The entire point of the movie is that the owner wants the team to draw fewer than 800,000 fans so she can move the team to Miami. By the time the team started winning, it probably drew the 800,000, so why would she care if they won the final game? It wouldn't matter anymore. Besides, they hardly mentioned this again, which was odd because this really was the key plot point.
shareI get it to a point. You're right that by that point the Indians had probably drawn well over 800,000 for the year so there was no chance she could move the team to Miami.
However, remember that she hated the team and really truly wished bad things on them. They had ruined her perfect dream and she had planned on getting rid of them anyway at the end of the year. Thus, since her dream was ruined, she wanted theirs ruined - i.e. by losing and not making the playoffs since had she continued to own the team, she would have dumped all of them anyway.
Perhaps a bigger plot hole is that as the team started to show signs of improvement, why didn't she have Donovan trade the guys who were playing well? MLB's trade deadline isn't until well into the season so she had plenty of time to ship Hayes, Cerrano, Vaughn, etc. for minor leaguers or other guys. As Lou told the team, "she'll replace you with someone who will".
Rachel had plenty of opportunities to do this during the regular season via trade.
Original ending her bitchy personality was just an act to fire up the players. She did scouting reports for players who were a bargain kind of like money ball
Good point about her wanting to screw the team over because they screwed her over. As far as the trading thing, yes, she could have ordered the GM to do that. Why didn't she do that? Likely because of what DarthVoldey said about the original ending. But if the filmmakers are going to change the ending, they need to make other changes to make sure things make sense. They did not do that in this film, which was a major weakness.
shareThe test screened the film and it would have cost to much to reshoot a ton of scenes. They ended up just filming some shots of her looking pissed at the end.
In reality. she would have got rid of some of the better players before the trade deadline. Since this is Hollywood, reality doesn't exist.
shareWith trades it takes two to tango. Teams don't trade for players who come out of nowhere and have half a good season. Maybe some of the veterans could have been traded. If they sent all the good players down to the minors the players could file a grievance and the league would investigate.
The owner was a bitch at the end because her plans had been ruined. However I think the original ending would have been more interesting.
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Filming two different movies in two different stadiums isn't a plothole. It's a continuity error. One no one cares about.
Ty Webb: "Remember Danny - two wrongs don't make a right but three rights make a left."
The original ending which was not used had the owner using the moneyball guidelines before moneyball was used to scout and get players who could play. She used a fake story of moving the team to miami to motivate the team. She informed Lou of what she was doing at the end of the film. She told him if he told the team he would be fired as she wanted to be seen as a bitch.
Remember the Indians, didn't really start heating up until they had about 41 games left (60-61 when Donovan tells Lou about Phelps' plan). This would have put them in mid-August well after the non-waiver trade deadline. Even if Phelps sniffed a hot streak and told Donovan to start putting players on waivers, there may have no been adequate suitors. Also, I don't see how guys making the league minimum, under team control for multiple years, and having career seasons would clear waivers. No way in hell.
sharewhat I don't understand is if the rule merely states they need 8000 or fewer fans per game, why didn't she just jack ticket prices to an astronomical amount?
shareIf you remember on opening day (which is usually a sell-out for most teams) the stadium was sparsely filled, as were the next month or so. So initially they would have easily fell below 800000. I think (not sure) that owners are locked into ticket prices the beginning of the year and can't be raised until the next year
shareShe was upset because the underdog team was rallying the city behind themselves, ruining her chances for low attendance next season when she had a fresh batch of bad players.
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It was virtually impossible for them to fall below 800,000 once the team started winning.
The stadium the Indians played in at the time had a baseball capacity of more than 74,000 (yep, you read that correctly - it was a multi-purpose facility that also hosted football).
A MLB team plays 81 games at home. In order to fall below 800,000 in attendance the team needed to average less than 9,876 fans per game. Not an outrageous figure considering how bad the team was expected to be.
The team started winning when it was 60-61. The team had 41 games remaining. For argument's sake let's say they had played 60 at home and 61 on the road. That would give them 21 homes games left.
Say they averaged 7,500 fans (the stadium may have appeared empty in the first game, but for later games there was a growing crowd - remember when Lynn is in the crowd one night?) up until they were 60-61. That puts them at 450,000 total attendance.
The team then starts an unbelievable winning streak. It starts getting national attention all around baseball. They are in commercials. Fans are buying merchandise and attending the games.
A winning steak like that for a city starved for a winning team - the Browns have pretty much always sucked and this was long before LeBron - would have created an enormous amount of interest from the fans. (I have actually lived this first hand the past couple of years, not long ago Toronto Raptors tickets were easy to get and cheap and suddenly (almost overnight) they started winning a lot of games and now every game is sold out and the secondary market for tickets is hot and pricey!)
To stay under 800,000 they would have needed to average less than 16,666 fans for the last 21 games. That goal simply isn't possible considering the attention the team was getting. They probably would have pushed into 35,000-40,000 fans per game with more on the weekends. And with the kind of streak they were on - there's a good chance they would have games that attracted more than 50,000 people to the stadium.
In addition, the sold-out one-game "playoff" is actually counted as a regular season game (since the two teams finished tied after 162 - they played game 163 - this was pre-wild card days and only the four division winners advanced to the playoffs - to decide the division - stats recorded in that game count towards regular season totals).
There was simply no reason for Rachel Phelps to continue cheering against the team once it started winning. Her low attendance goal was shot all to crap and, in reality, she would have been raking in cash. All those extra seats sold, tee-shirts, etc would have had her bank account bulging. In addition, the equity value of her franchise would have increased dramatically with a playoff team that is popular and selling a lot of tickets. There probably would have multiple suitors lining up to pay her millions and millions and millions for the team.