Moneyball: Billy Beane [INTJ]
UNOFFICIAL TYPING BY: anonymous
Functional Order: Ni-Te-Fi-Se
Introverted Intuition: Billy Beane keeps his focus directly on baseball, his team, and how to get the Oakland Athletics to a World Series, and in the process completely reinvents how to play the sport itself. At the start, he’s fully preparing for when his three best players inevitably leave, and he bucks the traditional scouting methods held dear in baseball circles to stand by an entirely new process he expects to work out of a hunch. He sees something in Peter Brand when they meet, and brings him to Oakland after hearing about his way of doing things. That said, with such insight comes some level of superstition on his part, which is why he makes a point not to watch any games for fear of jinxing them. He summarizes Oakland’s situation with one metaphor. He also immediately understands Peter’s metaphor when he shows him the video of the stumbling player. At the end he also chooses to remain with Oakland rather than joining the Red Sox due to his attachment to what the team represents to him.
Extroverted Thinking: Beane is a blunt leader who knows the system and asserts his decisions through facts. He knows he doesn’t have much to work with, which forces him to find the best ways of using what he can get. Compared to Peter (INTP), Billy doesn’t expect to coddle players or cushion facts such as trades or sending players back to the minors, since he knows they can take it either way. During the meeting with his scouts, he asserts his position despite their protests, and expects them to follow him simply because it’s his responsibility. He plays different teams to get the assets he wants and always keeps the end result of bettering the team in mind. He doesn’t let his feelings affect his work, even when his scouts all believe his new approach is simply his way of getting back at the league for his failed career. He also maintains an amicable relationship with his ex-wife and her husband, because having any ill feelings there accomplishes nothing.
Introverted Feeling: Beane is passionately driven towards Oakland’s success, but with it comes self-doubt and the occasional urge to express his frustrations at losses. He never quite got over how he didn’t quite pan out in MLB capacity, even though he doesn’t admit it. When he first meets Peter, after a failed trade meeting with the Indians, his frustration comes out when he asks Peter who he is. He initially avoids getting too attached to the team he may have to trade at some point, although he does open up as time goes by and connects with a few players to help them reach their potential. He clearly adores his daughter, and breaks his own superstition about jinxing games just because she thought he should. Although he tries to never let that interfere in his work, and at the end he chooses to remain in Oakland over taking a sweet deal in Boston, simply for his love of all the team represents.
Extroverted Sensing: Beane was an athlete in his youth, to the point he gave up a full scholarship to impulsively pursue his MLB dreams, although that didn’t pan out. He picks up on subtle cues when he sees Peter in the office, and how everyone seems to defer to his opinion, and formulates that into his hunch. After a loss when he finds several of his team partying, he makes his feelings known by destroying something with a thrown bat, which he considers a lesson about losing. He can think fast quite well when making trades by phone, in which he indulges in a bit of silent fist-pumping in celebration. He also exercises during games he doesn’t watch out of a need to burn off stress, and is occasionally reckless when he drives.
(Note: This post is meant to type the film version of the character, not his real life counterpart.)
