On September 26, the Oakland Athletics played their final game at the Oakland Coliseum, defeating the Texan Ranger 3–2. Loyal fans expressed a range of emotions, from nostalgia to sorrow, as the occasion turned out to be more requiem than a ball game. With the Athletics’ departure, Oakland has now lost its third franchise in five years, following the relocation of the Golden State Warriors to San Francisco in 2019 and the Raiders move to Las Vegas in 2020.
As of a month ago, the team officially dropped ‘Oakland’ from their name as they prepare for a temporary relocation to West Sacramento for the next three seasons before their permanent move to Las Vegas in 2028.
The move follows three decades of failed attempts to secure a new stadium in the Oakland area. The legendary Oakland Coliseum, home of the A’s since 1968 and built in 1966, has deteriorated over the years, with issues such as sewage problems, mice infestations, and light malfunctions adding to an ever-growing list of structural issues. At the centre of this saga stands the chief villain of the Oakland A’s story: John Fisher — their owner and heir to The Gap clothing store. He is a fitting antagonist for this tale, as fickle as the shirts that helped build his empire, a worthy villain in a Disney classic.
The 2011 film Moneyball, directed by Bennett Miller, follows the unforgettable 2002 season of the Oakland Athletics, and the drama surrounding the revolutionary team-building strategies of legendary Athletics General Manager (GM) Billy Beane (Brad Pitt). Based on Michael Lewis’s 2003 nonfiction book, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, the film is a commercial and critical success. Lewis is also known for his other nonfiction books, The Big Short and The Blind Side, both of which were adapted into successful films.
Moneyball grossed 111 million USD worldwide on a budget of 50 million USD, earning a 7.6/10 IMDb rating, a 94 per cent score from Rotten Tomatoes critics, and an average rating of 3.9/5 on Letterboxd. A favourite among sports fans, it has also been featured on The Varsity’s top five sports films of all time, and top five sports films based on true stories.
Despite operating on less than half the budget of other MLB teams, Beane used advanced baseball metrics to sign statistically undervalued players on below-market contracts. For example, Beane focuses on maximizing on base percentage rather than the more conventional metric of batting average to scout effective hitters. He signed or traded for players such as David Justice (Stephen Bishop) and Scott Hatteberg (Chris Pratt), who the other teams overlooked due to their age and injury histories.
Today, rigorous statistical analysis of players is commonplace in every sport — teams like the Maple Leafs, Blue Jays, and Raptors all have dedicated analytics departments — but at the time, Beane’s approach was revolutionary. He faced both internal and external criticism for his unorthodox approach to baseball, a game steeped in tradition and resistant to change.
In Moneyball, Pitt leads an all-star cast comprising actors such as Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jonah Hill and Pratt. However, Pitt’s stellar performance truly steals the show as the charismatic GM, delivering a cool and effortless charm that you’d expect from a professional sports executive.
Miller brilliantly captures the unique drama of sports while telling a compelling underdog story in a well-paced film. You can’t help but root for the As, and you can’t help but echo the sentiment of Beane’s iconic line: “It’s hard not to be romantic about baseball.” The film received six Academy Award nominations in 2012, including Best Picture, Pitt for Best Actor, and Hill for Best Supporting Actor.
Unfortunately for reality, the issue is that it’s much easier for any MLB team to start an analytics department than it is for a small market team like the A’s to triple their budget. This season, the Athletics had a roster payroll of 47 million USD — 25 million USD behind the next lowest, the Pittsburgh Pirates, a fraction of the league-high 290 million USD of the New York Yankees, and a third of the 150 million USD average across MLB.
It’s a surprise that the Athletics have made the playoffs nine times since the 2002 season. Their feature in the 2006 American League Champions Series — which is the equivalent of the World Series semifinal — is all the more impressive, considering the A’s have constantly been underfunded.
Oakland fans will definitely blame franchise owner Fisher for losing their team. Fisher has frequently been described as the worst owner in professional sports since acquiring the A’s in 2005. The billionaire has continually neglected the team, refusing to invest in a historical franchise that won three consecutive World Series titles from 1972–1974. Under Fisher, the team payroll ranked an average of 27th out of 30 teams. The list of Fisher’s missteps is infamous as it is lengthy.
In an era in which the 2024 World Series winners Los Angeles Dodgers have constructed a superteam headlined by Shohei Ohtani’s 700 million dollar USD contract, the underdog tale in MLB seems like a relic of the past. Theoretically, if you had three of Ohtani’s historic 50/50 home run ball — which recently sold at auction for 4.4 million dollars — you could nearly cover the entire cost of the largest free-agent contract handed out by Fisher, Joakim Soria’s two-year $15 million USD deal signed in 2019.
Thanks to the MLB’s revenue-sharing program, the Athletics receive a share of 48 per cent of local revenue across the league, split among the 30 MLB teams. This means the Athletics make a hefty profit on their dismal payroll. In 2023, the team received 3.3 per cent of an estimated revenue total of 11.6 billion USD, or about 386 million USD.
No wonder the Oakland faithful despair. Following their miracle run in 2002, Beane himself turned down a five-year, $12.5 million offer from the Boston Red Sox. Had he accepted, he would have been the highest-paid GM in history.
In the face of relocation, Moneyball, and its underdog themes are all the more moving. Unfortunately, the film is almost prophetic in its conclusion. Beane cryptically states “I know these guys. I know the way they think, and they will erase us. And everything we’ve done here, none of it’ll matter.” Lewis is right. Baseball is an unfair game and maybe it has always been ‘Moneyball.’
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