Here's Your 'Moneyball' Movie Script, Sex Scene Included

Although the big movie studios have all balked at putting the best-selling baseball book 'Moneyball' on the silver screen, one of the versions of a screenplay for the movie has surfaced on Hollywood Elsewhere. (EDIT: The link to the actual script seems to have been removed.)

I just finished reading through the whole thing and it actually does stick relatively close to the story of the book. Sure, there are some changes -- like making Billy Beane a bachelor and having him hook up with a waitress (p. 20) -- but for the most part it's a story of how he built the 2002 A's into a winner on a shoestring budget after losing three big-time free agents, Jason Giambi, Johnny Damon and Jason Isringhausen.

This particular screenplay, by Steven Zaillian ('A Civil Action', 'Mission: Impossible', 'Schindler's List'), is dated Dec. 1, 2008. Presumably this is not the one that was most recently submitted to Sony Pictures and was rejected because it had changed too much. For all we know, the last version of the script was nothing like this one.

Still, it's an interesting read, just to see how Hollywood was planning to adapt this book to the screen.

As you'd expect, the movie paints Beane as a know-it-all prone to profanity-laced tirades. It makes assistant GM Paul DePodesta look like a numbers geek. It makes Art Howe (who was going play himself in the movie) look like an old-time baseball guy who didn't see eye-to-eye with Beane on much. Scott Hatteberg is a journeyman ballplayer struggling to get comfortable with the new role the A's have made for him as a first baseman.

One of my favorite scenes in the screenplay is when Beane and David Justice go back and forth, with Justice essentially telling Beane that the players shouldn't listen to him because he was a lousy player (p. 75).

JUSTICE: I don't think a guy who couldn't cut it has much to offer guys who can, but go ahead and tell them how to play baseball. Not me.

BEANE: Why? Are you special?

JUSTICE: You're paying me 7 million bucks. I guess I am.

BEANE: I'm not paying you 7 million bucks. The Yankees are paying half your salary. That's what they think of you. They're paying you to play against them.

Anyway, the screenplay is full of Beane's snarky comments like that. Too bad this movie isn't going to be made. I'd have gone to see it, even if no one else would have.

Oh yeah, about that sex scene. It's really more of an "implied sex scene." Billy smiles at the waitress, gets her phone number and then later she's asleep in a hotel room, while he makes a phone call.