I must begin this review by saying one thing: I am not a baseball fan. It’s the only major American sport I don’t watch. I even find curling to be more interesting than baseball. But “Moneyball,” an inside movie about baseball, does not require you to care about baseball. It’s the quintessential American underdog story of a workingman fighting the status quo. It goes without saying that “Moneyball” is a crowd pleaser. Best of all, it’s a good—and true—sports movie.

Brad Pitt stars as Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics, a baseball club that is one of the poorest in MLB. He realizes, with the help of Assistant GM Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), that many MLB players are grossly undervalued for frivolous reasons. Using a formula based on the club’s need for one thing only—getting on base—Beane replaces much of their roster with a team of cheap, statistically sound players that Brand memorably calls “an island of misfit toys.” Naturally, the sports community resists this radical change. The Oakland Athletics’ coach, Art Howe (an underused Phillip Seymour Hoffman), lacerates him on radio shows while commentators call for his firing. Yet Beane persists, and slowly his moneyball strategy starts to work.

With any other actor in the title role, I doubt that “Moneyball” would work as well as it did. Brad Pitt elevates the role in a way only a true movie star can, letting his natural charisma guide him through. It’s some of the best work of his career, and he is deservedly generating Oscar buzz for it. And any movie that makes Jonah Hill likable is a winner in my book. He works surprisingly well as a foil for Pitt. Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian’s script is sharp, snappy and economical. At times it approaches the brilliance both writers have had, Sorkin with “The Social Network” and Zaillian with “Schindler’s List.” One scene in particular, in whcih Beane and Brand are working to make a deal happen before the trade deadline, is classic Sorkin.

It is not without its flaws, though. “Moneyball” sometimes came across as a made-for-TV movie, with its weird montage sequence of edited footage from the actual Oakland A’s run for the AL consecutive wins record (I will admit that I teared up) or its strange slow motion shots, straight out of Discovery Channel’s “Time Warp.” Bennett Miller is an adequate director, but he plays it safe too often. The only real plot misfire is the inclusion of Beane’s ex-wife and her new husband. It’s a weird distraction from the central story and did nothing to develop Beane’s character. Other than that, “Moneyball” tells a great story that avoids the pitfalls of most sappy sports movies. It’s well-told and well-acted, and it will unite baseball fans and haters alike.