The arrival of "Moneyball,'' the movie "based on a true story,'' has brought the anticipated reaction: Like so many other unconventional concepts, it no longer is applicable and can be dismissed as an accident in time.

But that misses the entire point.

Which is that it was applicable and also brilliant.

What general manager Billy Beane, what then-exec Paul DePodesta, what the Oakland Athletics accomplished when, in author Michael Lewis' words, they were "winning an unfair game'' was to turn flax into gold.

Or, more accurately, turn the A's into contenders.

What does it matter if the game has changed and the theory is no longer pertinent? If the A's keep losing players to injuries and free agency and losing too many games? If finding slow, unwanted ballplayers willing to extend the count to 3-2 every at-bat has become irrelevant in 2011?

It was very relevant not long ago. The A's made the postseason in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2006. They haven't been since. And now, despite beating Texas on Thursday in their final home game of 2011, the situation is particularly grim.

The owner wants to move the team to San Jose, 45 miles down Interstate 880, insisting the Athletics can't be competitive staying in the O.co Coliseum (yes, a new name), where seats in the upper deck are covered with tarps for esthetic purposes. It's all about money, or lack of same. In Hollywood and sports.

The film properly had its red-carpet premiere Monday in Oakland, the town the A's hope to flee. It features Brad Pitt, who plays Beane; Jonah Hill, who plays a Podesta-like individual because DePodesta wouldn't allow use of his name; and Philip Seymour Hoffman, who plays A's manager Art Howe.

There are a few script inventions that prevent it from being a pure documentary, but when you have a movie constructed on baseball stats and dialogue, a little poetic license is allowed.

Lewis' book deals with the 2002 season, when Oakland won 103 games, 20 of those in a row. And even though it's ostensibly about baseball, as one observer reminded, "It is really a book about business and life,'' with a useful message.

You can march to a different drummer.

The A's marched right to the playoffs, but then they halted. Beane, with his plans undone every October, called the postseason a "crapshoot'' because one great pitcher or one surprising play changes everything. Moneyball becomes Funnyball.

One year - probably 2003, when the A's were beaten by the Red Sox three games to two in the division series - Beane the realist could be heard saying something like, "If we only had $50,000 more, we would have beaten these guys."

But they didn't. And they didn't.

Yet it was what they did that ought to be respected.

In 2002, the Yankees had a payroll of $126 million, the A's $40 million. Oakland created a bargain ballclub from numbers in a computer rather than advice from scouts on the scene because there was no other option. So Beane and DePodesta went by what they determined from the screen, qualities they thought would convert into wins.

Beane found the right ones. A 102-win season is one for the ages, or the Yankees. But in the playoffs, the strengths became weaknesses. One advantage you get in an $8 million player you don't get in a $1 million player is an intangible quality to produce under pressure.

Oakland was good. It needed to be great.

What it also turned out to be was fascinating.

"I wrote this book because I fell in love with the story ... a small group of undervalued professional baseball players and executives, many of whom had been rejected as unfit for the big leagues, who had turned themselves into one of the most successful franchises in Major League Baseball,'' Lewis said.

Lewis wanted to know how the A's, a team without a big budget, could win so many games. His research led to the book, which in turn led to the movie.

The A's had a few wonderful years, with fine pitching - Barry Zito, Mark Mulder and Tim Hudson were hardly rejects, as their contracts proved when they left Oakland - and timely hitting.

If now they're not much, that has no bearing on what they were, a team that found a new way to become a winner.