to get it right. The point, ultimately, is to think and question and ponder and eventually come to something that is the best human proximity of Fact.

People who hate critics, in their own way, acknowledge this: The most common "insult" hurled at critics is that they are all frustrated filmmakers. This criticism has never made much sense -- they're two entirely different skillsets, as far removed from each other as, to paraphrase Pauline Kael, making a meal and eating it -- but what lies beneath it is what lies beneath what people suspect of journalists all the time: They're biased. What "you're biased" really means is, "I do not trust you to be able to remove yourself from this story to tell it to me objectively." Sometimes this is true. Sometimes it is not. But that's the argument. I understand it.

But it's still strange to be thought of as somehow biased because of an understanding of the material a movie is presenting. This might be because critics often see so many movies that the only thing they have time to have an understanding of is movies: That's probably makes for a better critic; my inability to put aside my baseball knowledge -- if I was in fact unable to do that, which I'm not yet willing to concede -- probably speaks more to my inexperience as a professional critic than any sort of inherent conflict. But there's also an implicit understanding there: Critics shouldn't be experts in anything other than movies because they have to be the ideal viewer. That's to say: They shouldn't care about anything but movies. I hope that's not true.

It's still possible I'm wrong here: After all, there were surely tons of little details that "The Social Network" got wrong that only programmers and former Facebook employees would understand. They flew right by me the same way the slipshod understanding of baseball philosophy slips by the non-fans who love "Moneyball." Maybe we're all supposed to just be the average viewers, all the time. I will keep trying. I will also hope there aren't any other big baseball movies coming out soon, or biographies of people among my family and friends. Those are the only things other than movies I really care about.