Why X is suddenly filled with ‘Moneyball’-‘LOTR’ crossover memes

If you were wondering why your entire timeline was filled with “Moneyball” and “Lord of the Rings” crossover memes on Wednesday, well, you can thank James for that.

A social media joke from the 33-year-old New Yorker posted to X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday night led to the whole of the internet nerding out via a parade of memes combining the all-time-great fantasy trilogy with the Bay Area baseball classic starring Brad Pitt as A’s general manager Billy Beane.

The whole thing started with a joke from Defector co-founder Tom Ley, who posted a screenshot of generic fan comments dragging someone online (“WHO LET THIS MAN COOK”) along with “Lord of the Rings”-referencing text above it: “Saruman seeing that Elrond spent 4 Fellowship roster spots on hobbits.”

James, who opted not to share his last name, added the “Moneyball” layer, quoting Ley’s post with the “Moneyball” title image and the text: “Elrond putting together the Fellowship roster.”

Then, the internet took that single post and went nuts with it.

“We might not have Bilbo Baggins, but we can recreate him in the aggregate,” posted one fan, tweaking the famous Pitt line about Jason Giambi.

“I need one more thing, bread. I don’t want my guys paying for bread. I want you to stock my guys with enough lembas bread to get them to Mordor,” wrote another, expertly replacing soda (from the original “Moneyball” scene) for the elven bread that can sustain your hunger for days in Middle Earth.

“Frodo: So you want us to walk more?” added a third — lining up a quote that hilariously worked for both films. “Elrond: Good question. Yes.”

If you’ve seen both movies, it’s hard not to get a pretty good laugh at some of these:

“It was already after midnight here on the East Coast so it was getting some engagement from mutuals, but nothing too crazy,” James told SFGATE via direct message. “It really took off overnight while I slept.”

As of this writing, the post says it has been viewed 23 million times, which honestly isn’t a reliable or verifiable number thanks to the gentleman who runs the app, but it was nonetheless “a thing.” So much so that one person actually recut — extremely impressively, might I add — an entire scene from the movie. The clip shows the Jonah Hill soliloquy about undervalued players in baseball, subbing out zoomed-in, grainy computer screen images of minor leaguers for zoomed-in, grainy computer screen images of Frodo Baggins, Aragorn and Samwise Gamgee. 

“I’ve had some tweets go viral before, but usually for some small observation or an opinion. This has been its own beast because it’s been nothing but positivity and people celebrating two (or four?) great movies,” he told SFGATE. “I just saw a video edit someone made with Jonah Hill narrating over b&w photos of the Fellowship, I think that’s awesome that a late night goof could inspire that.”

James, who’s currently in the midst of rewatching the entire “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, admitted that he’s not a baseball guy, but he is a “Moneyball” fan.

“‘Moneyball’ does it for me. It’s a classic underdog story, but instead of centering it around speeches or other sports cliches, it’s presenting something quantifiable,” he said. “And to present something like that in both a dramatic and funny way just blows me away.”