The Real Art Howe: Nothing Like The Moneyball Art Howe
In today's issue, we look at another "Moneyball Myth" -- the movie portrayal of A's manager Art Howe and how the real-life skipper felt about it.
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Pregame Pepper
Did you know…
. . . As an MLB player, Art Howe spent 11 years in the Major Leagues with the Pittsburgh Pirates (1974-75), Houston Astros (1976-82) and St. Louis Cardinals (1984-85). Though he never played in more than 125 games in a season (most of which came at third base), he did have one of his best years in the strike-shortened 1981 season, in which he hit .296 with a 124 OPS+, struck out only 23 times in 103 games, and finished 18th in the National League MVP voting (the winner that year was eventual Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt).
. . . Though Howe received votes for Manager of the Year seven times over his career, he never won the award. The closest he came was when he finished second in the voting in four straight seasons from 1999-2002. The only two Oakland Athletics managers to win the Manager of the Year award are Tony La Russa (1988, 1992) and Bob Melvin (2012, 2018).
Leading Off
Moneyball Myths: Part Two
By Ben Abel
When last we left you, we were debunking myths found in the movie Moneyball with Brad Pitt playing general manager Billy Beane.
Moneyball, if you recall, was the phenomenon that was first a book and then became a movie in 2011. The book, as author Michael Lewis noted in the preface, came about because of his curiosity about how a team like the Oakland Athletics who were through the restrictions of their ownership fielding successful teams despite not having a high payroll.
We set out to dispel how the character actor Jonah Hill played, Peter Brand, wasn’t a character but really was longtime MLB executive Paul DePodesta. We turn our attention now to the Athletics’ manager at the time, Art Howe.
Who Was Art Howe Really?
Arthur Henry Howe Jr. was a player and manager who was at the helm of the Athletics from 1996-2002. He replaced Tony La Russa, who had guided the A’s to three consecutive American League pennants and World Series appearances from 1988-1990.
Howe had managed in Houston with the Astros (1989–1993) and with the New York Mets (2003–2004), but he gained notoriety after his managing days were over because of his Moneyball portrayal, something which wasn’t accurate according to Howe.
Tom Au’s Bleacher Report article back in 2011 defended Howe and focused on how Howe had been made to look like a cranky luddite who objected to any new ways of managing a team or analyzing the game.
Howe, as Au’s article states and another by David Jones in Penn Live Patriot-News also discusses, was portrayed as a villain because the Hollywood story needed a good guy and a bad guy.
Jones interviewed Howe and Howe said, “No. I learned that when they say it’s ‘based on a true story,’ it’s very loosely based. Almost every scene in that movie with me involved was a total lie. And it really hurt my reputation. Probably hurt my chances to get more opportunities to manage. But, what are you gonna do?”
Howe continued to refute the portrayal of him as well in referencing the book’s author Michael Lewis. Howe said he only talked to Lewis for about 10 minutes for the book.
In an article by Film School Rejects, Howe was quoted on SiriusXM’s Mad Dog Sports Radio saying that, “If you ask any player that ever played for me, they would say that they never saw this side of me, ever.”
The story goes deeper when actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, who played Howe, said in a 2012 Esquire interview, “He's not very happy. I kind of hope I get to meet Art Howe one day and tell him, ‘Listen, Art. I actively did not play you, okay? You should have taken your name off it.”
Howe and Hoffman never met, and based on my research, they never actually discussed how the portrayal went down. With Hoffman’s death of a drug overdose in 2014, they didn’t get a chance to reconcile, either.
I’ll have more Moneyball Myths in future articles for the IBWAA.
Ben Abel has been an avid sports fan since the 1980s. He has contributed to Sports Betting Dime and the IBWAA Newsletter and has written about hockey, baseball, and football as well as other sports. He lives in Vancouver, Canada. Contact him on Twitter @lebaneb or via email at info@abelmarketing.ca