Favorite movie from my Childhood.

Rating: 9/10 (24 February 2004)

*****Spoilers*****
This is by far my favorite movie from my adolecent age as I was 11 when it came out and saw it in the teatres and remember it like it was yesterday. I am on of the biggest baseball fans you will ever meet (an Orioles fan if your keeping track). This movie, that I probably should not have seen at the age of 11 because of the language, was great. It still holds the test of time. My wife and I watch it whenever it comes on TV and she hates to watch it because I will say the lines of the movie right befor they come on word for word, man I even think that I know the edited versions from watching it on regular TV. My cousin and I spent countless hours of our life watching this movie.
The movie takes a look at the laughing stock of baseball, at the time, the Cleveland Indians. With the hilarious ex show girl wife of the now dead owner taking over the team and wanting to re-locate them to sunny Florida (this is prior to the Marlins being introduced in 94). So she wants to put together the worst team possible as she has found a loup hole in the contract if their attendance falls below a certain number for the year then they can move, with no protest from the city. The attendance number that it has to fall below is some ridiculously low number but she thinks they can do it. There are many great scenes prior to any baseball being played at all, including one of the best lines in the movie when they are looking over the people they want to invite to camp."This guy here is dead!" "Cross him off then". If you love this movie like I do your laughing right now. I know I need to shorten up the end of this review for word sake so i'll go quickly through the rest. So they assemble this team of a few has beens and a couple of never will be's.First there is one of the best guys in the movie Harry Doyle(Bob Uecker)as the announcer who's quick wit really carry a lot of the moive(not really part of the team but deserved to be mentioned). Lou-The minor league manager who works at Tire World and doesn't seem to be too excited about managing the Indians as he puts the GM on hold because he has someone on the other line asking about some whitewalls. Jake-The aging catcher w/bad knees. Dorn-The over confident 3rd baseman who can't field a ground ball. Hays-Who can run circles around anyone but likes to pop the ball up. Harris-The aging pitcher who throws nothing but spit balls. Cerano-The voodoo man who can't hit a curve ball. Then there is Vaughn, the pitcher who can throw the ball as hard as anyone but just can't control it. Playing the enemies in the movie, it's baseball so it still stands today and would have to be, are the Yankees. The Indians go thru the season struggling of course until the GM tells the manager that the owner has hired all of them just to loose. So this, like in most 80's movies, is the what I like to call "we're gonna do it!" factor of the movie. Where they Indians need to win something like 32 out of 40 games to get into and final day tie with the Yankees. This makes it so that there is a one game playoff between the two. This by far is the best part of the movie, this whole game. If you haven't seen this movie I won't give it all away, but i'm sure you know the end because it's an 80's movie. Still to this day whenever I see this movie I still get chills with the Harry Doyle call at the end. As I said before one of my favortie movies from my childhood.
3 1/2 out of 4 stars.