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"The Rookie"
(Reviewed March 11, 2002)
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This movie is guaranteed to bring big, salty tears to the eyes of every delusional middle-aged slob who parks his sorry, out-of-shape ass in front of the tube every night to watch baseball while fantasizing about What Might Have Been. If only you had followed that childhood dream of trying out for pro ball and working your way up through the minors to the bigtime, instead of taking that goddamned lousy eight-to-six job you have hated for the past 15 years, maybe you could have made it. Instead of rooting for a bunch of ball-scratching millionaires from your split-seamed La-Z-Boy in the rec room while stuffing Doritos and Domino's pizza into your bloated face, you could have been the superstar signing autographs at high-priced memorabilia shows for overgrown losers whose greasy caps barely fit over their fat heads and bad haircuts.
"The Rookie" actually is not a bad movie, following the story of high-school baseball coach Jim Morris and his attempt to make it into the major leagues at an age when most players' glory days are well behind them. Dennis Quaid is excellent as Morris because he is entirely believable in the role. He looks like a guy who actually might play baseball when the cameras are off, as opposed to Kevin Costner or Robert Redford. Don't get me wrong, I loved "Field of Dreams" and "The Natural," but Quaid definitely would get picked before either of those two if it came to choosing up sides for a sandlot game.
Still, the main reason that suburban wives may want to take their hated husbands to this flick is to watch those chairbound, abusive blowhards blubbering like babies, desperately wishing they could drop 75 pounds and run the bases without experiencing a coronary. Said wives then can laugh derisively at their mates' discarded dreams all the way home, where hubby will grab his souvenir bat and warn her to knock it off or get knocked off. Then one of their snot-nosed brats will begin screaming from the next room, making the dog start barking loud enough to wake up the whole lousy, stinking neighborhood. Daddy's bat will drop to the stained carpet from his stubby, sausage-link fingers as he stumbles to the fridge for the first of a dozen beers, followed by his wife's shrill shout of, "Go to hell, you lousy bastard!"
"I'm already there," he will mutter in sad reply, twisting off a top. "I'm already there."
Back Row Grade: C
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