For the life of it, This Blog can't imagine what the audience for this film is. OK, the Brad Pitt fans will come out for it. And there are people -- This Blog included -- who are inclined to see anything Aaron Sorkin writes, and this story is right in his wheelhouse. If nothing else, Sorkin is the master of sharp-tongued nerdery -- finding state-of-the-art Wilde-ish epigrammatons even among lawyers, political operatives, speechwriters, and founding cybergeeks. That Stephen Zaillian apparently also shares screenwriting credit, This Blog considers a more than considerable lagniappe, since Zaillian wrote Searching For Bobby Fischer, the best movie on youth competition ever made.

But, honestly, now, unless the film gilds Billy Beane's lily beyond even the decades-long efforts of his most fervent acolytes, is there an entire two-hour movie to be made about how some renegade executives managed to fashion a team that made the ALCS once, thereby reinventing the sport? (The trailer seems to indicate that they rejected The Scott Hatteberg Story as a title late in post-production.) Strangely enough, the IMDB cast list doesn't show anyone playing Tim Hudson, Barry Zito, or Mark Mulder, the three starting pitchers -- 60-21 combined in 2002 -- without whom Beane might be reinventing the game in Greenville right now.

This Blog will see it for the Sorkin, and hopes it's a hit because, if it manages to stay in theaters for three weeks, it will have gone deeper into October than the A's have in a lot of years. OK, that was cheap.