For Love of the Game (1999) 1 1/2 stars out of 4. Starring Kevin Costner and Kelly Preston. Directed by Sam Raimi
In baseball parlance, Kevin Costner already has hit a home run and a triple with "Field of Dreams" and "Bull Durham."
In his newest outing in uniform, "For Love of the Game," Costner has just managed a scratch single.
"For Love of the Game" is a soapish weeper filled with clichés. It is as predictable as a hit-and-run situation.
And yet it has moments that ring true despite its mawkish nature and a lead character who, while not as blue-collar noble as a Crash Davis, is flawed but likable and heroic.
Billy Chapel (Costner) is a 40-year-old pitcher for the Detroit Tigers at the twilight of a Hall-of-Fame career. He has pitched for the Tigers for 19 years, through good times and bad.
Now, the team's owner is selling the franchise because he has become disillusioned with the game. "I wanted to leave the team to my kids," he ruefully tells Chapel, "but, hell, they don't even like baseball."
He has sold the Tigers to a corporation, and one of the first moves of the new owners is a plan to trade Chapel to the Giants. That is, unless Chapel decides to call it quits and go out while he is still on top.
As Chapel takes the mound for the next to last game of the season, he looks back on his career and his life - and especially on his involvement with Jane (Kelly Preston), a magazine writer-single mom whom he met when her rental car broke down and he stopped to help her.
As the game progresses, we see that Chapel is fulfilling that rarest of baseball feats - the perfect game, retiring every batter he faces.
Bone tired and with a sore shoulder, Chapel reflects on his life between batters and between innings, recalling the good times and bad.
The screenplay by Dana Stevens, adapted from a novel by Michael Shaara, does not offer any surprises, twists or turns.
Yet, to Costner's credit, his star power raises the film from mediocre to acceptable. He knows how to wear the skin of the superstar athlete who treats his celebrity status and the perks that come with it with a casual acceptance, an air of matter-of-factness.
During spring training in Florida, he has his own condo. When traveling with the team on the road, he has his own suite.
When he slices his hand, he asks Jane, who rushed him to the hospital, to call the team's trainer because at the moment he is the most important person in Billy's life, the only one who can help him through this crisis.
Billy does not even realize how such words cut Jane. His life is focused on the diamond.
Preston does her best to breathe some backbone and life into Jane. She does show her to be a strong, capable woman, so one wonders why she continually pines for Billy.
But "For Love of the Game" is really nothing more than a vanity piece, a star vehicle for Costner.
And somehow it works. Despite all the distractions - the overripe, too-literary commentary by the legendary Vin Scully, Chapel's too self-conscious interior monologues - "For Love of the Game" holds your attention.
Even such hoary lines as "This should have been the biggest night of my life, but it wasn't because you weren't there," as spoken by Costner fail to make you winch.
"For Love of the Game" won't be remembered as the worst baseball movie ever made - "The Babe Ruth Story" or "Major League 3: Back to the Minors" can battle for that distinction.
This movie is like a late-season game between two second-division teams going nowhere - it's meaningless, but if you're a fan, you still can enjoy the action on the field.
Bob Bloom is the film critic at the Journal and Courier in Lafayette, IN. He can be reached by e-mail at bloom@journal-courier.com or at cbloom@iquest.net
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