(1973) It wasn't so sad that I felt like crying. (But as Tom Hanks said in A League of Their Own, "There's no crying in baseball.")

A million dollars of promise but pennies on delivery, baseball player Bruce Pearson (Robert De Niro) of the New York Mammoths gets a terminal diagnosis from the Mayo Clinic of Hodgkin's disease; he could die any day, though most days he doesn't look ill. His roommate and new friend - having made the trip up to Minnesota with Bruce - Henry "Arthur" Wiggin (Michael Moriarty), the ballclub's ace pitcher hurling the story at us, holds out on signing a contract, initially for more money, until he gets a package deal including Pearson.

Arthur, who sells life insurance for Arcturis on the side (Bruce is guaranteed a payout to his beneficiary of $137,500), is also an author and married to Holly; manager Dutch Schnell (Vincent Gardenia, who reminded me of Lou Costello delivering lines from "Who's on First?") wants to know what's the reason for this new arrangement with Pearson, "a plumb dumb catcher," knowing they're not a couple of faeries.

As he has his entire career, Bruce, a chaw-chewing Vietnam vet, good-naturedly puts up with all the ragging he receives from his teammates. A rookie catcher, a fellow Georgian and motorcycle wild, Piney Woods, remarks before being sent down to the minors: "Maybe somebody'll drop dead and open up a spot for me."

Arthur, who'd been guilty of unkindness in the past toward Pearson, goes out of his way to build up his backstop's confidence, offering tips to improve his game and teaching him the card game TEGWAR (The Exciting Game Without Any Rules); Bruce catches on because the game resembles the cards he's been dealt from the deck of life while Arthur employs TEGWAR tactics to flummox Dutch.

Meanwhile, Dutch interrogates Arthur about why he and Pearson drove up to Minnesota together during the winter; the pitcher, as he strings together wins for the team, tells his manager lots of little truths adding up, Dutch thinks, to one big lie. Determined to get to the bottom of the mystery by hiring a detective ("Never mind the facts; give me the details"), Dutch turns his attention to quelling dissension on a team with all the potential for winning the pennant.

Arthur repeatedly puts off Bruce's request of a change of beneficiary (from his parents?) on his policy to Katie, a prostitute he wants to marry. Arthur's decision to tell one player on the club, a veteran in his final years, Goose Williams, the truth about Bruce leads to others eventually knowing the secret: "Everybody knows everybody's dying," Arthur says to Bruce, "that's why they're so good to each other."

Winding up and throwing his best stuff past Dutch, Arthur's curveball has Bruce having caught the clap in Atlanta but trekking north for treatment to avoid local embarrassment. The experience teaches him to make at least one rule for himself: Never to rag on someone again.

Based on Mark Harris's big-league novel, director John Hancock's minor-league movie, with "The Streets of Laredo" (lyrics include, "Oh, bang the drum slowly/ And play the fife lowly") playing throughout the soundtrack, didn't move me as much as I'd been led to expect. Claiming to be 5'11" in one scene, De Niro is actually too small to be convincing as a Major League catcher. Also, the teams are fictional with the Mammoths wearing Yankee logo and pinstripes but playing against Pittsburgh and Cincinnati.

This maudlin movie, swing for major-league tears, can't compete with The Pride of the Yankees (1938 with Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig) or The Stratton Story (1949 with Jimmy Stewart as Monty Stratton).

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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