So the hardworking staff ventured forth from the Global Worldwide Headquarters yesterday and trundled over to the Fenway cinemas to take in the new movie “Moneyball,” the story of Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane’s (legal) tender love affair with baseball statistics.

The hardworking staff was whelmed.

Sure, sure – the big league film critics called it a home run. Here’s Manohla Dargis in the New York Times (“Throwing a Digital-Age Curveball”):

The hungry heart of “Moneyball,” a movie about baseball in the digital age, is a beautiful hard case named Billy Beane. Coiled yet cool, Billy has the liquid physical grace and bright eyes of a predator. He was built to win. Even his name, with its short syllabic bursts, sounds ready for ESPN exultations. That he’s played by Brad Pitt giving the quintessential Brad Pitt performance just seals the deal. It didn’t turn out that way, and in 2001 this high school star turned major-league washout was no longer a player but the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, the little team that could but didn’t.

And here’s Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal (“Stars, Stats and Perfect Pitch”):

One of the best sports movies ever, “Bull Durham” has one of the best opening lines ever: “I believe,” Susan Sarandon’s ardent groupie declares, “in the church of baseball.” The church is desanctified in “Moneyball,” whose context is runaway commerce, and whose subtext is statistics—i.e., a scientific approach to the major-league version of the game that seeks to sweep away nostalgic notions and dry the moist eyes of the faithful. Never before, though, have statistics added up to such electrifying entertainment. After the mostly minor-league productions of recent months, this movie, which was directed by Bennett Miller, renews your belief in the power of movies.

Then again, the movie was also overlong, overwrought, and overstated (as Allen Barra pointed out in his WSJ column “The ‘Moneyball’ Myth”).

Not to throw spitballs or anything.