Moneyball came out on DVD last week. Like most really good sports movies, it's only superficially about sports. Based on the bestseller by Michael Lewis, it tells how the 2002 Oakland Athletics won 103 games (including a record-breaking 20 in a row) and their division title after losing their three best players to free agency. Actually, the movie explores the tension between faith and reason, and how that tension affects the way we work and play.
Income inequality in Major League Baseball forced Oakland’s general manager Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt) to re-think his roster. How could small-market teams like the A’s compete with big-market teams like the New York Yankees? With three times the cash to spend, the Yanks could outbid the Oaklands of the league for the best athletes. An awkward computer geek fresh out of Yale (Peter Brand, played by Jonah Hill) convinces Beane that the answer lies in finding undervalued players – guys who produce out of proportion to their salaries, as revealed by sophisticated statistical analyses. Instead of relying on subjective evaluations by his scouts, Beane decides to go with Brand’s cold, hard numbers.
The movie gets big yuks from the old-timers’ unscientific approach to judging players. The old talent scouts give a thumbs-up to a prospect with “a good face,” thumbs-down to ones with less attractive girlfriends. (“He can’t do better than her? Shows a lack of confidence.”)
But when the team goes for its record-setting 20th consecutive win, even the converted number-crunchers fall back into magical thinking. Beane, on the road to scout a prospect, gets a frantic call on his cell phone from Brand, who begs him to get back to his habitual place in the stadium – presumably, for luck. Beane thinks over his options for a second, and we can almost hear his inner voice saying, “Well, what the hell, it can’t hurt.” He turns his pickup around, and we next see him watching the game on TV somewhere in the bowels of Oakland stadium. And, in true Hollywood fashion, a player who was signed not for his power but for his on-base percentage wins the game with a walk-off homer.
Michael Lewis has said that his book explores how "an unscientific culture responds, or fails to respond, to the scientific method." To the book’s credit – and to the movie’s – it also shows how even the most science-minded folks tenaciously hold onto their superstitions, especially in a superstition-laden sport like baseball. Ironically, it's Brand the Science Guy who implores Beane to get back to Oakland for luck. Or maybe it's not ironic at all. After all, don't science and superstition spring from the same impulse -- the drive to find patterns in the past and present that will predict the future? Whether we find the patterns in numbers or in behavior, it doesn't matter. The drive is still there, hard-wired in us.
Moneyball shows people who put their faith in computers hedging their bets with good-luck rituals when, as the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski put it, the stakes are high and the outcome is uncertain. In other words, it shows people acting like people.
Hey, JDY, As "luck" would have it, I saw this movie. I happened to watch it by myself, because I was at the mall with time to kill. I enjoyed it much more than I expected to--not just because it demonstrated that that keel-over-gorgeous Brad Pitt can really deliver a great performance (and so can that super-nerd number cruncher, Jonah Hill), but that (as you have pointed out in this blog) there was something much deeper going on--namely the conflict and/or interdependency between our reasoning minds and our "gut" instincts. I refer you to Stevie Wonder's great hit from the '70s, "Superstition": When you believe in things that you don't understand, then you suffer. Superstition ain't the way. Thanks for your thoughts.
ReplyDeleteStill, I like the "hedging your bets" argument. The superstitious behavior has no cost and does possibly have some upside potential. That seems like a perfectly rational behavior.
DeleteThanx, KMT. I liked the movie, too. (Book's really good, too.) And I never argue with Stevie Wonder.
DeleteBertrand Russell observed:
ReplyDeleteMan is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones
Oh, of course it's rational behavior when you look at it from a risk-management perspective. In fact, it's a little like Pascal's wager, isn't it? For instance, according to a host of studies, most college students practice some sort of superstitious ritual before big tests. (And, the more important the test, the more likely they are to "hedge their bets" superstitiously.) When pressed, however, they insist that their action has no affect on the outcome. But they do it anyway, saying things like "You can never be too sure" or "You never can tell." I think of them as bargain-hunting insurance consumers. When the stakes are high -- and the price of coverage is low -- why not buy in? Even if you don't believe, it makes sense to act as if you do.
DeleteHas anybody shown this movie to the Indians, or perhaps the Browns?
ReplyDelete