One of this summer’s interns is Andy Hutchins, a student at the University of Florida. He runs The Arena. He welcomes your Tebow hate, even if it has nothing to do with his post.

Alas, Moneyball, the big-screen adaptation of the Michael Lewis book, has been shelved. Variety reports that a final script from Steven Soderbergh was “it very different from the earlier scripts,” and that Columbia Pictures’ Amy Pascal “was uncomfortable enough with how the vision had changed that she applied the brakes.”

Of course, the changes that Pascal’s referring to are what made that version of Moneyball sound so fun. It had Soderbergh reinventing Bill James as a cartoon character (which delighted some), Demetri Martin as Paul De Podesta, a $60 million budget, and interviews with Lenny Dykstra and Darryl Strawberry. That’s probably what turned the project, which teamed Soderbergh with his Ocean’s Eleven running mate Brad Pitt (cast as A’s GM Billy Beane), from a cute little lark to a vanity project not worth the time or money; in cutting the project, which was set to start filming today in Phoenix, Columbia can cast it as a kooky little thing that works better in Soderbergh’s mind than on paper.

That, unfortunately for “Moneyball” practitioners, is exactly why the movie would have been great for the idea.

Criticism of “Moneyball” persists to this day, and gets batted down whenever it flares up. But it’s hard to read Lewis’ pseudo-epilogue to Moneyball and not get the impression that there were more than a few misconceptions about the book and theory themselves, much less its successes and failures, and that those misconceptions in “the Club” were so deeply entrenched that no amount of explanation would dispel them. Some writers even thought Beane wrote the book: Lewis quotes Doug Krikorian, of the Long Beach Press Telegram: “But he’s also a shameless self-promoter who wrote a book about his imagined genius and is despised by scouts around baseball.”

But if Beane is despised or viewed as a paper tiger because of the book (and because of Oakland’s postseason struggles), all the better: He can flip personal animus into professional gain, by picking up on the things that other GMs might not value, and, true to the tenets of Moneyball, exploit market inefficiencies to make the most of limited resources.

The chances of that perception, and further smokescreens about “Moneyball” reaching the silver screen? Huge. Having Brad Pitt portray Beane powers the Beane-as-Superman idea; the prospect of the movie turning into a cartoon-slash-documentary that would focus on “computer statistics” and other nerdier aspects of the idea would further discredit it.

And, of course, that’s how “Moneyball” should flourish: By taking advantage of what others can’t or refuse to see, and by appearing to fly in the face of conventional wisdom. Barring another studio claiming the project, it seems like we won’t get to see that scenario play out with a movie.

But, hey: Someone could produce this musical.