Here’s the breaker for me between the two scripts. In Zillian’s, Jeremy Giambi is always watching the Natural on DVD. In Soderbergh’s, he watches Happy Gilmore. That sums it up for me.

Even if the facts aren’t true, I rather watch the first movie with Brad Pitt trading players and women at about the same pace. It’s Hollywood, not Oakland. The second script is much more Oakland.

Either way, I hope the movie gets made.

The stuff with David Justice and Scott Hatteberg is interesting, especially Hatteberg because its a story a lot of people can relate to on a human level even if they’ve never played baseball. The thing I thought that really tied the book together was Beane the GM understanding that Beane the player and others like him had no business being major leaguers regardless of physical talent and that in this regard the traditional scouting culture was failing. I think that they could expand that stuff and keep it interesting for a wider audience, especially since its a human story as much as a baseball story.

I think they could go back a little further to the decline of the great late 80′s teams and the recollection of A’s management of what needed to be done and maybe spend a few minutes of screen time on that to lead up to how the Moneyball culture in Oakland came about and its current most successful incarnation in the late 90′s early 00′s.