Sunshine’s Baseball Movie Review: For Love of the Game (1999)

This off-season, while we wait for some action from the front office, let’s remove a bit of the baseball doldrums by talking about some of the many baseball movies out there. I’ve been reviewing movies for a few years now for my friends and thought this could be fun, so come along with me and discuss baseball on the silver screen.

First up, I watched For Love of the Game (1999).

The plot: Kevin Costner film in which he plays aging Detroit franchise pitcher Billy Chapel. Chapel is struggling with his personal life, his desire to keep playing the game, a meddling franchise owner, and other drama as he makes his final start of the season, an away game against a likely playoff-bound stellar Yankees squad. While we get flashbacks to his career and love life, Chapel begins to pitch a perfect game. Can he make pitching history while figuring out how to deal with all the problems in his life at the same time?

Warning: everything after this line will potentially contain spoilers for the film (yes, it’s 25 years old, still giving you a warning).

Key stats:

• Year – 1999
• Director – Sam Raimi
• Writers – Michael Shaara (book), Dana Stevens (screenplay)
• Starring – Kevin Costner, Kelly Preston, John C. Reilly, Jena Malone, JK Simmons, Brian Cox
• Budget – $50 million
• Box Office – $46 million
• Runtime – 137 minutes

The Cast

This was Costner’s third baseball movie and easily his most forgettable, after Bull Durham and Field of Dreams. He was still quite famous but had suffered a series of duds in the years leading up to this film (The Postman, Waterworld), and this film earned him a Razzie nomination for worst actor.

Kelly Preston was a solid actress with some roles in films such as Jerry Maguire and Jack Frost, but this film, followed directly by Battlefield Earth, tanked her career. John C. Reilly was really blowing up in the late 90s after memorable roles in Boogie Nights and The Thin Red Line, and was honestly a fantastic casting as Chapel’s longtime personal catcher. JK Simmons is worth noting here as well as the Tigers’ grizzled manager; he was surviving on smaller roles until this film, where he worked with Sam Raimi for the first time. That led to him being cast as the iconic James Jonah Jameson in the Raimi Spider-Man trilogy, and the rest is history.

The Director

Sam Raimi, a famous Michigander, had seen success directing lower budget films like the Evil Dead trilogy, Darkman, and the crime drama A Simple Plan. He was an unusual choice for director of a sports film, but he apparently fell in love with the screenplay and agreed to work alongside the usually demanding Costner. He’s known for a shot known as the “dutch dolly-zoom”, in which there’s a rapid zoom onto a character or object while the camera is already tilted. I personally think he does a solid job directing the film, as the flaws we’ll get to are much more story-based than visuals or shot styles.

The Baseball

The opening sequence of the film shows a young boy loving baseball and playing with his dad. That’s actually Kevin Costner and his real dad, using home videos. Costner and Reilly have great chemistry, just like the best pitchers and catchers have. There’s solid foreshadowing that feels pretty natural, leading to important baseball events later in the film.

Many of the players on both teams were real minor league players, so they look fluid making plays (unlike some other films). Vin Scully and Steve Lyons call a pretty solid game (even if some of the details are BS, their style is fine). The “clear the mechanism” sequences are really interesting – the crowds and noise are all drowned out and his focus blurs everything else but the hitter and catcher…except towards the end, when he’s out of gas.

The film really tries to get into the psychology of a pitcher as they’re on the mound, including how they want to approach hitters; in the first at-bat to Tuttle, where he crowds the plate and Chapel/Gus agree to throw inside using a middle finger as the sign… it’s just pure gold. There’s even a look at how money affects friendships as players head off to different teams; guys taking care of their family.

There’s also a look at what happens when a freak injury occurs and how a player struggles physically and mentally recovering from it. It’s overly dramatized as an issue between Billy and Jane, causing more grief, especially because he acts like a total ass while under pressure.

Of course, no perfect game would be complete without some wild game-saving plays, and they tie up some smaller character details by having a poor defensive outfielder redeem himself by making a highlight catch to rob a HR from Billy’s friend who left the team for more money. It’s a small thing, but it really does feel like true baseball – the stories sometimes write themselves.

The Tigers win as Chapel throws a perfect game, which is…amazing. Anytime the Tigers win in a movie, it’s a good time.

The Other Stuff

Chapel is juggling multiple things during the day this film takes place in. He’s got an injured arm. His relationship falls apart right after the team owner tells him he’s selling the team, as his five-year girlfriend decides to leave for a job in London. The new owners of the team want to trade him to another team after the season (which they couldn’t do because he has 10/5 rights, a frustrating script oversight from a baseball writer perspective at least).

The film features long flashbacks to his past, with former teammates, big events, and various stages of his relationship with Jane. On their own, some of these are fine, but they mostly get awkward because their chemistry is non-existent. The stories of this yo-yo relationship just get…tiresome.

Film Strengths

Some of the drama is really good, particularly interactions between Brian Cox and Costner. Reilly’s entire character is great, and he nails the grizzled backup catcher vibe. The soundtrack and score are also pretty decent, adding to the feelings. Costner is great when he’s doing baseball things (and nothing else). The crowd and key Yankees fans extras really add to the atmosphere, because they absolutely cheer like Yankees fans do.

I’ve always liked Raimi’s style in his films, and here, while it’s certainly more conventional than his earlier stuff, he’s still masterful with his use of dramatic shots and angles that give you strong emotions. For example, the pivotal final play of the game features a chopper that Billy just gets a glove on, deflecting it up the middle. Billy is falling in slow motion, watching the end of his perfect game go up in smoke because he was too beat up and old to make a play….when an infielder flies in, nabs the grounder, and throws to first to end the game. Seeing it from the angles it’s shot in, it really evokes strong emotion and I think Raimi did a fantastic job setting it up.

Film Weaknesses

There are a staggering number of continuity errors, baseball blunders, and just downright lunacy throughout the film. Add to it the frankly awful romance subplot and it really detracts from the baseball portions. One example of an error is literally in the opening credits; there are a series of opening newspaper clips and one of them shows Chapel winning the first game of the 1984 World Series against the Padres, but the opening paragraph of this fake news says he beat the Yankees. While that’s not much in the grand scheme of things, it shows the lack of quality control of the film itself, which manifests time and again in scenes where characters switch numbers, plays are different with each cut, and continuity is ignored. A few errors happen, but a lot of errors show negligence and there are too many for an inexperienced baseball watcher to ignore over the course of the film.

As for the romance…they just don’t have any chemistry. Costner acts like a brick wall and Preston is just…a flip-flopping oddball. At one point they’re on the phone and she’s asking him questions like, “would you still love me if I was burned in a fire?” which just shows a really healthy relationship, clearly. Seriously, they just don’t have the vibe of full grown adults falling in love. Instead it veers between forced teen romance and then relative disinterest between the two. There just aren’t many moments where you actually feel like the characters are developing a real adult intimacy between them. That they get together in the end is movie magic, not a satisfying reality.

Lakeland is presented as a seaside town. For real. Guess nobody cared or bothered to look up the real town, because Florida means BEACHES. Obviously this is a very Tigers’ fan pet peeve, but it does illustrate how they tried to have it both ways by grounding the story amid theoretically real MLB teams and situations, but then took liberty any and everywhere they felt like.

My Final Opinion

Sam Raimi is known for horror, but here he shows that he’s not too shabby with sports and drama. I think the film’s biggest weakness is the romance plot, mainly due to the casting and writing. The baseball stuff feels real and is filmed really well. Vin Scully calling the game and giving a final monologue in the last inning is a cherry on top. I do like this film, but not as much as most other baseball flicks. To me, I can overlook a lot of the weak drama because of how well the baseball is done.

I give this film a solid 7/10, but it’s mostly for the baseball side of it. It’s not a classic like Major League or Bull Durham, but it’ll get the job done for you if you’re in the mood for a baseball flick. The question is: what do you think?

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0126916