More a romantic drama than a baseball movie...

Rating: 9/10 (16 April 2005)

I know what you're probably thinking... Kevin Costner in ANOTHER baseball movie?? To be fair, while I like Field of Dreams and Bull Durham, I know that I would have been more receptive initially if this wasn't another movie about "America's Favorite Pastime," but I have to admit that this is probably my favorite of the three.
This is less a "baseball movie" than a movie about a baseball player. While the movie prominently features a baseball game (perhaps the last in Billy Chapel's storied career), it is much more about Chapel looking back on his long career, and especially his love affair with Jane Aubrey, a magazine writer that he stumbles into one day while in New York.
As the movie opens, it's the end of a losing season. Chapel finds himself in the worst day of his life: his team is about to be sold and he is about to be traded from the only team he has ever played for. To compound things, his longtime girlfriend tells him that she can't handle being the second priority in his life behind baseball. So as he takes the mound in the last game of the season, and perhaps the last of his career, realizing that his whole life is about to change, he spends the time thinking about his relationship with Jane. And on this day when nothing else is perfect, maybe Billy can salvage something from his life before the day is through.
This movie also surprised me for a few other reasons. Sam Raimi, the director, is better known for his "Spider-Man" movies, which he made later, and for his "Evil Dead" movies. He leaves behind his action sequences for this touching film about life and relationships. What surprised me more was that the film was based on a story by Michael Shaara, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "The Killer Angels," which should be required reading for all courses dealing with the Civil War (and which was made into the film "Gettysburg"). The manuscript was found in his desk after he died, and published posthumously.
Having read the book, and seen the movie, it is clearly a labor of love. Costner, Raimi, and Shaara clearly love the game of baseball, and yet all three recognize that there are more important things in life than a game.