Million Dollar Arm: Bunt to shortshop

Million Dollar Arm (2014) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang

Underdog sports stories are irresistible. Fish-out-of-water stories are irresistible.

You’d therefore think that a film combining both elements would be can’t-miss.

You’d think.

Newly arrived in the United States, Dinesh (Madhur Mittal, far left) and Rinku (Suraj
Sharma, center left) are delighted by their first visit to an American baseball field. The
event is recorded for posterity by Amit (Pitobash, far right), while J.B. (Jon Hamm)
looks on with pleasure. Unfortunately, and rather cruelly, he's about to abandon his
new charges, naively believing them capable of carrying on from this point forward.

In fairness, Million Dollar Arm has a lot going for it, starting with a fact-based premise that is buoyed further by several thoroughly charming performances. Unfortunately, these virtues are offset by director Craig Gillespie’s protracted approach — his film is both too slow and, at slightly more than two hours, too long — and a casting decision that doesn’t work as everybody undoubtedly hoped.

Thomas McCarthy’s screenplay takes a gentle, light-comedy approach to real-world sports agent J.B. Bernstein’s gimmick-laden visit to India in 2007, when he staged a reality show-type competition in order to uncover untapped baseball talent. J.B. felt, not unreasonably, that in a nation obsessed with cricket, surely a few “bowlers” could be groomed into Major League pitchers.

As shaped by McCarthy, J.B. (Jon Hamm) and his partner and best friend Aash (Aasif Mandvi) are treading dire financial waters. The dream of fronting their own agency is about to go under for the third and final time, salvation resting entirely on a potential deal with an extravagantly fickle football star (Rey Maualuga).

Things don’t work out, leaving J.B. to clutch at the flimsiest of straws, after some late-night TV flipping between a cricket match and Susan Boyle’s stunning performance of “I Dreamed a Dream” on Britain’s Got Talent (an event that took place in April 2009, but hey, who pays attention to such niggly little details?).

J.B. hatches an improbable scheme, manages to secure financial backing from a taciturn investor named Mr. Chang (Tzi Ma), and soon finds himself in India.

Gillespie is on firm ground during this sequence, evoking portraits of various Indian locales that are by turns exotic and amusing. J.B. liaises with a “fixer” (Darshan Jariwala) and quickly picks up a protégé of sorts: Amit (rising Indian film star Pitobash, in a thoroughly delightful American debut), an eager-beaver volunteer, gopher, translator, right-hand man and die-hard baseball fan.

They’re also joined by Ray Poitevint (Alan Arkin), a cantankerous retired baseball scout who doesn’t need to watch for potential; he can hear the sound of a proper fastball. (Didn’t Clint Eastwood’s Gus Lobel rely on that skill, in 2012’s Trouble with the Curve? And does Arkin ever play anything but cantankerous?)

Trouble with the Curve: Just about out of the park

Trouble with the Curve (2012) • View trailer
Four stars. Rating: PG-13, for occasional profanity and some sexual references
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.21.12

Even the most familiar material will become vibrant in the hands of seasoned pros.

Randy Brown’s impressive debut script for Trouble with the Curve turns this film into a quiet little charmer that focuses on both sports and the angst-laden trauma of a long-estranged father and daughter. Along the way, Brown also scores perceptive points about loyalty, workaholics, the ageist contempt of youth, and the soul-grinding aggravation of growing old.

Veteran baseball scout Gus (Clint Eastwood) is having trouble with his vision, but he
dares not acknowledge this, lest he lose his job. Enter Mickey (Amy Adams), his
long-estranged and only child, who reluctantly serves as her father's eyes while
attempting to re-kindle a bond once characterized by love and a shared devotion
to their favorite sport.

Star Clint Eastwood continues to be at the top of his game, delivering another riff on the “crusty ol’ coot” persona that has served him well in projects ranging from the light-hearted Space Cowboys to the far more serious Gran Torino. His work here slides between those two extremes; Gus Lobel has become too cranky to be actually likable — the ravages of old age merely amplifying his less pleasant qualities — but we sympathize with him nonetheless.

Gus is an old-style baseball scout, long employed by the Atlanta Braves, who loves hunkering in the bleachers and bathing in the magic of the sport’s “true, sweet sound.” He’ll never accept computer-driven stats as a replacement for his devotion to poring over newspapers and tip sheets, and then watching the players, in order to draw his own conclusions.

He is, in short, a dinosaur: an object of ridicule to number-crunching Braves associate scouting director Phillip Sanderson (Matthew Lillard), who insists that computers can do it faster and far more accurately. Pete Klein (John Goodman), chief of scouts and also Gus’ longtime best friend, is finding it harder and harder to defend the “old ways” to Braves General Manager Vince Freeman (Robert Patrick).

At this crucial moment, with Gus’ contract due to expire in three months, things get even worse as his eyesight begins to fail; an expanding circle in the center of his vision has grown blurry. A reluctant trip to his optometrist confirms the worst: glaucoma and macular degeneration.

The timing couldn’t be worse, because Gus’ next assignment involves a trip to North Carolina, to observe hot Swannanoa High School prospect Bo Gentry (Joe Massingill). The Braves really, really want this kid, and Sanderson is leading that charge; Gus, not to be rushed, wants to reach his own conclusions ... but that’ll be difficult, if he can’t see how Bo handles a pitch.

Enter Gus’ long-estranged daughter, Mickey (Amy Adams), a tightly wound associate at a high-powered Atlanta law firm, who has sacrificed everything to sprint along the fast track toward partnership. Mickey essentially has no life outside the office, but this is less a function of ambition, and more a self-defensive coping mechanism.

Once upon a time, long ago, Mickey and her father were inseparable, of necessity; her mother died when she was 6. Gus subsequently hauled his only child along on all his scouting assignments, and she grew to love the male-dominated atmosphere of swearing, joshing and drinking straight whisky. She also adores baseball to every possible degree, having reluctantly sublimated her talent for player stats in favor of torts and legal precedents.

Moneyball: Thoughtful slugger

Moneyball (2011) • View trailer for Moneyball
Four stars. Rating: PG-13, for occasional profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.23.11


You just can’t beat the romantic, almost spiritual atmosphere of a good baseball movie.

Other sports-themed dramas — football, basketball, tennis, whatever — simply don’t deliver the emotional oomph of The Natural, Field of Dreams, The Pride of the Yankees and many, many others. Baseball movies — like the sport itself — aren’t merely about the game; they’re more akin to a religious experience.

Forced to wait in the outer office like some no-account hired hand, Oakland
Athletics general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) suspects that his efforts to
trade players with the Cleveland Indians will come to nothing ... but, at the
moment, he sees no other options. That view is about to change, as will
Beane's entire vision of how best to create a winning baseball team.

Moneyball belongs in their company: a rather unconventional entry, to be sure, but one suffused with its own type of magic.

Director Bennett Miller’s thoughtful drama, ostensibly a profile of Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), actually concerns one man’s quixotic quest to re-write the fundamental principle that had driven baseball for decades: the notion that the best team could — would — be assembled by obtaining the best players money could buy.

And for “best,” insert “most expensive.” After all, a player commanding an eight-figure salary must be worth every penny, right?

Ah, but is a collection of ego-inflated prima donnas actually a team? Therein lies the question.

Scripters Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network) and Steven Zaillian (Schindler’s List), working from a story by Stan Chervin — who, in turn, adapted Michael Lewis’ book, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game — have quite cleverly written the All the President’s Men of baseball, and made the result equally fascinating. Just as William Goldman spun espionage and intrigue from the grinding research and day-to-day fact-checking of newspaper reporters, Sorkin and Zaillian have made a rich, engrossing brew of economics, statistics and charts.

An impressive feat, to say the least.

Miller has made it even better with a well-cast collection of realistic characters: dreamers, pragmatists, visionaries and stubborn naysayers. Change doesn’t come without pain.

We meet Beane and his Oakland Athletics in the aftermath of the 2001 season, just as their best players are cherry-picked by other franchises with deeper pockets. The A’s are left gutted, with Beane nearly apoplectic over the realization that his team is little more than a candy store for the Yankees and other wealthier rivals. The playing field isn’t level, and he resents it.

A humiliating attempt to horse-trade with the Cleveland Indians draws Beane’s attention to somebody who seems out of place in that office: a quiet, couch-potato nebbish whose opinion inexplicably carries some weight. Beane tracks this individual to his desk — a delightful scene, well staged by Miller — and thus meets Peter Brand (Jonah Hill).