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: July 1, 1994
Box Office Total: $12,267,790
Team Featured: Minnesota Twins

“We’re never gonna win anything with a kid for a manager.” – Spencer Hamilton

“You know it seems to me you didn’t win last year with Jackson. Certainly weren’t winning with O’Farrell. Maybe I’m not the problem. Maybe the problem is you guys forgot how much fun this is. You’re Major Leaguers. I mean, you’re on baseball cards. What could be better?” – Billy Heywood.

In the eyes of CJS, nothing could be better than being a Major Leaguer. Little Big League takes a look at baseball played at the highest level through the eyes of a kid. And what we get is a startingly earnest film filled with outstanding baseball that is also, oh yes, extremely fun.

Plot Synopsis

Billy Heywood is an average 12 year-old kid except that his grandfather owns the Minnesota Twins. The two act more like old friends than grandfather/grandson separated by 60 or so years and trade obscure bits of baseball trivia such as “Who was on deck when Robbie Thompson hit the homer to win the Giants the pennant?” (Answer: Willie Mays) Their relationship is established early as warm, loving, and built on a rock solid shared love of baseball.

 

So naturally, the grandfather dies before the end of the first reel. He leaves Billy “his most favorite thing in the world: the Minnesota Twins.” Written into his will is the provision that if Billy isn’t old enough, the General Manager and other Twins staff will help him run the team until he is. That sounds completely implausible, logistically impossible, and possibly illegal, but given the rest of the movie, I suppose we can let it slide.

So Billy takes over ownership duties, clashes with belligerent, pig-headed manager George O’Farrell over acquiring new free agent Rickey Henderson, and fires him. Procuring a new manager proves impossible because no one wants to work for a kid. Billy’s friends encourage him to take the job himself, and who can argue with their logic? One of them says, “It’s the American League. You’ve got the DH. How hard can it be?”

Sure enough Billy takes the job and gives the guys an inspirational speech before their first game. The players, justifiably skeptical, respond with a mix of indifference and disdain as the catcher intentionally blows off a hit and run and leaves the runner hanging out to dry in an attempt to undermine Billy and force him to fire himself. However, slowly Billy wins the players over one by one with savvy baseball instincts, creative and long-dead plays, and a simple love of the game. He encourages the players to remember how fun the game is, and eventually they all do.

We’re treated to not one, not two, but three separate baseball montages in this movie and each one is more fun than the last. Little Big League’s cast is populated with former major leaguers such as Kevin Elster and Leon Durham, so the baseball action is top notch (more on that in a bit) and filmed nice and wide giving the audience context for each play and showcasing the actors’ athletic ability. Our first montage sees the fellas come around and enjoy the game as if they were kids. The second sees them executing Billy’s uncanny game savvy to perfection and go on a long winning streak. The third sees Billy rekindling his love of the game with a group of spunky lower-middle class kids while on a road trip to Chicago after taking the game too seriously himself.

As you might expect, in a movie where a kid manages a Major League Baseball team, the central problem emerges when Billy forgets to have fun himself and begins running the team like the blowhard he fired at the beginning. The team begins to lose, and not until Billy plays stickball with the ragtag inner-city youths does he remember his very own advice.

The Twins force a one game playoff with the Seattle Mariners as the movie reaches its climax. For those who haven’t seen it, I won’t spoil the resolution, but the game is one of the more realistic and fun games ending a baseball movie ever.

Treatment of Baseball/Quality of Baseball Scenes:

Roger Ebert says it best about this movie and its treatment of the game, “‘Baseball was made for kids; grownups only screw it up.’ Bob Lemmon, quoted in Little Big League. Little Big League is a movie about a 12 year-old kid who inherits the Minnesota Twins and decides to manage them himself. The last thing I was expecting was that the movie would take baseball seriously. But it does. It’s one of those rare baseball movies that has a real feel for the game, instead of using it as a backdrop for bizarre characters.”

Baseball in Little Big League is half legitimate strategy and attention to detail, and half pure fun of the highest order. First, the strategy. Below is perhaps my favorite exchange from a baseball movie, and possibly one of my favorite dialogue exchanges ever. It occurs when Billy attempts to prove to the Twins pitching coach that he can handle the managing job, and will strategize properly in a given situation. Pitching coach Mack gives him one such situation:

 

Mack: We’re playing the Yankees. No one out. Scales is on first, great speed. Lou’s up. 2-1 count. Abbott’s on the mound, lefty. Lonnie’s on deck, and remember he’s a switch hitter. What do you do?
Billy: What’s the score?
Mack: Tie game.
Billy: What inning? Home or away?
Mack: 8^th. Home.
Billy: Who’s catching? Who’s rested in the bullpen? Who’s up in the 9^th for the Yankees?
Mack: Stanley. Everyone. 7-8-9.
Billy: Okay. I let Lou hit away. With Mattingly holding Scales, he’s got that big hole to hit through.
Mack: No. See, that’s what I’m talking about. You got lefty against lefty. Lou’s a good bunter. You only need one run, so you sacrifice the go-ahead run to 2^nd with only one out.
Billy: No. You sacrifice him to second, they walk Lonnie and bring in Steve Farr to pitch to Spencer. So you’ve taken the bat out of two best hitters, our 3 and 4 men. And you’ve got Spencer, a righty with no speed against Farr and his palm ball. Which means…
Mack: Double play. (a pause) You could pitch hit for Spencer.
Billy: Now you’ve taken the bat out of our 3, 4, and 5 hitters. Not exactly a great trip through the heart of our order.  
General Manager Arthur Goslin: Any questions, Mack?
Mack: Yeah. What’s he need me for?

Whoever wrote that knows their shit. That’s some heavy duty baseball nerdspeak right there boy, and I believe it’s unparalleled by any other film.

This isn’t to say this movie is for die-hard fans only. Dialogue like that is just the cherry on top, and rewards hardcore fans without necessarily alienating casual fans. Because the bulk of this movie gives a semi-decent view of life as a Major Leaguer. True, there’s not enough profanity in the locker room, but most baseball players are just big kids. At one point, Billy joins some of the players in their hotel room to drop water balloons on unsuspecting pedestrians and teammates from above. Baseball is supposed to be fun, and in this movie it very much is.

Annoying Romantic B-Story/Stifling Spouse?

Love this movie for its treatment of the romantic b-story. Billy’s mom begins dating Twins All-Star 1^st baseman Lou Collins (who plays similar to a Todd Helton) and while it’s clear they dig each other, Lou doesn’t make a huge scene out of trying to win her heart like the ridiculous Tom Berenger/Rene Russo arc in Major League.

And even when this subplot begins to creep into the baseball scenes, we never forget the Twins are trying to get into the playoffs. In the game’s climactic at-bat, Billy and Lou have this exchange:

Billy: Where have you been? Why aren’t you on deck?
Lou: You seen your mom?
Billy: Yeah, she’s right behind the dugout. Why?
Lou: I just asked her to marry me.
Billy: What’d she say?
Lou: She said I should ask you. [Lou begins walking to the plate]
Billy: Hit a homer.
Lou: What?
Billy: Hit a homer and I say you can marry her.
[Lou walks to the plate again]
Billy: Lou! [Lou turns around] You can marry her even if you don’t hit a homer.
Lou:  Thanks. [Lou walks yet again to the plate]
Billy: And Lou!
Lou: (annoyed) Yeah-ah?
Billy: If Johnson gets ahead, watch for the slider low and away.

That’s a fantastically novel mix of romance and baseball and again takes special care in respecting the game. Beautiful. You wrap up the love story, and then we get on with the at-bat because after all, we got a game to play to here!

Final Thoughts

Little Big League isn’t a transcendent movie, but a supremely well-executed one. For baseball fans, few movies rival this one’s respect for the game and few offer a more fun snapshot of the big leagues. Cameos from Ken Griffey Jr., Randy Johnson, Lou Piniella, Mickey Tettleton, Carlos Baerga and a slew of other real life superstars simultaneously give the game scenes added ethos and an extra dimension of “Whoa! I know that guy!” fun.

It’s tempting to rate this movie higher than you logically should because watching it is just so damned enjoyable, but as I said, it’s not a seminal film, just an exceptionally well put together one. It does what it sets out to do, and does so quite effectively. While artistically not the finest movie you’ll ever see, nor the most clever, if you’re a baseball fan, it’s the one you might just purely enjoy the most all the way through.

Ruling from the Scorer: Hit and run through the right side rolls all the way to the wall, runner scores, double for the batter. Hit and run executed to perfection.

edagger@crujonessociety.com