t's a great story: The classic underdog sports tale, with the stats geeks and rejects joining forces to triumph over big money and big-name talent. The folks in Hollywood liked the story so much that they got Brad Pitt to play Billy Beane in the movie, which opens Friday. What some are beginning to ask, though, is whether that story is real and, ultimately, whether Mr. Lewis, having fallen in love with his scenario, looked at it through rose-colored sunglasses. Reading "Moneyball" again eight years after its publication raises questions about some of its basic premises. "For more than a decade," Mr. Lewis wrote, "the people who run professional baseball have argued that the game was ceasing to be an athletic competition and becoming a financial one. The gap between rich and poor in baseball was far greater than in other professional sports and widening rapidly."