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Billy Chapel (Kevin Costner) is having a bad day. His girlfriend Jane (Kelly Preston, stunning as ever) says she's leaving, and his boss (Brian Cox) says he's selling the business and ace employee Billy may be out of job. Sounds like business as usual for an old-fashioned veteran. However, the business is baseball and for Billy Chapel, the 40-year old former all-star for the Detroit Tigers, it means his career--and his life--is at a crossroads.

Although it is no Bull Durham, For Love of the Game finds a solid and very believable role for Costner. The film is based on Michael Shaara's (The Killer Angels) stream-of-consciousness novel (the rough manuscript was found after his death 1988). The entire film takes place on Billy's day on the mound against the Yankees, a meaningless late-season game for the Tigers, but everything for Billy. In flashbacks, he lingers over his long relationship with Jane and his baseball career (from World Series heroism to a career-threatening injury). His one viable link to the game at hand is his catcher, played winningly by John C. Reilly. Costner, like Chapel, is looking for one more great performance, but the film is too simplistic and loopy at times to resonate. The love story has an extra helping of cuteness, and legendary baseball announcer Vin Scully nearly takes on a leading role, waxing grandiloquent. It's no grand slam, but a solid double. --Doug Thomas
Customer Review: Kevin Baseball
Costner has made about 5 or 6 good movies, and three of them are about baseball. Bull Durham is the comedy, Field of Dreams is the spiritual, but For Love of the Game is the more realistic of the bunch. Billy Chapel (Costner) is an aging veteran pitcher for a bad Detroit team in the twilight of his career who must decide on retirement, or accepting a trade. The movie takes place over the course of just 1 game, with back flashes of his relationship with Jane (Kelly Preston). The movie touches on the celebrity of athletes, and the difficulties of having a normal relationship. I personally thought that the underlying theme was about choosing between a career or a relationship, but I'm sure it was probably deeper than that. I have always thought that Costner was a bit of a ham who takes himself way too seriously, and while at times in this movie he tends to fall into that role, Billy Chapel is more of an understated character, and Costner is by far at his best when he plays that kind of role.
Customer Review: For The Love of the Game
Kevin Costner gives a very compelling performance as a baseball player at the end of his career. He is very realistic in the role and brings thought provoking issues to light. How do you decide to hang up your glove and leave a game that has been the most important thing in your life? It was great that he could personally do the pitching in this movie because it would have lost a lot of the realism and credibility if they had to use someone else.

Chicago "Black Sox Scandal" of 1919 shook baseball to its core and almost ruined the game. Sportswriter Ring Lardner was at the heart of the story and reported regularly on the subsequent trial and banning of the eight players involved. The case shook Lardner's belief in the game and robbed baseball of one of its greatest early writers.

Adapting from Eliot Asinof baseball classic 8 men out, director John Sayles put Lardner back into the baseball and literary spotlight during the 1988 hollywood film Eight Men Out. The movie included some big name talent, including John Cusack and John Mahoney (of many films and later Frasier fame). Sayles, himself an actor, played Lardner, who quickly figured out something was amiss behind the scenes of the Chicago White Sox. Strong reviews from strong media outlets and critics such as the New York Times Janet Maslin ("story of boyish enthusiam gone bad in an all too grown-up world, Eight Men Out represents a home run.") gave this movie its preverbal legs and is now considered a classic amongst baseball film buffs.

Ring began his sports writing career in South Bend, writing for both the South Bend Tribune & the South Bend Times. He moved to Chicago and wrote for the Chicago Inter-Ocean, the Chicago Examiner and finally the Chicago Examiner. After bouncing around for a few years, including taking time off to work on the fictional book You Know Me Al, Larnder returned to Chicago and resumed writing for the Tribune.

This leads us into the scandal itself. The official story goes like this: Many players within the Chicago White Sox organization were upset with the pay and negotiation tactics of the Sox owner, Charles Comiskey. When Joseph Sullivan approached White Sox first baseman Arnold Gandil on the behalf of New York mobster Arnold Rothstein the timing was right. Gandil was able to gather seven other players (thus brining to the total to eight) to throw games vs the Cinncinati Reds in the 1919 World Series. For this the players were promised $100,000 total.

Ring Lardner wrote pieces for the Tribune after the series hinting and reporting the rumors floating around the majors at the time, that the players may have been "on the take". He continued with his stories and eventually major league baseball began to look into these assertions. After the owners appointed a new commissioner in Judge Kenesaw Mountin Landis the case was tried in a court of law. After a trial that was riddled with news coverage and most likely affected by public opinion, the players were acquitted. Judge Landis saw things another way however, as he proceeded to ban all eight players that were involved in the scandal.

After the scandal of the 1919 Black Sox played itself out, Lardner continued to cover baseball until he retired from the Tribune. According to biographies, while Ring did cover the sport, he did begin subtly questioning the happenings and outcomes of games. Ring Lardner passed at the age of 48 due to complications from tuberculosis in 1933.

Ring Lardner's all-time classic baseball book "You Know Me Al" and others can be downloaded for free at http://www.baseballebooks.com, your source for public domain and new Free Baseball Ebooks in PDF & Kindle Format

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