'Moneyball' junket: An invitation that's easy to decline

I got an invite to a screening of "Moneyball," the movie. It's always nice to get invited.

The press screening will take place Sunday night at 6 p.m. at an East Bay theater. That would be a good time for the screening if it actually were a good time. It's just that the 49ers play in San Francisco at 1 p.m. on Sunday and when the screening starts I and several million of my colleagues will be pounding out our Niners-Cowboys stories on deadline.

Which leads to several questions:

Did the Moneyball people check the local sports schedules?

Did they expect sportswriters to dump the Niners and write about the A's?

With their current standing as being totally irrelevant on planet Earth, which Bay Area teams do and the A's take precedence over?

How about none?

It gets better. The press release informs us of a press conferences at the Oakland Coliseum on Monday with famous people involved with the film. The press release refers to the press conference as a "junket." I've never attended a junket before. Have you? The press release says the junket starts "at approx 12:30-45 p.m. Please arrive at least 20 minutes prior."

Quite an interesting message contained within those quote marks. No guarantees when the Moneyball people will arrive but we press nerds should get there early and wait because their time is valuable and ours isn't.

Sign me up.

Oh, one other thing. At 12:30 p.m. next Monday when the Moneyball press conferences start, Jim Harbaugh will be holding his own press conference — er, junket — down in Santa Clara to go over what happened vs. the Cowboys.

Me, I'm sticking with Harbaugh. Did the Moneyballers check the 49ers' schedule? Are the Moneyballers aware there's a whole world out there?

For your information there will be two groups of celebs at the Monday news conference I can't attend.

First Group: Brad Pitt, Billy Beane, Jonah Hill, Michael Lewis.

Second Group: the director Bennett Miller, former A's player Scott Hatteberg, and Philip Seymour Hoffman "if he is available to attend." (My wife sometimes gets tongue-tied and refers to Philip Seymour Hoffman as Phillip Hoffmour Seyman or Phillip Sophmore He-man.)

Final public relations note, and I quote: "MONEYBALL, as you know, will be opening that Friday, Sept 23rd, so you'll have a very quick turnaround in getting your pieces done. I do appreciate your efforts."

He appreciates my efforts — in this case no effort. Do I work for Moneyball? Am I on the Moneyball team? Is this how people think in Hollywood?

Disclaimer from Lowell Cohn: I love "Moneyball," the book. Michael Lewis, the author, is a brilliant nonfiction writer, one of the best nonfiction writers in America. His book is astonishing. It is now dated and many of its theories about the nature of Moneyball have been called into question — that takes away nothing from what Lewis did.

I also admire Beane, although his accomplishments have been called into question, too. The A's have not had a winning season in five years and, from my point of view, hardly seem to compete to win their division. They merely try to look respectable — unsuccessfully.

The movie, as I understand it, shows how Beane brilliantly steers his team to a 20-game winning streak in 2002 despite the chintzy and cheap ownership. This is the first baseball movie in which the GM — and not the team — is the focus. But Beane didn't win the pennant that year, never has won the pennant or the World Series. Nothing like that.

So, let me understand what we have. We have a screening and two press junkets that lots of reporters and columnists can't attend because of bad planning. We have a movie about an outdated book about an irrelevant team.

It sure would be cool to meet Brad Pitt, though. Maybe he'll bring Angelina.

For more on the world of sports in general and the Bay Area in particular, go to the Cohn Zohn at cohn.blogs.pressdemocrat.com. You can reach Staff Columnist Lowell Cohn at lowell.cohn@pressdemocrat.com.