Mr. Baseball, a 1992 comedy starring Tom Selleck, was on recently so of course I watched it, even though I must have seen this “fish-out-of-water” film dozens of times.
Similar to the saying about the game itself, whenever you watch, there’s always a chance that you’ll see something you never did before. And it’s true.
Selleck is Jack Elliot, a former All-Star slugger whose reduced productivity has rendered him unwanted by American teams. So he winds up in Japan on the Nagoya Chunichi Dragons, managed by a former legendary slugger. There are all the cliches one might expect: Japanese apartments are too small for big Americans. Team owners are only interested in making profits and saving face. Communication is difficult, etc. Fortunately, there’s another American — the ubiquitous Dennis Haysbert (Major Leagues franchise) as Max Dubois, a Warren Cromartie-type — who shows him the ropes and helps him adjust to the nuances of Japanese baseball.
Towards the end of the film, there’s the familiar “let’s all pull together and win this thing” scene. Of course, they’re playing their dreaded rival and most successful team in Japan, the Tokyo Giants. And of course the manager’s job is on the line. And of course Elliot’s chances of returning to the U.S. hinge upon how he performs, with his agent and an executive of a team that might be interested in signing him sitting in the stands.
It’s late in the season. Because he is on the verge of breaking the home run record set by his crusty manager, opposing pitchers dare not throw Elliot a strike since it would be unacceptable to have a gaijin do so.
With the Dragons trailing in the middle innings, Elliot is hit by a pitch. After some scuffling between the teams because the pitcher was late in tipping his hat as a sign of contrition, a Japanese custom, peace is restored. Dubois hits a single to put runners on first and second. The next batter, Toshi Yamashita, hits a home run to bring the Dragons within a run. Here’s where the ‘seeing something new” comes in.
There’s a shot of the dugout with all the Dragons going wild, including Dubois, who stands in the back swinging a makeshift weighted bat. Kind of hard to do that since he’s still running the bases.
You would have thought someone should have caught that in post-production.
Does it need to be said? Thanks to Elliot’s acceptance of the Japanese way — he bunts, driving home the decisive run while preserving his manager’s sacred record — the Dragons win. I don’t even think that merits a “spoiler alert.”
Just a real quick review of Mr. Baseball. Selleck, a fierce Tigers fan, plays the ugly American well, but his Japanese costars are very wooden as they struggle to express themselves in English. The love story seems superfluous, especially — spoiler alert — when the woman just happens to be the daughter of said crusty manager, thereby adding an extra element of communication issues (surprise: the manager spoke English all along, but never let on, even as Elliot was insulting him and acting out). Maybe that’s why the movie merited just a 6.1 from IMDB and 12 % from Rotten Tomatoes.
And just for fun — and still adhering to the Throwback Thursday theme — here’s an “All-Star Baseball Movie Lineup” from Bleacher Report in 2008 which includes both Jack Elliot and Max Dubois.
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