Note: I’ll have the photos from the Moneyball premiere up in a few moments. This post is just about Brad’s appearance on the October issue of Sports Illustrated.

Okay, so… how terrible is this cover? Brad Pitt is one of the few non-athletes to ever get a cover of Sports Illustrated, and this is what’s done to him? He looks like a piece of leather. It actually reminds me of those odd, too-close-for-comfort photos Chuck Close did of Brad for an issue of W Magazine a few years ago. Normally, the camera loves Brad, but sometimes… the camera gets too close, or the Photoshop wizards get overzealous, and something awful happens. Anyway, some highlights from SI:

He plays a baseball coach in the upcoming Moneyball, but Brad Pitt is anything but experienced in America’s favorite pastime.

“It’s shameful how little I know about baseball … I’m amazed they let me do this movie,” Pitt, 47, tells Sports Illustrated in this week’s cover story, which will hit newsstands on Wednesday.

“Baseball and I didn’t get along that well,” he adds. “I wrestled one year [in high school]. I dove one year. Everything but baseball.”

What drew him to the role, says Pitt: “I’m a sucker for the underdog story.”

Pitt, who also graced last week’s cover of Entertainment Weekly and Parade Magazine is one of just a handful of non-sports figures to grace the cover of the sports magazine.

Former cover subjects include Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Stephen Colbert, Bob Hope, Ed Sullivan, Steve McQueen, Arnold Schwarzenegger, John F. Kennedy, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.

[From People]

I kind of like Brad for not pretending that he’s some baseball super-fan. Some men just don’t get into it – most of my dude friends, past and present, have only really given a crap about basketball, and they ignore football and baseball and everything else except women’s tennis (obviously).

Meanwhile, Entertainment Weekly released some additional excerpts of Brad’s cover story for… last week’s issue? Right? Anyway, Brad totally denies that whole “Brad Pitt saved a woman’s life, is a saint just like Angelina” story:

EW: I just read about how you rescued an extra on the set. Congratulations on that.
BRAD PITT: I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Seriously? It was all over the Internet.
I make a point of not seeing that stuff.

An extra fell down and was going to get trampled, but you swooped in on a horse and it was very gallant.
On a horse? I haven’t been on a horse. There are no horses in the movie.

Okay, forget the horse—maybe I’m drunk. But you came and saved her somehow and it was very gallant.
That’s bulls—. Listen, when someone falls down, you’re going to help.

Honestly? If I were a movie star, I would send one of my assistants.
Listen, a lot of our scenes are with masses of people. We’ve had several scenes where people have fallen down.

Have you saved any lives at all?
I have not saved any lives, okay? People fall and twist ankles—the extras have really been giving it. And you don’t want people to get hurt. If I’m not the first one there, someone else is.

Not to take anything away from your rescue, but I think Kate Winslet saving Richard Branson’s mother was a little more heroic.
[Laughs] I did see that.

[From EW]

It sounds like Brad did lift someone to safety, but he doesn’t really consider that “saving a life” – which is nice. It’s nice that he’s humble, and it’s nice that he’s realistic.

Oh, and did you know that Brad’s Moneyball character is doing chewing tobacco throughout the movie? Ugh. Brad confirmed: “That came easily. I grew up with a little dip.”

Photos courtesy of WENN.