Knox and the team owner Murphy have a little chat in the next scene. For some odd reason, one I really didn’t realize until now, they’re meeting in one of the upper deck seating areas in the stadium. Rather than, I don’t know, one of the offices that I’m sure they both have at the park. Maybe it was a movie thing, because having the stadium as a backdrop is more exciting to look at than an office.
“I can’t win with these guys,” Knox says, as he starts to
raise his voice. “Nobody can. There’s a thing called talent. They don’t have
it.”
Murphy tells him that it’s not Cincinnati, so nobody expects
him to win with this team. There’s some unpacking here. What’s the deal with Cincinnati?
Is that where Knox managed before? And what does that comment about this Angels
team mean? Is this a rebuilding year?
If it is, Knox isn’t having it, saying he came to manage a
winning baseball team. Murphy, spewing that cowboy stuff, calls him “partner,”
and says “you’ll ride through the dark days.” Well. I don’t know about Knox,
but that seems pretty reassuring to me.
Postgame show
Next up, Knox has a postgame interview with Ranch Wilder, via TV this time,
down on the field. This seems rather odd and out of place. Either way, I guess
he’s getting his exercise, first the wrestling match on the mound, tossing over
the snack table, jogging up the upper-deck stairs to meet with Murphy and now
back down on the field for an interview.
Showing again how Ranch and Knox have some past beef, Ranch
starts right in off-camera, poking Knox by saying the commissioner’s fine will
be “pretty hefty” for the ejection. Thanks, captain obvious. Of course, he’s
going to get fined.
Knox pulls out some dark shades for the interview, looking
stoic and calm for a task I’m sure he’s annoyed with after a bad loss. Ranch
annoys sports reporters everywhere when he starts with a non-question in which
he might as well have said “tell me about…” but goes with a statement of “tough
loss today.”
“Any loss is hard,” says Knox, super calm and… wow, what a
hilarious delivery. Very insightful as well.
Ranch and Knox can’t play nice
Ranch dives in with his response to offer the viewers more context into Knox
and his history: “But this one really got to you. You leave Cincinnati after 10
years of winning ball clubs, although the really big one always seemed to be
just out of reach.”
Got it. Knox had success with the Reds and apparently didn’t
win a World Series. Ranch goes on to say that there were high expectations on
Knox to turn this Angels club around, but that’s not happening. Again, not
exactly a professional moment for Ranch, especially if he works for the team.
Knox can’t take it anymore. It’s OK for him to
badmouth his team, but he’s certainly not going to allow Ranch to slander the
fellas, telling him the season’s only half over. Knox gets right up in Ranch’s
face, taking off his glasses as he does this, one-handed, because this is the
movies, after all. Ranch reminds him the Angels are in last place.
“You outta know how one incident can change the course of
events,” Knox says. Oh yeah, you can cut the Ranch-Knox tension with a knife.
Ranch responds with some lame stuff about wrong place-wrong
time. The dialogue, still on the air, isn’t all that exciting, but they are face-to-face.
Professional-producer gal shifts the camera guy to color-guy standing with a
microphone and trying to wrap it up. The movie cam pans back to Ranch as he
tries to save the interview, but Knox is feeling feisty today, and he slugs
Ranch in the face, dropping him to the ground like a sack of potatoes.
Color-guy tries to save the day as Knox walks away. FSNorth
postgame shows are nothing like this nonsense.
Cat brains with food coloring
Back at the foster home, Maggie feeds the boys dinner, including a new
character, Miguel, who’s a little older in his teenage years than Roger. He
makes a comment about how the Angels never win, causing Roger to visibly scoff
as he moves his fork around his plate. J.P. is the little optimist and thinks
they could win before uttering “it could happen” for the second time.
“Yeah, and you could drop dead after dinner. With food
poisoning,” Miguel taunts J.P. as the little boy’s mouth literally drops open
in shock.
Maggie waves some mouthwatering Jell-O around in a plastic
Tupperware container for dessert. Miguel is clearly only around to be an
instigator and says it’s actually cat brains with food coloring, adding that
Maggie kills the cats at night and does this all to save money. Roger is in a
mood and aggressively tells him to “shut up!” Children’s-movie alert: Maggie
will not have those words uttered in her house.
At bedtime, Maggie walks around the bunk-bed-filled room
collecting clothes for the laundry as she goes through the verbal checklist
with the boys to see if they brushed their teeth, washed their faces, said
their prayers, and, for some reason, picked the lint from between their toes.
After she leaves the room, Miguel and Roger mention one item
they didn’t do before J.P., cuddling a teddy bear, asks what lint is, causing
Miguel to call him a “butthead” and also tell him to shut up. Such harsh words
for a children’s movie! They’re tucked in sleeping bags, and Miguel takes a
shot at Maggie being “too old to bend over and tuck in sheets.” Roger defends
her, saying she has a lot to do.
Miguel fires one last verbal shot at J.P. before the young
lad says he’ll pray that Miguel meet a nice family before “it could happen”
instance No. 3 of the movie.
Did you say your prayers?
Roger, on the top bunk above J.P., stares out the high window by his bed and gazes at the night sky of stars. The visit from his dad is no doubt still weighing on him from earlier.
Roger offers up a prayer:
“God. If there is a God. If you’re a man, or a woman. If
you’ll listen. I’d really, really like a family. My dad says that’ll only
happen if the Angels win the pennant. The baseball team, I mean. So, maybe you
could help them a little. Amen. … A-woman, too.”
It breaks your heart a little as a star shines brighter in
the sky.
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