review of Moneyball by Manohla Dargis

Like “The Social Network,” which is about the creation of Facebook and yet so much more (it was also written by Mr. Sorkin) “Moneyball” is about a fundamental cultural shift and the rise of the information elite. Instead of going by instinct, Peter knows what he knows because he’s a disciple of Bill James, a once-marginal figure who, starting in 1977, began publishing an abstract that offered a new, rationalized way of looking at the game. In a nutshell, Mr. James looked at baseball statistics in a different light, less by breaking the numbers down in another way but by seeing that what appeared to be objective facts, like fielding statistics, were, as he wrote, “a record of opinions.” And these numbers didn’t just describe baseball; they gave the game its language, its “fiction and drama and poetry.”

Like a linguist Mr. James studied that language, looked at its form, context, meaning, and called his new approach sabermetrics. Among other things he could see value in underappreciated, often underpaid and ignored players whom conventional thinkers saw as destined for the minors. In the movie Peter preaches this new gospel to Billy, who embraces it with born-again fervor, partly because it clarifies the mystery of why he never became the player he was drafted to be: he had the tools, as the scouts like to say, but they just didn’t work in the majors. (In reality it was a former general manager of the A’s, Sandy Alderson, now with the Mets, who introduced Mr. Beane to Mr. James’s work.)

Reminds me of progressives like Yglesias and Ezra Klein and their recourse to data and charts, especially during the health care debate. In macroeconomics, though freshwater economists lost their way by focusing too much on models and equations.