The New York Times Sports of the Times has an interesting piece today about how the philosophy behind Moneyball is everywhere. Despite the irony that Billy Beane and his Oakland A’s can’t win for losing, can’t make the playoffs and now struggle to get anywhere, the practice that was put in place is helping other teams win. But of course, people keep looking to the story for a happy ending. We all are so inclined towards that. To find a happy ending in the film, Moneyball, one has to look not to a success story that helps the underdogs finally win the world series (they don’t, and never do) but to the notion that we can sometimes be strangled by our illusions.
Meanwhile, over at Eloquent Graffiti, Paul Clifford writes a post, “Everything I Know About Teaching I learned from Moneyball:
Eradicating old budgetary allocations, old practices, and old philosophies at a systemic level is extremely difficult–we may not have the power or influence to ‘change the game’ ourselves–but as Beane had the authority to impact the philosophy governing his team, so do we have the opportunity to bring a certain degree of progress and innovation to our own classrooms with or without the fancy tools.
He lays out the ways thusly:
1. Change is difficult because ‘the game’ is unfair.
2. Success is a product of confidence, not inherent ‘capability’
3. “Romance is for the fans”
4. The sound of losing is silence
5. “The first guy through the wall always gets bloody”
A great essay, well worth the read. We need more teachers out there like Paul Clifford. Education is exactly where we need to fortify this country. From the looks of things from my perspective, with a child in LAUSD, we’re moving in exactly the wrong direction. Kicking up the dust of tradition when the game you’re playing isn’t working well enough is what we see in Moneyball, even if, as the NY Times points out, new problems arise as a result.
While I don’t know if it’s possible to solve the problems of the LAUSD. Every time I attend a PTA meeting I’m even less encouraged. And when the higher ups attend and speak, it’s even worse. They are so bogged down, so backwards in their thinking that it’s no wonder most of the wealthy here in LA turn to private schools.
What I love about the Billy Beane story, and what many baseball fans probably hate, is that he’s stuck with the Oakland A’s even when they were losing. The process he put into place helped other teams win, maybe not his team. But so what. The point of it is to look at the individual strengths of players and not buy into the notion of not being able to compete if you can’t afford the star players. This philosophy, it seems to me, would work whether it’s baseball or teaching or the Oscar race itself.
Yes, money buys you publicity. But the notion of needing a high-salaried star to bring a film to the Oscar race is outtdated and has been for years. While it’s true that it’s much harder to, say, crack the Best Actress five unless you’re “somebody,” by bringing the bloggers into the process, a “nobody” CAN get coverage where they couldn’t say ten years ago when no one paid attention to the blogs.
It’s possible that my feet are becoming entangled in the metaphor. But what I do know is this: what I responded to in the film Moneyball was less about the reality of the game of baseball than about the things the film said to me about life itself. Movies are mostly accidentally good. Everyone sets out to make the best film they can make – Moneyball had such a strange trajectory with so many writers and stars involved. Who knows what its ultimate story will turn out to be. Maybe it won’t make enough money and the nervous chickens will stop clucking around it and move on to another film to cluck about. Maybe the Big Oscar Movies will flood the race and obliterate all that came before. But maybe – just maybe a good movie will be rewarded. It does sometimes happen, unlikely though it may be.
