Baseball is still the all-American sport, but this movie is just not satisfying.

Rating: Null/10 (28 September 1999)

For the Love of the Game.
It's not possible to do a baseball picture that is not filled with cliches. Just think of the thousands of games played and you know how many times in real life you've seen the pitcher's sliding, rolling catch of the slugger's surprise bunt and the throw to first just in time. You've seen the leaping outfielder snatch the ball from the hands of the fans in center field. You've seen the slowest runner on some team stretch a looper into a double. And you've heard the mavens in the broadcast booth tell you about other plays just like the amazing one they've just described. "The Love of the Game" manages to pack nearly every baseball cliche you know into this movie.
But no one who has ever felt the sting of a ball in the glove could dislike this movie. Anyone who has played the game, or has witnessed, repeatedly, the same plays in a MLB game, can relate to it or relive it, and all the senses that went with it. Still, it was not a satisfying movie.

A moviegoer might get weary of Vin Scully's nasal commentary as the voice of the Yankees, droning on for what seems like 27 innings, repeating his own brand of cliches, onward and onward, for 2 1/2 hours, while Kevin Costner pitches to only 27 batters, three up, three down, in nine innings. If there's one thing that Kevin Costner does well, it's to play The Star. And baseball players. But we already know that.
A viewer could grow weary of the switches from movie camera to the Fox network TV closeups of parts of a player's face, of the cliches in the love story, too, and the non-stop "product placements" which buffer the movie's profit margins so blatantly that you find yourself wondering in the sixth inning, "Did I just pay $5.00 to watch 2 1/2 hours of QVC?