Imagine if it was your last.....

Rating: 10/10 (13 May 2009)

Imagine you wake up one morning and start your routine, only to remember it is your last day to do this routine. You head to the shower as you have for every work day in the last 20 years. As you walk into the bathroom you begin to relive your career. The first day on the job and how excited you were. When you feel the water hit you, it hits you, the first time you met your better half. As you dry off and stand in front of the mirror you remember the first time you got the big promotion and how you shared it with your then girlfriend. You finish dressing and as you walk out the door to the car, you think of the first time you met your boss, the owner of the company, and how he took a liking to you right away. Then the car door slams and you turn the key, still unaware of your surrounding as you relive moments, even seconds, and how they changed your life. You turn onto the expressway for what you have come to know has the hour and half drive to work. It has just begun but you have done it so many times it come to you as second nature. You have learned to turn the blare of the horns off, the sounds of your surrounding just disappear, and you can concentrate on the task at hand. For 20 years now you have done this. Day in and day out it has been your routine. You begin to think back to the first time you stepped into your new office, the one on the top floor, the one with the window, you smile. Then you realize that although this your last day, it is also the biggest day of your career. you have a chance to close a deal that only a few in the history of your company have done, heck in the history of the whole business have ever done. Your focus returns and you go back into auto pilot, as you have done a thousand times. We can all imagine this situation, maybe not for a 20 year career, but for something. The last day you spent at home before heading off to college, knowing you would never again live in the house where your mom made all those great pancakes. Never again have your dad teach you to ride a bike or throw a ball. Maybe it was prom or graduation. Knowing that the twelve years you had spent is now ending and you are not a kid anymore. Life and new choices await you right outside that door. We have all been there, all had that moment to IMAGINE. It is the story of professional baseball player, Billy Chapel (Played by Kevin Costner), and the history of his life and career in the span of one nine inning perfect game. We watch as he pitches the game of his life after a 20 year career, all the while reliving his greatest hits so to speak. He relives his first love, baseball, his real love, Jane Aubrey (Played by Kelly Preston). He relives the injury that almost cost him his career. All this takes place on his last day of "work". While he is pitching the only perfect game in his long and illustrious career he lives all of it. This is what makes him realize that in the end it was only a job and the relationships he has built and the choices he has made are what made him, not just the "Love of the Game" This movie touches the soul and also allows us to get into the minds of the fans that love the game. As we watch him relive his life, it reaches into our hearts and pulls. As we watch him pitch against the New York Yankees, it brings out the fan in all of us and we watch even the harsh Yankee faithful fall for this guy who is pitching a perfect game against their team. If there was ever a sports movie that could take us everywhere we wanted to go and to the places we seldom admit we need to go, this is it. So the next time your team is rained out and the reruns season is in mid run. Go to the video store, or turn on the laptop and download it. I enjoy it every time I get a chance to see it. I always walk away feeling better about my choices and knowing that life is the same way. We have to imagine and we have to live it for the love of the game.