The Rookie commentary, part 5: ‘You got your shot at baseball. You got hurt.’

On another sunny afternoon, we see Jimmy and Hunter at the same house where teenage Jimmy moved to back in the day. It’s Hunter’s birthday, and he’s there to see his grandpa. Remember him? That warm-and-fuzzy military man from the start of the movie? It’s the same actor from before the time lapse, just with more gray hair. Jimmy greets him with a “sir” upon entering the house. Clearly, they’re still cold and cordial with each other.

Hunter sits on the couch and rips open the boring-and-gray wrapping paper on his birthday present from gramps, which turns out to be a baseball glove. With “no fingers,” to be exact. Jimmy, unamused and getting a glass of water in the kitchen, deadpans that it’s a first baseman’s mitt. An awkward moment when grandpa asks if that’s wrong, because he obviously isn’t in tune with the baseball side of his boys.

Even able to simmer the situation as an 8-year-old, Hunter tells his grandpa that he likes first base, letting him off the hook for getting a glove that is only for one position on the diamond, and not a pitcher’s glove, like his dad. Prompted on his manners by Jimmy, Hunter gives grandpa a hug and thanks him for the gift before he heads out into the yard to play.

Jimmy glances at the plaques and photographs that line the wood-paneling walls and remarks that he didn’t know his dad had those. Mom gave them to him, and Jimmy is quick to verbally hit back at his father with a “she’d be the one to have them.” A couple of things are clear here. One is that it looks like Jimmy’s parents aren’t a couple anymore. Two, the tension between father and son didn’t just disappear once Jimmy reached adulthood. It’s still very much around.

Hangin’ with the fam
Later, we get a glimpse of family life at Hunter’s birthday party, complete with Jimmy’s mother, an old-fashioned ice cream machine and the first sighting of Hunter’s younger sister, Jessica, who blows out the candles before her brother. Typical sibling stuff.

Presumably once the sugar rush hits the kiddos, Jimmy and his mother head down a dirt country road for a leisurely stroll and conversation. She tells her son that he got his a stubborn side from his father, since Jimmy is still holding resentment and blame on his dad after all these years.

“You got your shot at baseball. You got hurt,” his mother says.

She adds that that had nothing to do with his father.

I’d have to dig in a little more to the actual Jim Morris, but this relationship bit with his father feels like it could be a movie thing and not based on truth. I mean, it could very well be true, but the way the storyline progresses between them throughout the movie, it wraps up with a bow.

Coach is back on the mound

Back at another baseball practice – still at the gravel yard while the grass seed comes in on the ball field – Wack mouths off yet again and as a result is told to come in for BP (batting practice) with Jimmy tossing from the mound. And yes, coach is wearing that same Jiffy Lube hat. It’s part of his informal uniform throughout the movie. Wack eggs coach on, wants him to bring the heat.

Cue the musical montage as Jimmy cranks his pitches up a notch, and his players can’t keep up. It’s a compilation of swings and misses from various Owls players, even with the “whoosh” sound effects for their hacks at the air. The music abruptly ends when Wack finally fouls off a pitch. He feels quite encouraged by getting a piece of it.

One thing I noticed here, and it shows up throughout the film when he pitches, is Dennis Quaid’s eyes. They’re laser-focused. He doesn’t blink. He’s so intent on throwing fastball strikes that watching his eyes during the windup is pretty mesmerizing, actually.

Owls win!
Now that the Owls have their bet with the coach, have seen the heat he brings and have a green baseball field for the first time, it’s time to play some baseball. The next sequence offers a montage of baseball, game-action clips on that green field. The Owls finally get a win.

This leads to another musical montage stringing together another game from the Owls. Fans are cheering them on from the bleachers. We’ve reached the part of the movie where we need to move the story along and quickly assign a bunch of wins to the Owls to get them to that all-important district championship game.

Sure enough, the PA announcer proclaims five wins a row for the Owls. Interspersed with the game-action clips from their season, we see close-ups of a bulletin board and Jimmy tacking up newspaper clippings with Owls-related headlines.

As a print reporter, this is great to see. It’s also a bit of a trend in sports movies. Or at least, it’s not the first time I’ve seen it. “A League of Their Own” used newspaper clippings to quickly show the results of the early games of the World Series. I recall the “Mighty Ducks” trilogy used this, too. The camera also uses a variety of shots here, including a nice overhead above home plate as runners score. 

The Rookie commentary, part 1: ‘What kind of baseball do they have? … They don’t.
The Rookie commentary, part 2: ‘There are more important things in life than baseball’

The Rookie commentary, part 3: ‘Yeah dad, bring the heat!’
The Rookie commentary, part 4: ‘You don’t have dreams, you don’t have anything’