A schizophrenic movie

Rating: 5/10 (4 March 2014)

This movie is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too long, and that's not the worst of its problems.
Perhaps the worst of its problems is that it tries to be two very different movies.
On the one hand, it tells the story of a great major league pitcher, as he recalls the last several years of his life while pitching what starts out as an unimportant game and ends up becoming the most important game of his career. It is the story of a man who triumphs over adversity - pain in his shoulder, etc. - to pitch a last, great game.
On the other hand, it's the story of a man who, off the field, becomes involved with a woman who only causes him trouble. She wants him to NEED her, and by the last scene, though he has pitched a perfect game, which is enough to put most men on cloud 9 for the rest of their lives, he tells her that he NEEDS her, they kiss in what is supposed to be a very romantic public kiss, and one imagines that the producers thought that would win over large audiences of middle-aged women.
I can't watch this movie as a stereotypical woman - that's not how nature made me. I can only say that, for me, the romance was constantly aggravating, because the protagonist allowed himself to become and remain involved with a woman who constantly wanted him to choose between her and his real passion, baseball.
But do many women really expect men to subordinate their non-romantic passions for them and tell them that they NEED them? Not that they love them, which is completely understandable, but that they NEED them? I don't know.
So this is what the movie is about, and it keeps going on, and on, and on, with more incidents. The story simply does not merit going on over 2 hours about this.
If you're looking for a baseball movie, this is likely to disappoint you. If you're looking for the story of a man who comes to the realization that NEEDING a woman is more important than accomplishing something important in his life, maybe this is for you. If you even exist.