Sports movies are often a tough sell to studios.

They don’t make a lot of money and just don’t look realistic enough. Besides, watching the real thing in high definition beats a sports movie anyway. Too often, they lapse into clichés and predictable emotionalism.

Finally, there’s one that doesn’t.

Brad Pitt’s “Moneyball” is an enjoyable cinematic diversion and a great movie made out of a book that definitely doesn’t lend itself to film like Buzz Bissinger’s “Friday Night Lights” did.

In the Michael Lewis book and the film, Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane, portrayed ably by Pitt, totally junks the way that talent is evaluated and embraced the sabermetric principles of Bill James, who used mathematical and statistical analysis analyze baseball stats.

The film has its Hollywood touches. Beane’s family life isn’t dealt with much in the book, whereas in the film, it adds some humanity to his character. A composite character stands in for Paul dePodesta, who didn’t want his likeness or name used in the film and several other Beane deputies. Jonah Hill does a great job conveying the discomfort of an Ivy League economics guy amongst hardened baseball folks.

Manager Art Howe does not come off well in the film because audiences need some antagonist-protagonist back and forth. He’s depicted as adversarial, insubordinate and dismissive of Beane’s ideas.

But the biggest disservice to the film’s subject material is that the viewer does not know why the A’s were able to win more games than they did in 2001, the year after Johnny Damon (Boston Red Sox), Jason Isringhausen (St. Louis Cardinals) and Jason Giambi (New York Yankees) departed in free agency.

There were three reasons for Oakland’s success and all of them were in the starting pitching rotation. Guys named Barry Zito (now with the San Francisco Giants), Tim Hudson (Atlanta Braves) and Mark Mulder (retired). Hudson was mentioned, but not the other two. Considering in 2002 that they were the best three pitchers in baseball and the Oakland rotation has not enjoyed that level of talent since, it’s little wonder the A’s have been unable to duplicate their success. While the movie makes the viewer think the team was nothing but a bunch of stiffs, shortstop Miguel Tejada won the 2002 AL MVP award.

But those are minor quibbles. It’s hard to cram everything into a two-hour movie.

The primary theme of the film is that league had one paradigm. The more you spend, the more you win. Beane’s way of evaluating talent seeped into the thinking of every franchise. The Boston Red Sox hired James as a special adviser and tried to hire Beane away from the A’s, whose small payroll forced the team to tackle talent evaluation from an unconventional perspective.

In the end, Beane changed the game. Every team has a math wizard crunching numbers now. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

But as the film vividly shows at the end when Scott Hatteberg’s walk-off home run that gave the A’s the American League consecutive wins record, ultimately, there are some things in sports that can’t be quantified on a spreadsheet.

It’s something the film distills nicely into an entertaining two hours.

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Steve Wilson is sports editor of The Vicksburg Post. You can follow him on Twitter at vpsportseditor. He can be reached at 601-636-4545, ext. 142 or at swilson@vicksburgpost.com.