“As a celebration of the magic of movies involving baseball, at least one scene from a different film will be posted each day for the next nine days…”
—From “Top of the First” March 28th

In the game of baseball, there are teams that can afford to peruse through a catalog of players, glaze over their hitting percentages and “big name” status and then call them up with a single offer that would make them potentially the biggest fools on the planet if they were to reject the contract. In other words, money plays.

But what if there was a team that thought differently? What if a manager and his Ivy League educated assistant used statistics and mathematical equations to evaluate talent to determine the best value in players who would inevitably score x runs, strikeout y hitters and ultimately win z games?

And more incredibly, what if this was based on a true story involving the Oakland A’s?

“Bottom of the First” showed us how math had to be used to get the Minnesota Twins, of “Little Big League,” into the game. The first scene (and a bonus scene!) from “Moneyball” shows us the genesis of deciding to utilize statistics and math to win the game.