Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

Before the Baby Boomer generation, baseball was (at least purportedly) ”the American pastime.” Perhaps not in Texas, and certainly not by the time (1999) high school science teacher Jim Morris (Dennis Quaid, Far From Heaven, The Special Relationship, The Express) undertook turning around the perennially losing baseball team at Reagan County High School in Big Lake, Texas. Football was King there, and, indeed, the baseball fanatic Morris had been relocated, following his army recruiter father to Brownwood, where he had played football in high school and there was no baseball team/program.

Jim promises his team that he will try out for a Major League Baseball team if they win the distcit championship, something Reagan County’s baseball team has never even come close to doing. They do and insist that he keep his pledge. So what if he has to drag his 9-year-old son and his five and one-year-old daughters along, not mentioning what he is doing to his wife (Rachel Griffiths [Six Feet Under, My Son, the Fanatic, Hilary and Jackie])?

To the astonishment of himself as well as the scouts, the 35-year-old fires a dozen consecutive fastballs clocking at 98 mph. A 35-year-old father of three cannot support his family on minor-league pay, but the callup to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays comes, Morris comes out of the bullpen in Arlington, Texas to strike out  a Texas Ranger batter on four pitches with his family (including his father) and the town in the stands. Even a Disney story cannot follow through with stardom, but making it to the major league at the age of 35 is astounding enough to inspire a warm glow in viewers. All the more so with a then-48-year-old Dennis Quaid (but, hey, he’s a native Texan, albeit born in Houston, far from west Texas), ten years older than Griffiths (born in Melbourne, Australia, btw). The movie’s tagline is “You’re never too old to achieve your dreams.” If your dream is to pitch in the majors, 35 is close to miraculous, becoming a rookie at 48 shows that there are impossible dreams and that the tagline is a lie.

Griffiths’s acting abilities (which are considerable) were not called for in “Rookie” (2002). It depends primarily on Quaid’s charm and that of his son Hunter (Angus T. Jones) and the high school baseball team (especially Jay Hernandez and Rick Gonzales)… and that of Trevor Morgan playing Jim as a child. The sentimentality is cut by Brian Cox as Jim’s father, from whom never is heard an encouraging word. And the multiethnicity is augmented by a black hotshot, Brooks (very handsome Russell Richardson), who is called up from the Durham, NC farm team along with Jim.

If what I saw made me doubt that the movie was shot in West Texas, I’m sure Texan viewers would already know that the movie was shot in Thorndale and Thrall (though the movie’s Rangers stadium is really the Rangers stadium).

My daze of being a baseball fan ended before the Rangers were created. My reason for watching the movie was curiosity about this earlier and critically more acclaimed movie from the director of “The Alamo” (2004, in which Dennis Quaid also received top billing), John Lee Hancock (another native Texan [Longview], whose return to sports movie, “The Blind Side” (2009) rehabilitated his reputation, one that I don’t think have been tarred by the best of the Alamo movies… but then I am in a minority in liking “A Perfect World” [1993,] which he scripted, Clint Eastwood directed and starred in).

“The Alamo” had a lot to get in. I don’t think “The Rookie” needed to exceed the two-hour mark, though I was not bored even though I find baseball boring to watch in general. (Somehow, baseball movies generally work better than football movies IMO, even though I am a football not a baseball fan.) The DVD includes four deleted scenes, proving that it could have been longer still and that some wisdom about cutting was used.

The title "The Inspirational Story of Jim Morris" is guilty of gilding the lily (or, I suppose of the Disney tendency to leave little to chance or to any possible intelligence of viewers) introduces the real Jim Moris, who is also charming. I didn’t make it through the “Spring Training” featurette, not needing advise on how to improve my chances in MLB spring training (I lack the dream and am older than Dennis Quaid!). I like Hancock (in DVD bonus features to “The Alamo”), but did not want to spend another two-plus hours rewatching the movie for his commentary track (which also included occasional remarks by the laconic Quaid). I also skipped the “Sneak Peeks,” but hereby mention their existence.

IMO too many sports movies are variants of "The Little Engine that Could," certainly including this one (one that becomes less interesting as it shifts form the high school boys to their teacher/coach as the little engine). Some call them "inspirational," others see them as encouraging super-long longshot hopes (and tweaking skeptics like Brian Cox's Jim Morris, Sr. herein). I like the few that portray ultimate failures of the dreams (Bull Durham; Mystery, Alaska; Moneyball) and coping with the math of "Many are called, few are chosen."

©2012, Stephen O. Murray

Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 9 - 12