Cru Jones Society

 

Every Wednesday between now and the end of baseball season the Cru Jones Society brings you a new baseball movie examined for both overall entertainment value and treatment of our favorite game. To suggest a film, email us at staff [at] crujonessociety.com. Otherwise, pour yourself an $8 beer, crack some shells, and let’s play ball.

Date Released: September 14, 2001
Box Office Total: $40,222,729
Team Featured: Kekambas

“That Keanu Reeves movie was when he has to coach the little league inner city suck-squad, I think it was called Mighty Ducks 5: It’s about Baseball This Time or something like that.” – CJS Regular Deuce.

In our fantasy draft of baseball movies to review for our Summer Homestand, I ended up with the too many sub plots, tug at your heart strings, Keanu Reeves coaching kids playing baseball movie Hardball. Why we even put this on the list, I will never know.

Plot Synopsis

Keanu Reeves has squandered his life on a gambling addiction. He lives in Chicago, so his addiction comes from sports betting with Irish mobsters. He makes a bet with one mobster in order to pay back the other mobster he owes, so we see this character is just brilliant. Well, he loses both bets and now he’s in deep shit.

Keanu then does what any logically thinking individual would do and asks his stockbroker friend for a loan. And his stockbroker friend does what any logically thinking stockbroker would do and tells Keanu he will give him 500 dollars a week to coach a little league team.

Hmmm… a guy coaching a little league team for money. Where have I heard that before?

Keanu shows up to the first day of practice and just sits in the dugout while the kids all screw around on the field. Day two goes about the same. But Keanu is waiting for his criminal friend and keeps the kids too late. They now have to walk home in the dark and we are shown how scary the projects are as the fat kid with asthma gets jumped and his backpack is stolen.

Keanu, apparently starting to grow a heart, gets a stern lecture from the fat kid’s mom and promises to let them leave practice before it gets dark. His stockbroker friend does one better and gets him a station wagon in which he has to use to drive every kid home.

The team starts doing well, but then one of those ultra-competitive father coaches has a problem with a bunch of inner city kids winning. He calls them on one kid who forged his birth certificate. Keanu has no choice but to not play the kid. The kid gets really upset and starts screaming about how he just wants to play ball, and the audience gets a little choked up. He runs off crying. Later we learn he joins a gang. Uh oh, this movie has social commentary.

The ultra competitive father coach then gets mad that his team is being struck out by a little ghetto boy, and cries to the league president about the kid pitching with his head phones on. At this point the audience boos and hisses when this coach comes on screen. This is awkward since I am watching it alone. Wonder who the big game is going to be against?

Now Keanu is getting upset and he storms out to the field, yells at ultra competitive father coach and league president, and then announces he is quitting. The kids are saddened, but not surprised as we are informed they are used to the men figures in their lives running out on them.

Keanu has his criminal friend take him to a different bookie and he puts down a huge bet on the evening’s Bulls game. He ends up winning. He uses the money to pay back at least one of the other bookies he owes, but we are never told if he pays back the other one. The one we’re not informed about is the guy was more ready to kill Keanu. But I guess it makes sense to have a scene where he runs from two Irish thugs then never pay it off later.

Keanu and his criminal friend are on their way to make another bet with the third bookie, but Keanu has to take the equipment back to the team he left and we’re treated to a scene of him acting out the Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go.” If you haven’t figured out that he stayed with the kids then you have never seen a movie. Ever.

He takes the kids to their first major league game in an attempt to buy their forgiveness. It works. The team then goes on to win the rest of their games and they come down to a tie breaker against the team with ultra competitive father coach. In the bottom of the last inning the fat kid with asthma has an asthma attack and Keanu has no choice but to put in the kid who is too young to be on the team but hangs out everyday anyway.

The film tries to get artsy with what it does here. We see the kid running to the batter’s box then it fades out to Keanu dropping him and his brother off after the game. They seem happy so we assume they won and are the next game is the championship game. As the kids try to enter their building, some gangstas coming running out followed by more gangstas. A shoot-out ensues and the kid who was too young to play gets killed in the crossfire. The audience weeps.

There is a funeral scene where Keanu tells the story about the too young to play kid taking his only at bat and hitting the winning RBI. The league wants to cancel the championship due to the incident, but the team says fuck that. They show up and win and we all learn a lesson about how with enough pluck a team of ragtag kids from the projects can get their shit together and become winners.

Treatment of Baseball/Quality of Baseball Scenes

When Keanu starts participating in practice, the kids are all awful. Taking ground balls like Buckner, fly balls like Canseco (in his Texas Ranger days), and throwing everything short. They only manage to score one run in the first game.

I will say this, the movie does look like a bunch of kids playing little league. There are a lot of miscues, a lack of skills such as putting the ball where you want it and properly executing plays. So to the extent of not teaching the children actors to play the game like pros, this movie did a great job with that.

What’ss frustrating is how the team gets so much better so quickly. By game two they’re winning by six runs. There should have been a montage of the team practicing and getting better. We got no such montage. Even Rocky had a montage.

The pitching, however, all looks really good. There is good wind up, good delivery, and good release. It looks like the hired a pitching coach to come in and teach them a few things.

Annoying Romantic B-Story/Stifling Spouse?

Diane Lane is in this movie as the boys’ Catholic school teacher. She looks nothing like anyone would expect a Catholic school teacher to look, not even Keanu. So when he first meets her, he is blown away and we realize oh shit this movie has a love story.

Diane is hesitant to Keanu. She doesn’t trust him. As she shouldn’t. He lies to her through half of the movie. Her first priority is that the kids don’t get hurt emotionally. Also she’s looking for someone who must love dogs. Keanu keeps chipping away at that stone. During one scene, which is painfully hard to watch, you can’t help but to expect his next attempt to entice her on a date is to use the line, “I know kung fu.”

She shows up to the final games to cheer on the children and at the championship game after she realizes Keanu has changed, she and Keanu smooch and the audience wants to know what the hell the point of all that was, like a lot of the other stuff going on in the movie.

Final Thoughts

This is not a baseball movie. This is a movie about overcoming hardships with some baseball thrown in. Based on this theme, it’s easy to make a quick comparison The Mighty Ducks (only the first one, of course), but The Mighty Ducks is more light-hearted and fun, whereas this movie’s goal is to show white America how fucked up the projects are and how important letting all kids play organized sports really is.

Keanu’s character is never fully fleshed out and we have a hard time caring about him. While it’s always enjoyable to watch young children swear as we do here, we never completely get to know any of them and thus never entirely feel connected to the movie.

Also between the gambling, baseball, inner city violence, trying to get the kids an education, and the love story, there are just way too many things going on in this movie. It was like I was watching several different episodes of Touched by an Angel at once.

There is a speech in the movie about how just showing up is one of the most important things in life. I wish I hadn’t shown up for this movie.

Ruling from the Scorer: Strike Three Swinging.

lee.s.hart@crujonessociety.com