History Film / Moneyball

* LuckBasedMission: Invoked by sportscaster Bob Costas during the montage of the A's reeling off 19 (eventually 20) wins in a row, noting that baseball by its nature is full of randomness on a given day that this A's team in particular must have unprecedented fortune on their side. To wit, he points out the longest winning streak for the 1927 Yankees, arguably the most fabled and greatest team of all time, was nine.

* PresentDayPast: At one point Billy tells Peter to text him the score and a scout refers to Peter as “Google Boy” (which was an actual nickname given to Paul DePodesta -- the inspiration for Brand -- in the pages of the ''Los Angeles Times'' when he was the general manager of the Dodgers, which was in 2004 and 2005). While texting and Google did exist in 2002 they were not common forms of communication or a popular search engine. They certainly had not yet become a common part of the English lexicon. The "Google Boy" jibe

* PresentDayPast: At one point Billy tells Peter to text him the score and a scout refers to Peter as “Google Boy”. While texting and Google did exist in 2002 they were not common forms of communication or a popular search engine. They certainly had not yet become a common part of the English lexicon.

* TakingItWell: Peter, being relatively new at dealing with players face to face, is long nervous at the prospect of telling a player he's been traded; Beane eventually assigns him to break the traded news to Carlos Peña and assures him to be straightforward and it'll be OK. Peter tells Peña that he's been traded, audibly and visibly nervous about the possible response. Carlos simply says "OK" at a level of calm far outpacing Peter's.

** Billy's daughter sings him Lenka's "The Show" in a scene set six years before it was recorded.

** Chad Bradford and Jeremy Giambi are depicted as risky newcomers to plug the holes on the roster; in reality, they were already on the team the previous season leading into the 2002 season depicted in the film.[[note]]The depicted 2002 season would be the first year Bradford was entrusted as a regular arm, but he had been acquired in a trade in 2000; Giambi was not only on the A's, but was the victim of one of the most infamous playoff plays the previous season, Derek Jeter's "flip" to home that erased Giambi at home plate in a crucial moment.[[/note]] Among the players Beane mentions the A's are losing and whose on-base percentage he's attempting to "recreate", one of them is Olmedo Saenz in addition to Giambi and Damon. In reality, Saenz was still on the A's that season and would re-sign with the A's as a free agent in the offseason to boot.

''Moneyball'' is a 2011 American film based on the best-selling book of the same name, following the RealLife story of how Oakland Athletics GM Billy Beane built a winning team on a shoestring budget despite baseball's the-rich-get-richer environment, using overlooked advanced statistics and players to make up the competitive advantage.

Billy goes through a bit of a depression after a post season loss to the New York Yankees as he realizes that with his ballclub's meager salary, they just can't compete with the likes of teams that spend three times the amount of money they can. Destiny along with the Cleveland Indians put Billy together with Peter Brand as they start using Bill James-style statistics (aka: Sabermetrics) to rebuild the Oakland Athletics into a League powerhouse once again.

* AluminumChristmasTrees: The A's blowing an 11-0 lead, only to win on Moneyball archetype Scott Hatteberg's pinch-hit walk-off home run in the bottom on the 9th to seal their American League-record 20th consecutive win might seem like a cinematic fabrication. Not only did [[https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/OAK/OAK200209040.shtml it actually happen]], it was the ''third'' straight game where Oakland scored the winning run in the bottom of the 9th to keep their winning streak alive.

-->'''Matt Keough:''' Ugly girlfriend means no confidence. [...] I'm just saying his girlfriend is a [[invoked]] [[EightPointEight 6 at best]].

* TheCameo: Bobby Kotick of Activision/Blizzard, a friend of director Bennett Miller, as New York Yankees owner Stephen Schott.

* TheCameo: Bobby Kotick of Activision/Blizzard, a friend of director Bennett Miller, as team owner Stephen Schott.

* TimeshiftedActor: Actor Reed Thompson playing Billy Beane in his playing days, bearing an uncanny resemblance to a young Brad Pitt.

* BittersweetEnding: The A's go on an unprecedented 20-game win streak (setting an American League record) but lose in the playoffs. Billy is offered a 12.5-million dollar contract — the highest offered for a baseball GM at that time — to GM for the Red Sox and seriously considers it but ultimately decides to stay with the A's, content to know that he's changed the game for the better. Years down the road, other teams realize the value of these metrics and actively recruit players based on them, meaning that Billy's advantage disappears and he is left back where he started: trying to do the same things as the wealthier teams to keep up with them, but with nowhere near as much money.