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'The Rookie' hits a home run for those who love emotion of baseball
 Harold John Behling
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 Media Credit: KRT Jim Morris, left, is played by Dennis Quaid, right, in �The Rookie.� Morris was 35 when he pitched his first major league game for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.
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If this movie wasn't based on a true story, I wouldn't have believed it for one second. Jim Morris had his chance with major league baseball. He was a talented pitcher drafted by the Brewers.
Then a catastrophic shoulder injury ended that dream. Or did it? Years later, Jim is a devoted father, a science teacher and a high school baseball coach. When, on a whim, he decides to risk pitching full force again (despite his fears of reinjury) Jim realizes that he still has it, and remarkably he has gotten better. This prompts Jim's players to make a bet with him: "We make it to the playoff. You try out again." And so it starts. Jim's team miraculously pulls out of the last place to make it to the playoffs and Jim miraculously attends a tryout against men 20 years younger than him.
The real life story about Jim Morris is amazing. But even given a true story more unimaginable than most fictional premises, the producers and writers of "The Rookie" didn't seem satisfied at letting one miracle stand alone. Jim's band of misfits/baseball players are terrible. They're losing games in the double digits and seem more interested in cracking jokes than cracking bats. But after making their pact with Morris they instantly become well conditioned machines, talented and experienced ball players who mount an unbelievable winning streak. I think this highlights a very important truth for young athletes.
You can train hard, practice harder and learn from your mistakes to get ahead in athletics. These methods don't always add up to success; well, at least not as much as the surest road to victory: making a bet with your coach. In this fashion, all of the reality of this true story is drained out slowly and methodically. In place of a story about real people accomplishing extraordinary things is a typical Hollywood movie. The strong wife who spouts lines like "I'm a Texas woman, I don't need a man to keep things going at home." The precocious little child, every bit as exploited and scripted as the child from Jerry McGuire, and the stoic non-encouraging father (still addressed by his grown son as sir). This creates friction between the true elements of the story and the desperate attempts to make it into a Hollywood production (and worse than that, a Disney production).
These strong complaints stated, there were a couple of moments in "The Rookie" that truly took a hold on me. When Morris gets his long awaited call up to the majors and gets to trot out onto the stadium grass for the first time, he takes the audience with him. Dennis Quaid's emotional recreation gives everyone a chance to live vicariously through Morris. I felt that long-awaited prize finally being attained, and caught a glimpse of what it was like to live in the spotlight of professional sports. For these reasons, "The Rookie" is a powerful film and a successful film. It's also a family film which should play better to a younger audience that is more willing to believe and less likely to reprimand it for it's unrealistic tendencies.
Harold John Behling can be reached at: [email protected]
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