“Look out, Wall Street, I’m coming home!” – Paula Fradkin
Number of Times Seen – 1 (20 Dec 2021)
Brief Synopsis – When a woman tries to get accepted on a professional league baseball team, debates ensue as to whether it should happen or not.
My Take on it – This is a film that I recall seeing as a kid on cable and enjoying the premise.
It has always been in the back of my mind that I wanted to try and see it again, so when the opportunity presented itself, I watched it.
The premsie is quite good but unfortunately, they dont manage to presnet it in a better way.
I’ve seen lots of baseball movies and this is a baseball movie that focuses on the politics of the game instead of the game itself.
The idea that a baseball team can be integrated between the sexes has lots of merit to it, but the story here isn’t shown in a powerful enough way to make it seem more feasible and realistic.
Harry Hamlin as the owner of the team feels out of his league here, as does Mimi Rogers as a sports agent trying to get him to agree to field her client who happens to be a great athlete.
Robyn Barto, a real baseball player plays the lead here, but her character isn’t really developed on anything more than a superficial level and that doesn’t help differentiate her from other when asking the question of why this is the player to integrate baseball as a unisex sport playing together professionally.
The best character is played by Kenneth McMillan as the team manager who wants to try and do what’s bets for the team despite his boss objecting to his idea.
His performance is great here and the only aspects that I didn’t like was how in certain scenes he feared his boss and did things in order to not get fired.
If this film was made today, it would be quite different, but I still give them a lot of credit for trying to make this nearly 40 years ago, even if it doesn’t work well enough.
MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – To promote the film, Robyn Barto threw the first pitch at a Los Angeles Dodgers game. (From IMDB)
Rating – BAFTA Worthy (5/10)
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