I know nothing about baseball. I never watch it, live or on TV. But I loved this movie about the business of baseball.

Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) is the general manager of  the Oakland Athletics,  the team with the lowest salaries in Major League Baseball. In 2001, Beane, a former promising player himself, led the Athletics to the World Series, only to see them lose and have their three best and star players hired away by richer teams.

He tries desperately to rebuild the team, and is running out of ideas. Quite by accident, he meets Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), a recent Yale graduate who never played a game of baseball in his life, but is a wizard with mathematical models. The two cook up a system that all the old talent scouts dismiss. After 11 consecutive losses, the A’s start winning, and end up breaking the baseball all-time record, winning 20 games in a row.

This is not a sports movie, it’s about business, and wits and numbers over instinct and time-tested ingrained processes. The action takes place between Billy and Peter, and baseball is just a side-show for the personal dramas and triumphs.

As I said above, I don’t give a damn about baseball, but I learned a ton about how the game works, I enjoyed myself thoroughly and I think this is one of the best movies I have watched in a long time.

Rating: ****