Moneyball

Moneyball finally made its way to Europe. The name changed to Le Stratège in French. I’ve been reflecting on the film and I’ve gathered a couple of metaphors that I’d like to throw at ya.

1. I really like the struggle that Billy Bean (played by Brad Pitt) finds himself in, after loosing in the play-offs, faced with loosing 3 of his best players and having the lowest budget in baseball with which to rebuild his team. In a meeting with the coaching and scouting staff he rejects all of their conventional efforts and solutions. He doesn’t know what he wants to hear but it is not what he’s hearing from them.

What I took away from this is that sometimes in life you are hemmed in on all sides. The frustration and desperation lead you to re-evalute, re-think, re-imagine everything from a the very fundamentals to the big picture. It forces you to get creative. It channels Einstein  and his famous saying about not being to reach change by doing the same thing that got you there.  There have been times in my life like this and I look back on them as very formative. I am who I am today because of the struggle and the resulting creative and intuitive solutions that came. It makes you rethink everything…how even your weakness can become assets….how your environment or situation can determine the medium of your creative ideas. Art is about making decisions. The art of life is about making decisions. When you are in a tight spot like this, a lot of the decisions have been made for you….that can become a positive. Now you have to figure out how to do life within the canvas that you’ve been given. That’s what Brad Pitt struggles to do.

2. His struggle leads him to look at everything and everyone differently. While he’s in a room with other scouts and coaches of another team, he spots a spots the fat, nerdy kid whispering to one of the coaches. At this point in his desperation he is willing to look at any and every possibility, not shutting down any potential source of inspiration. He finds the kid and ask him who he is and what he was doing. The kid answers him with his name and that he wasn’t doing anything. The Brad Pitt character leaves him alone. Then finds him again.