Last week my friend Phil and I were talking about baseball movies. We listed favorites and commented on also-rans. We also each learned about a few films we'd not yet seen. One of these, for me, was the 2012 release Trouble with the Curve, starring Amy Adams, John Goodman, Justin Timberlake and a crotchety Clint Eastwood.
Eastwood (Gus) is an aging baseball scout for the Atlanta Braves whose eyesight is beginning to deteriorate. Adams is Eastwood's estranged daughter, a hard-working attorney on the verge of becoming a partner at a law firm. Gus named her Mickey after his favorite baseball player, Mickey Mantle.
The setting is ten years or so into the "moneyball" era. If you remember Moneyball, the film based on the Michael Lewis book by the same name, you'll recall that it took place in that transition period when computer algorithms began displacing the traditional system of sending out scouts to find new talent. It became an almost total reliance on data. Gus is a throwback whose perceived value is questionable to the younger scouts who live by the data.
The backstory here is that Gus lost the wife he loved when Mickey was six. For reasons that come out later in the film, Gus and his daughter have an unresolved issue to deal with.
Pete Klein, a longtime friend, is concerned enough about Gus that he intercedes and asks Mickey to help her father in an important scouting assignment. She reluctantly agrees because she's in the middle of a major project which may have a bearing on her becoming the first female partner at the legal firm she works for.
As it turns out, the film is a father-daughter story with a baseball setting. It's also a feel-good with a measure of predictability. Nevertheless, it's a worthy baseball movie that you ought to see, in the event you missed it when it was released.
I like seeing John Goodman in a "normal" role, as opposed to those over-the-top characters he played in Flight and Inside Llewyn Davis. Goodman shows the value of longtime friends who notice and care about what we're going through.
As an aside, I couldn't help but think of Bill Belichick as I watched Mickey step up and show how much she knew about baseball by growing up with her father. Bill Belichick's dad was a football coach, and by age eight little Billy was learning how to assess defenses by watching game films. He was a student of the game from a very early age.
I suppose we should mention Justin Timberlake (Johnny). He's a scout for the Red Sox. Boston has the first pick in the MLB draft and Johnny is evaluating the same stud power hitter that the Braves are. One of the subplots is Mickey's personal love life. There's a lawyer with the firm who has a serious interest in her, but she's remaining non-committal, for reasons that come out later. You can tell that there's more electricity developing between her and Johnny as the story moves along. Will it end the way her other relationships have floundered?
Not that we care all that much. It's not high drama, just a comfortable ride with some characters we have grown to like and enjoy being with as they work out their problems.
Watching Trouble with the Curve did bring back a few baseball bmemories. When I played ball in the Babe Ruth League our team had a pitcher that some scouts from the Pittsburg Pirates were paying attention to. And another time, when I was playing varsity ball in high school, I faced a pitcher from Piscataway who was being scouted for MLB potential. When Ron Fulop, our first baseman, hit a triple off one of his fastballs, this "superstar" pitcher got rattled. I was up next and he whizzed four adrenaline-injected, supersonic pitches shoulder height and higher. I drew a walk.
I never did find out if either of those guys made it to the majors.
For a great read about how a kid from Panama became the greatest relief pitcher in baseball history, read The Closer. Here's my review of this inspiring baseball story.
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