The Rookie commentary, part 2: ‘There are more important things in life than baseball’

The military family is on the move again, this time shown in a station wagon pulling a U-Haul trailer driving on old country highways in the middle of nowhere. In the backseat, Jimmy’s little brother (we assume; he’s not a major character) asks what those things are, referring to oil rigs. Dad explains what they are and that if they’re moving up and down, that means times are good. “Looks like times are good.”

They pass a sign for Big Lake – 3 miles – as they proceed to pass through what I can presume to be the main street of the small Texas town. Next, we see the family unpacking the car and going through boxes in the front yard of their new home. Mother and Jimmy are looking for a specific box they can’t find, which includes the lad’s socks and, his mother tells her husband, his baseball glove.

Dad is there to comfort yet again: “Well, quit moping and grab a box,” he sternly tells Jimmy. “There are more important things in life than baseball. The sooner you figure that out, the better.”

Yikes. I’ll take Dream Crusher for 600, Alex.

The kid is determined to play baseball

Jimmy later bikes into town, on a bicycle complete with the old-style banana seat, and enters a store with a bell on the door to signify his entry. Wearing a baseball cap, the youngster announces that he’s looking for socks. One of the middle-aged men playing dominos upstairs in the all-quiet store comes down to help him out, showing off the variety of socks to choose from, some with stripes or without etc. Jimmy says he just moved to town, and the man offers a friendly handshake and introduces himself as Henry.

As Jimmy sadly spins the socks rack, Henry senses something is on the boy’s mind and offers to help him find whatever it is he’s looking for. Jimmy timidly takes the opportunity to ask: “Got any baseball stuff?”

“Don’t get much call for baseball stuff around these parts,” Henry says. “Now if it’s football, that’d be a whole different story.”

The theme of football > baseball comes up a lot in this movie, at least early on.

Henry pulls out a catalogue to help Jimmy find some baseball stuff and then brings up the story about the nuns and Santa Rita. For the first time in a while, Jimmy starts to crack a smile. Next, we see him biking to the spot from the story, near the old oil rig where the old-time baseball was played. He starts to uncover the dirt baseball mound, moving his left foot back and forth.

Here's our time-jump in the movie
As the camera pans up to the Santa Rita sign, there’s a time shift. When the ball field comes into view again, it’s filled in a little more with green grass. And we now see Dennis Quaid – playing the adult Jimmy Morris – on the same mound. Nice knowing you, actor from the “Genius” movie.

Adult Jimmy eventually heads back to his tan Ford pickup truck and drives away, with a Santa Rita coin hanging inside.

Jimmy pulls up to a parking spot in front of Big Lake High School and walks into the office. As I learned from a bonus feature on the DVD about the real-life Jim Morris, the school was actually called Reagan County High School, still with the Owls as the mascot. Actress Rachel Griffiths walks by and offers a simple “coach” greeting to Jimmy, to which he responds “counselor.” Cordial enough, until she grabs Jimmy’s ass on her way by. Obviously, these two are an item. She actually plays Jimmy’s wife, Lorri.

We’ll assume that Jimmy is a baseball coach, because what other sport would he care so much about? But for now, we also know he’s a science teacher. In the next scene he’s talking to his class about protons and neutrons. We don’t see a lot of his classroom in the movie, so this is pretty much just establishing his life as a coach/teacher in the same Texas town he moved to as a teen.

History lesson in why Jimmy isn’t in MLB
Later, Jimmy and a young boy we’ll come to know as his son, Hunter, are seated at the café for dinner. And hey, the guys playing dominos back in the day are now in the café. One is cooking their orders while the others are seated at the counter. Small-town life. Henry is there, and he mentions all the surgeries Jimmy had back in his playing days, trying to remember if four was the right number. It’s laying the groundwork a bit to learn about the gap so far from Jimmy as a young teen to Jimmy the family man/teacher/coach.

As they’re leaving, Hunter, who’s about 8 years old and played by the adorable Angus T. Jones, asks his dad if his arm hurts anymore. Jimmy quickly catches the audience up on why he’s not some big-shot pitcher in the major leagues. He tells his son that his arm never hurt in high school because they didn’t have a baseball team (score another point in the baseball v. football battle), and it didn’t hurt in junior college when he got drafted.

He leaves it with kind of a vague answer.

“Is that why you didn’t make it?” Hunter asks.

Jimmy replies: “It’s never one thing.”

The talk must have inspired him, because Jimmy is throwing a baseball against a chain-link fence while wearing his red T-shirt and black hat with the red Jiffy Lube logo. His pickup’s headlights illuminate the fence for him while Hunter is asleep in the cab.

At home in bed, Jimmy and Lorri awake to a baby crying and briefly debate who will get their daughter this time. Lorri goes and rocks the baby, telling a tired Jimmy to sleep when he comes in the doorway saying it’s his turn. What are we establishing here? Jimmy is a family man. He has a local job and responsibilities at home. Pretty standard stuff. 

The Rookie commentary, part 1: ‘What kind of baseball do they have? … They don’t.