We are deep into October. The Yankees and Red Sox have been sent home, but the Oakland Athletics are still thrilling fans on a nightly basis. It’s the 2002 A’s, not 2011, and their exploits can be seen only on a dwindling number of movie screens. But we A’s fans (I’ve been one since the early 1970s) take what we can get.
What we get is a movie, Moneyball, in which Brad Pitt, as A’s General Manager Billy Beane, throws a few chairs and craftily rebuilds his team into a 103-game winner after the departure of three stars Oakland can’t afford to keep. We also get a seemingly unending debate over what the A’s run of success-but-not-quite-triumph from 2000 through 2006, and the team’s subsequent failure to put together a winning season, really means. Is Beane an innovative genius? A fraud? Just lucky? Is scientific analysis the key to success in sports and in life? Is baseball fair? My A’s are no longer just a baseball team; they are a heavily freighted metaphor.
