Excelent Baseball Story

Rating: Null/10 (6 April 2000)

This is an excellent baseball movie and a decent romantic entry as well. Billy Chapel (Kevin Costner) is a veteran pitcher with an accomplished career who is headed for the Hall of Fame. On the day we meet him he has a lot on his mind. He is informed that his team is being sold, he is being traded and the love of his life is moving to England. Add to this the pain in his pitching arm, his impending decision on whether to retire and the fact that winning this game is critical in determining if the Yankees go to the playoffs, and you have a man with overloaded neurons.
The story unfolds as an introspective retrospective. As he is pitching this important game, he is thinking about his childhood, his relationship with Jane (Kelly Preston) and how he is going to get the next batter out. He is so preoccupied that it doesn't even dawn on him until the eighth inning that there have been no Yankee hits and he has been pitching a perfect game.

The flashback elements are expertly woven into the game, giving us a genuine feeling for his distraction. This is a fresh perspective for a sports movie. Instead of simply focusing on what the player is doing, the film focuses on what he is thinking while he is doing it. It gives us an authentic look at how athletes get `in the zone', filtering out all the noise and concentrating totally on their performance. Those who have been involved in athletic competition can identify with this state, although only the best can achieve it at will.
Sam Raimi's direction on this film was excellent. His direction of the love story was nothing special, but he did a superb job on the baseball scenes. The combination of on the field action, commentary by Vin Scully and simulated TV telecast footage was so well done that it was impossible to differentiate it from a major league game in progress.
The acting ranged from fair to excellent. Kelly Preston was very good as Jane. She brought a full range of emotional expression to the part, though she sometimes got a little shrill, like the scene in the hospital where she screams out `Is this America? Is baseball still the national pastime.' Overall though, she played the part of the torn lover very well.
Kevin Costner is no great lead actor and it is hard to understand why he is so popular. Perhaps it is his whiny lost boy charm that makes women want to mother him. In the love story, he again presented as listless and uninspired. But in the baseball scenes, he came alive. In fact, in these scenes Costner was not acting so much as acting out. He loves baseball and was obsessed with doing all his own baseball scenes. He is a top notch athlete, so he really could throw a curveball and his fastball had plenty of pop. His ability to portray a professional athlete in this instance was superlative, probably due to his having played the game scholastically. So overall, I would have to rate his performance here as very good.
John Reilly gets a very honorable mention as Chapel's catcher. He was quietly supportive and unobtrusive, the way catchers usually are. He portrayed intense desire in a demure and low key way without overacting. It was a nice performance by an actor in a supporting role playing a baseball player in a supporting role.
I love baseball and this was a great baseball movie so I rated it 8/10. Anyone who enjoys sports will probably enjoy this film.