But the - if this movie wins one Academy Award, it should be for casting, for whoever cast those scouts, because I tell you, for sure, if you put me in a room with 10 scouts and those guys playing the scouts, nobody in the world could say which were which. JAMES: The - well, they've changed a little over the years. Is that really what those meetings are like? Is that - they're sort of like dinosaurs for comic relief. JAMES: In terms of the look and feel of the places that we work and the meetings that we sit through and the things we talk about and - they couldn't possibly have gotten it any more right because it - the movie looks and feels and sounds exactly like it really does when - in baseball for (unintelligible).ĬONAN: There's a meeting in the film, a couple of meetings with the old scouts who are providing their advice on the players that Billy Beane, the manager of the Oakland Athletics, ought to sign up for the next season. Nice to have you back.īILL JAMES: Thanks for having me on, Neal.ĬONAN: And I wonder, do you think they got it right? That's at npr.org, click on TALK OF THE NATION.Īnd Bill James joins us now from a studio at Kansas Public Radio in Lawrence. Email us: You can also join the conversation on our website. If you've seen the picture, do they get it right? Give us a call: 80. We'd especially like to hear from those of you in baseball. Bill James now works as a senior adviser to the Boston Red Sox. He plays for Detroit now.ĬONAN: 'Moneyball' is based on a book by the same name, by Michael Lewis, which describes what happened when an actual team decided to base its decisions about ball players on new ways to think about the game, ideas developed by a guy working at that time as the night watchman at a pork and beans cannery in Lawrence, Kansas. HOFFMAN: (as Art Howe) Well, I am starting him at first. I'm just saying you can't start Pena at first. PITT: (as Billy Beane) The lineup card is definitely yours. PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN: (as Art Howe) I don't want to go 15 rounds, Billy. NEAL CONAN, host: In the new film 'Moneyball,' Brad Pitt plays the general manager of the Oakland Athletics who wants his field manager, Philip Seymour Hoffman, to adopt a radical theory, symbolized by an argument over who should play first base.īRAD PITT: (as Billy Beane) You can't start Pena first tonight.

Moneyball art