OPINION: Stepping on cracks

Originally, this column was going to be completely different. I watched “Moneyball” this week and was fully prepared to write about what I consider to be fascinating microcosm.

“Moneyball,” the story of the Oakland A’s groundbreaking underdog story, existed at a time when sabermetric analysis, reducing sports down to the numbers and stats, was a ridiculous and ostracized idea in the world of sports. Bankability of the best athletes would lead teams to titles.

However, since Oakland’s experiment, we’ve entered a world where any team you look at in the professional world of sports is performing their own moneyball experiment. Some stars exist today (for the baseball crowd, Ohtani’s $700 million contract comes to mind) but the midfield of athletes now exist in a constant state of flux, underpaid as teams reap their talents to save a quick buck.

That is not what today is about. What I found more interesting in the movie on this watch was a simple character trait found in its protagonist, A’s general manager Billy Beane, played by Brad Pitt.

Beane’s characterization is fascinating to me, a former major league player who entered scouting after underperforming in the big leagues. He’s cocky, balancing on a wire with his experiment to transform the cheapest budget in Major League Baseball to playoff contention.

His love for baseball is undeniable, but there’s a catch: he can’t watch the games.

From the very beginning, Beane is shown listening to important games intermittently on a radio or on the TV, before quickly shutting the game off to focus on something else. His staff knows this tendency, shutting off the game when he enters a room. Beane is deeply serious despite his relaxed demeanor, which makes these moments feel dramatic.

Why does he do this? At first, it might seem that he’s nervous about the game’s results, not wanting to know if his team was winning or losing. So what happens when he does watch?

As the A’s are up 11 runs to nothing, Beane enters the Oakland Coliseum to watch a game in-person for the first time in the entire movie. A’s are up 11, what could go wrong? As he stands at the entrance to the stands, he sees the A’s collapse, dropping balls and bumbling around the outfield. He quickly leaves the stadium, existentially terrified.

Beane is superstitious, feeling his eyes on the game would eventually result in his team’s failure. It’s a fascinating portrayal of anxiety, consistently showing Beane as attempting to control this phantom of cursed luck. It helps build him as a true underdog, alongside the unorthodox scouting strategy that would eventually allow for the A’s to make playoffs.

Beane’s confidence in his decisions in choosing staff and players makes the flipped angle fascinating, as the composed facade is peeled back to reveal an inner shame. It roots back to his first days as a Major League player, cursed to never find the success he achieved growing up. While he smirks and goes all-in on his strategy, these moments where the game happens outside of Beane are what makes him truly compelling.

An omniprescent curse could feel out-of-place in a numbers-driven sports flick, but it’s the subjective and intangible aspects that have made sports enticing and fantastical to me and wider audiences.

To me, sports have always been engaging because of the underlying, personal aspects. The Chicago Cubs World Series win only matters so much because of a title drought that cursed their franchise for decades. Max Verstappen winning the F1 title in 2021 matters because of the dominance of Lewis Hamilton that came before. The Oakland A’s turning around an abandoned budget into playoff contenders matters because of the struggle involved.

I like to believe in curses, not because I wish to be cursed or curse others, but because it explains some of the bad business that happens during our lives. It’s overcoming these curses, our bad circumstances, our insurmountable walls and succeeding that makes victory that much sweeter. It’s narrative pleasure, it confirms our efforts were worth the hardships.

Beane’s eventual satisfaction doesn’t come from winning it all. Oakland would come to fall at the American League Finals. His victory comes from having changed how teams look at the players who previously wouldn’t get a chance for some subjective flaw, changing baseball and sports forever.