Moneyball

The whole plan behind university study and taking some responsibility over the direction of my adult life revolves around a desire to do what I love, and what I love is sport. However, with three decades now worth of wisdom and experience under my belt, I've faced up to the reality that is my actual sporting prowess, and graciously accepted the fact that if I want to earn a crust and find my place in sport, it's with the eggheads - not the athletes.

Since I have little to no social life, my Saturday evening consisted of cleaning the house and watching a movie, and tonight's flick was Moneyball. For those who haven't seen it, Brad Pitt and his glorious head of hair find themselves playing the part of a one-time baseball prodigy-turned Major League General Manager, and it's based on the true story of the Oakland A's during the early 2000's. Brad's character, Billy, along with his egghead, Econ-degree-from-Yale sidekick Jonah Hill (Peter), revolutionise the baseball scouting system and player analytics world as it once was, embracing statistics and science over traditional measures. As a result, Billy and Peter assemble a team of misfits on the A's shoestring budget, and out-perform every pundit's expectations.

I don't care much for baseball, and I know Moneyball is a dramatised Hollywood depiction of the real world, but I loved viewing the story of a professional team from its front office. The business of sport fascinates me, and Moneyball more than reinforced my desire to immerse myself in that world one day. Sure, I've got more chance of a three-way with Farah Fawcett and Brittany Murphy than I do of becoming General Manager of a Major League Baseball team, but that's not the point, because baseball isn't where my passions lie. Now, if I could somehow find myself sitting in the Commissioners chair of the European Tour, or the General Managers chair in the Philadelphia Flyers front office, that'd be my nirvana.

It took me a long time to set my internal compass, and what I learned today is that at different points, it helps to check that that calibration is correct.