In baseball, a good hitter is a player that fails seventy percent of the time.  For every ten appearances at the plate, they will hit the ball safely only three of those times.  You might think that to be successful in just one more of those instances is conceivably possible, especially in more modern times as athletes have gotten bigger, stronger, and faster.  The last major leaguer to bat .400 or above was Ted Williams . . . in 1941.  What is even more remarkable is that on the last day of the season, his team, the Boston Red Sox, were playing a double header.  Had he sat out the games as his manager suggested, his .3995 average would have been rounded up to the mythical number.  Instead, he played and went 6-8 at the plate, finishing the season with a .406 mark.  Why did he not take the easy path?  The answer can be found in today’s title, For the Love of the Game (1999).  Its main character, veteran pitcher Billy Chapel (Kevin Costner), has some parallels to the events just described, as you shall see.

Though Billy and Ted Williams each do what they do For the Love of the Game, Billy plays for the last place Detroit Tigers.  They are coming into the final series of the season against the New York Yankees, and Billy’s catcher, Gus Sinski (John C. Reilly), notices his pitcher wince as he lifts his luggage into the overhead compartment.  Billy’s decorated career has him annoyingly wave off Gus’ concerns, desiring to only focus on his upcoming trip to the mound.  However, his next start is not the only thing on his mind.  Once he gets to his hotel in Manhattan, he makes arrangement for a romantic dinner in his hotel room with Jane Aubrey (Kelly Preston).  He waits, and waits, and eventually falls asleep, only to be awakened from a drunken stupor by Gus pounding on his door the next morning.  In his rushing about, Billy gets a call from the front desk saying that Jane had been waiting for him there, but has now left.  He catches up with her in Central Park.  She does not have any good answers for why she stood him up until she finally admits that she has taken a job in London.  The only reason she had come at all was to say goodbye.  At this point, you might be asking yourself why this is a big deal, which would be a fair question.  It is answered in the rest of the movie during the course of the game, but her news is not the only bad tidings he receives before it.  Once he is back in his room, he is visited by Gary Wheeler (Brian Cox), the owner of the team.  Gary has arrived to tell Billy personally that not only has he sold the Tigers, but that the new ownership group plans on trading the forty-year-old Billy in the off season.  Gary’s advice is to retire, but baseball is everything to Billy.  As Billy takes the mound, these developments are adding extra zip to his pitches.  Against Gus’ advice to save some energy for later innings, Billy declares that he is going to throw a little harder today.  The result is a perfect outing through the first few innings.  As he does so, he thinks about his relationship with Jane, and in flashbacks we see how we get to her departing for England.  They met five years previously during another trip to the Big Apple by the Tigers.  He is on his way to play golf when he encounters her broke down on the side of the rode.  Despite knowing nothing about cars, he manages to get hers restarted and fends off the tow truck driver who wants to take her vehicle regardless of its function.  The roadside assistance leads to her being invited to that night’s game, having dinner afterwards, and finally spending the night in his hotel room.  She expects him to leave and forget her like other men, but there is something about her that has him leaving his number.  Thus, whenever the Tigers are in New York, they spend time with each other, but the relationship remains casual.  The first test comes in Spring Training the next season when he invites her to come to Florida.  It seems too serious for her, and she initially declines to his dismay.  Yet, she unexpectedly shows up at his door the next day, only to be hurt by the presence of another woman at his condo.  Months go by without them talking until he gets a call from her while the Tigers are in Boston, asking if he can help find her daughter, Heather (Jena Malone), who had run away without permission to the Massachusetts metropolis to visit her dad.  Billy had been unaware of Heather, but the vulnerability leads to a strengthening of his relationship with Jane.  He accepts her daughter, and they begin spending time as a family.  What changes everything is when he severely cuts his hand while working in his woodshop in the offseason.  Up until now, she had thought he had seen baseball as merely a job.  However, his obsession with coming back from the injury, despite his age, demonstrates to her where his priorities lie.  When she threatens to leave him, he is dismissive, saying he does not need her.  Thus, they separate, and months go by until he finds a vile of her perfume in the drawer of his bathroom vanity.  It has him looking her up once he is back in New York, but he finds that she has begun dating someone else.  Still, he apologizes for his behavior, and though it seems to soften her attitude, they go another stretch without seeing each other until we get to the beginning of the film.  As for his performance, despite being in excruciating pain from his overworked throwing arm, he completes a perfect game.  This is a rare feat for a pitcher, but all he can think about is Jane.  The next day, he goes to the airport, intending to fly to London and find her.  Instead, she is at the gate, having stayed to watch the game.  We end with them in each other’s arms.

A small detail I appreciated at the end of For the Love of the Game is that Billy is still favoring his throwing arm as he sits down next to Jane.  Remember everything I wrote in the introduction about how difficult is hitting the baseball?  Pitchers do not have it much better.  It used to be that a hurler going the entire game was a more regular occurrence.  Things are different in today’s game, with starters usually being allowed to make no more than ninety tosses, even if they are doing as well as Billy in the movie.  Yet, there are those rare players today that will deny any request to be taken out of a game because they have the eponymous feeling.  Indeed, the title is basically why this Catholic reviewer chose the movie.  When approaching your relationship with God, one should have a similar attitude to Billy’s.  Further, this is not me making the usual, faith-based extrapolations from a film that has nothing to do with religion.  After all, at one point Billy admits to believing in God, and even prays on the mound that God take away the pain in his shoulder so that he can record the last few outs.  Then again, this last bit could be that mentality that says there are no atheists in the fox hole.  Even the most ardent agnostic will turn to the Almighty for a miracle in a moment of desperation.  Maybe this makes me unlike other Christians, but I am okay with this idea.  I would rather, like God, have people believe all the time, and not just believe, but practice their faith.  Practice is a good word for a sports movie, but I digress.  The problem for Billy is that baseball becomes an obsession, and Jane sees it as leaving no room for her in his life.  She tries to support him, but he does not accept what she has to offer.  A relationship with God cannot be described in this way.  He should take precedence in our lives, but when it comes to being with someone else, that other person should feel the same way.  As such, you work together to help get each other to Heaven.  It takes Billy pitching the game of his career for him to realize that he had not been on the same page as Jane.  They may not have been talking about God, but he does come to a good conclusion.

My conclusion is that For the Love of the Game is a mediocre movie on two fronts.  It is neither a good baseball or dramatic romance, but it is okay on either count.  It gets a little melodramatic at times, but nothing over-the-top.  So, meh.