Moneyball Shut Out By Oscars

It started innocently enough.

Howe’s portrayal in the movie was controversial upon the film’s release last fall, and remains so. Howe returned to Oakland to help celebrate The Streak as part of a pre-game ceremony that included players and coaches from the 2002 team. (Read this post on Athletics Nation for a rundown on what the 2002 team members are doing now.)

If you ask me, Brad Pitt got robbed by the Oscars.

He should have been nominated for his performance in Tree of Life, but wasn’t.

The 2012 Oscar nominations were announced Tuesday morning, and a little film called Moneyball racked up four big nods nods.

Most notably, Moneyball is one of nine films nominated for Best Picture. The complete list:

A few weeks ago, I “live-blogged” a Kevin Costner vehicle, For Love of the Game. Why I would torture myself -- let alone, you -- like that, I don’t really remember. Nor do I know what possessed me to live-blog Moneyball, which was released last week on DVD (et cetera).

But I’ve done it.

It took quite a bit for me to convince my wife to see Moneyball in the theaters. It took cajoling, begging, and bargaining. And what good is the promise of staring at Brad Pitt for a couple of hours if you have the real deal at home, right, ladies?

I eventually won out, and we saw the movie. She absolutely loved it. She can sit through a baseball game on TV about once every season, but she loved Moneyball. When the adaptation was announced, I gave it something like a 5% of not being a total dirigible accident of a movie. Then some big names started to get attached to the script -- Steven Soderbergh, Aaron Sorkin, Bennett Miller, Brad Pitt. It started to look interesting. And then it became a hit, grossing over $75 million with a chance of Oscar love next month. It was an astounding success.

Sure, it’s only the Golden Globes. But the nominations are out, and “Moneyball” did pretty, pretty, pretty well.

The film was among the six nominees for best picture, actors Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill both got nods, and so did screenwriters Aaron Sorkin and Steve Zaillian.