The Rookie commentary, part 3: ‘Yeah dad, bring the heat!’

Quick-cut to sprinklers popping up at ground level on a luscious football field full of crisp, green grass. Then the camera pans over to the school’s baseball field, which is very clearly a pile of dirt without any green to be found. Score another touchdown for the football tally.

With 10 players on the Owls high school baseball team practicing on the sub-par surface, coach Morris says they’re “waiting for the grass seed to take.” The players aren’t buying it, and one remarks about how the school’s football field “looks like Tiger Woods’ backyard.” There’s a timely reference for golf fans in the early 2000s.

At the end of practice, the team’s catcher, Joel, takes off his gear and asks his coach if he wants to throw. See, the catcher lets him know that he’s seen Jimmy tossing the ball at the old legion field at night; it’s no secret. Joel tries to sweeten the deal by saying that it helps to have someone to throw to, so the coach obliges. Hunter is also here, by the way. It’s subtly clear that he loves baseball just as much as his dad and is a young team manager, of sorts; Hunter’s busy putting the equipment away in the dugout.

Coach brings it 
Jimmy goes out to throw to his catcher, still wearing that Jiffy Lube hat and red shirt. When asked, he says he threw 85-86 mph back in the day. Then he adds that he “promised too many doctors” that he wouldn’t throw a “real” pitch anymore. That doesn’t stop the encouragement from the catcher and Hunter to get him to try anyway.

“Yeah dad, bring the heat!”

Who can resist that?


via GIPHY

So, Jimmy fires one into the catcher’s mitt, producing a “whoa” from Hunter and then a happy, 360-degree twirl in the dugout. Then it’s a little montage of pitches from Jimmy, in slow-motion with sound effects of his arm movement and the smack of the ball in the catcher’s glove. Joel is also quite impressed. When he’s finished, Jimmy asks to keep it between them, and that goes for Hunter not telling his mother either, “because I said so.”

Leaving school that night, a custodian tells Jimmy that he knows why the grass isn’t growing on the baseball field. The custodian flips the switch for the field lights to reveal a small group of deer eating away at the seed. It’s a nightly visit for three or four deer, apparently. Mark down another tally under the football column as Jimmy makes a crack about all the “big budget money they got.” Texas really loves its football.

Throwing ‘real’ BP to the Owls
Jimmy must not be able to contain his excitement about his pitching, or want to keep secrets, because while drinking wine on the porch with his wife that night, he tells her: “I threw today.” He also promises her that he’ll stop if his arm starts to hurt, but he must have touched a nerve because she abruptly gets up to go check on the kids. Stay tuned.

Back at baseball practice, Coach Morris ends up throwing batting practice because of some flimsy movie excuse that their pitcher, Rudy, is in the locker room looking for a shoe or something. Basically, the writers wanted to find a way to get Jimmy on the mound in front of his whole team. The players laugh and mock him, especially when the first kid up – nicknamed Wack, who’s cocky right out of the gate – crushes a pitch for an obvious home run.

Coach and the catcher make eye contact and silently agree that he should throw a “real” pitch now, if only to shut up Wack, probably. So, he does, and it draws a “What was that?” from a bewildered Wack as his teammates start to laugh in disbelief as the loudmouth getting schooled for a pitch.

Want the grass to grow? It’s all about that flow
We’re back to the old guys playing games (poker this time) in town, Henry asks Jimmy about a bunch of job applications he’s sent out. It seems like another throwaway scene, where the movie wants to let the audience know that perhaps Jimmy is looking elsewhere for work. Remember this plot point for later.

The other part of the scene has the fellas asking Jimmy about the problem with the baseball-field grass. Henry tells the coach he’ll have the field looking greener than Dublin on St. Patrick’s Day if Jimmy can keep his players off the field for the next three weeks. More on that later, too.

The Owls are finally in action playing a ball game, but unfortunately, they drop their season opener. The game ends with Rudy caught looking at the plate to finish off with a strikeout. He and the rest of the team look pretty dejected.

At a local barbershop, Cal – who’s one of the guys in the old-guys’ club, plus apparently a barber and also the public address announcer for the Owls games – is serving a customer when Henry and the other old fella come into the shop and start sweeping hair into bags and take it with them. Curious, but you can guess that this has something to do with their plan to fix up the baseball field. A little later, we’ll see the trio spreading this human hair on the ball field to keep the deer away from the grass seed.

Interesting tactic. Let’s see if it works.

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 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.

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

I had such a fun time watching and writing a commentary for one of my favorite movies, “A League of Their Own,” this spring that I decided to give it a go with another baseball movie. Yes, I’ve broken down another baseball flick: Disney’s “The Rookie.” Look for another 14-parter! 

Sticking to what I know, apparently, “The Rookie” is another movie about baseball based on a true story. So I guess that means I have a type for my commentaries, at least up until this point. Also, I have to make sure that I’m thinking of the baseball movie here, instead of one of my favorite TV dramas the past couple of years on ABC, also titled “The Rookie.” Nathan Fillion is still a stud though.  

A disclaimer to let my loyal readers know that I can pretty much guarantee that I haven’t seen “The Rookie” film as many times as “A League of Their Own.” I don’t keep track, but I’m sure it’s not even close.

Basics on the real-life Morris

This kid-friendly Disney flick was released in 2002 and based on the story of lefthanded pitcher, Jim Morris, who played for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in 1999 and 2000 at the ripe old age of 35 and 36 years old. The relief pitcher tossed 15 innings across 21 games in the big leagues, walking 9 while striking out 13. He gave up 13 hits and 8 earned runs among the 69 batters he faced.

This all happened years after he was drafted by the Brewers in 1982 as a young stud. But injuries got in the way and derailed his career (He never got past single-A ball.) until he got another shot, eventually making his MLB debut Sept. 18, 1999. I learned from a behind-the-scenes feature on the DVD that one of the movie’s producer’s, Mark Ciardi, who played with the Brewers, played ball with the real-life Jim Morris back in the day.

Also, the real Jim Morris in this behind-the-scenes feature sported a thin mustache as a player. I wonder why that wasn’t incorporated into the movie with Dennis Quaid?

At any rate, let’s dive into Jimmy’s story, as it’s told by Disney.

A story from Big Lake, Texas

The movie opens letting us know it’s a Walt Disney Pictures flick that’s based on a true story. It starts out with a male narrator’s voice sharing a story about Texas. It goes a little something like this:

There’s a story told in the town of Big Lake, Texas. A story of the town’s beginnings. It’s the story of the Santa Rita No. 1, birthplace of West Texas Oil. Now, as with most Texas legends, there was a man who thought oil was right beneath his feet. And as with most such stories, no one else believed him.  

Except in this case for two nuns, who in 1923 met the man and believed so much in him and his dream that they invested money no one knew they had. Now, when the nuns told their parish priest about the man’s dream and their investment in it, now, he counseled them to try and get their money back. Sheepishly, they admitted that it was too late, that the money was already spent. Well, the priest, he sighed, shook his head, and offered just one small bit of advice: ‘Bless the site with rose petals, and invoke the help of Saint Rita, patron saint of impossible dreams.’ And while the workers waited for the oil that would eventually come, they played baseball. 

In a movie touch, the baseball from an old-time scene is popped up and then magically lands in the ball glove of a teenage boy who’s playing out in the snow and clearly in a more modern time period. 

The kid from "Genius."

Right away when seeing this film, I noticed the actor, Trevor Morgan, starred in the Disney Channel Original Movie “Genius.” A little millennial note for my fellow 90s kids right there. 

Typed script across the screen sets the scene in Groton, Conn. Obviously, with all that snow on the ground, it didn’t seem like we were in Texas anymore. We’re introduced to our main character right away, as this young lad with the baseball plays public-address announcer to himself, muttering that it’s the first game in the big leagues, and Jimmy Morris has a no-hitter going. Naturally.

It must be a friend of his who’s catching Jimmy’s tosses, and it’s clear this boy isn’t as excited about playing baseball outside during winter. He tells Jimmy to not throw the ball so hard because his hands are cold. Another pitch and the friend announces he’s “waiting until spring” (good call, pal) and heads inside, leaving a dejected Jimmy all alone. Just then, Jimmy’s mother yells outside to Jimmy: “Your father and I need to talk to you.” That becomes a recurring line as we quickly learn that Jimmy’s dad is in the Navy and they’ll be moving to Virginia. Jimmy’s mom remarks that “maybe it won’t snow so much in Virginia.” I like the way she thinks.

That father-son relationship though 

Next, we see young Jimmy throwing a baseball against a chain-link fence out in the pouring rain (a bit of foreshadowing for later) in Roanoke, Va. Then his mother offers that same line about needing to talk to him, and just as quickly the family is relocated to Hollywood, Fla. Where, this time, Jimmy is on the pitcher’s mound for a youth team.

Wearing a gray uniform with Falcons across the front in orange lettering and No. 10 on the back, Jimmy strikes out a batter. Next, he’s riding his bike onto a military base and enters a garage where his dad is working at a desk. His father, clearly established as a man with an all-business mentality, barely looks up from his work as Jimmy comes over and proudly tells his pop that he had 13 strikeouts in the game. Immediately, dad asks if he won, and Jimmy nods, sadly. Amazing – 13 strikeouts and all dad cares about is the W.

Continuing to ruin the moment, dad then tells Jimmy there’s a chance he may re-station (again) in three weeks to West Texas. Jimmy pleads his case for staying put, saying he has half the baseball season to play. He even offers a suggestion that he could stay with another family instead, but dad abruptly cuts him off, saying the family moves together and adds that he doesn’t have a choice.

Jimmy, resigned to the fact that he’ll have to move once again, has one question: “What kind of baseball do they have?” Dad responds: “They don’t.”

Man, pops just keeping hitting ‘em out of the park here. Completely dejected, Jimmy walks away without saying goodbye and then breaks into a run out of the garage.