Culture Junkie: On loving and hating ‘Love of the Game’

I have a problem.

One of my favorite baseball movies of all time is also among my least favorite movies of all time. I know that sounds contradictory. But if you’ve ever seen “For Love of the Game,” you’ll know what I mean.

Directed by Sam Raimi (“Spiderman,” “Evil Dead”), based on a posthumously-published novel by Michael Shaara (“The Killer Angels”), and starring Kevin Costner, 1999’s “For Love of the Game” is actually two movies in one — and only one of them is worth watching.

The central character is Billy Chapel, a legendary but aging pitcher for the Detroit Tigers. He’s fading, and is about to be traded to the San Francisco Giants, clearly a demotion of ego-crippling dimensions.

By the way, in the book, Billy plays for the fictional Atlanta Hawks, and why the movie couldn’t have left it that way, I have no idea, because fictional baseball team names are the best. Along with the Hawks, my favorites are The Mudville Nine (from the poem “Casey at the Bat”), The New York Knights (“The Natural”), the St. Louis Ebony Aces (“The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings”), the New York Mammoths (“Bang the Drum Slowly”) and the Springfield Isotopes “The Simpsons”).

But back to the movie.

Primarily set during a single season-ending game against the Yankees, the best stuff in “For Love of the Game” is all about Billy, muttering away out on the pitchers’ mound, grinding through what could be the final game of his career, as he ultimately recognizes that he might be within striking distance (pun intentional) of a perfect game. These scenes are absolutely thrilling, with Costner weathered and convincing as an athlete summoning up every bit of skill he has left, so he can leave it all out on that field, one last time.

I love every second of those scenes.

Even the Dodgers’ Trevor Bauer has gone on record to say “For Love of the Game” is among his favorite baseball movies (along with “Bull Durham” and “The Sandlot”).

Unfortunately, there is all this other stuff in Costner’s movie.

By other stuff, I mean the flashbacks.

While facing down batter after batter, fighting hard against fatigue and old injuries, and frequently engaging in amusing signal-exchanges with his catcher (the awesome John C. Reilly), Billy keeps flashing back to his relationship with a much-younger, baseball-hating freelance writer played by the late Kelly Preston (“SpaceCamp,” “Jerry Maguire”). The actor passed away last summer of cancer, and I mean no disrespect to her memory when I say her performance in this film is not what she will, or should be, remembered for. Every scene between Preston and Costner is agonizing. These flashbacks are not just badly acted. They are badly written and poorly plotted, their characters so increasingly selfish and shallow and unlikable the movie founders and sinks under the weight of so much badness, and blandness, and boredom and B.S.

And yet, those other scenes, the baseball scenes, are so good! Over the years, whenever I’ve stumbled upon this movie while surfing TV channels, I’ve found myself wishing someone would come along and put together an alternate edit in which only the scenes in the ballpark existed.

Costner’s Billy Chapel self-pityingly drinking himself into a stupor because his girlfriend missed a booty call? Deleted. Preston’s passive-aggressive neediness and flip-floppingly incoherent demands? Deleted. Costner’s callous insults and juvenile man-boy narcissism? Deleted. Both actors barely even attempting to fake they have any attraction to each other, a problem so cinematically crippling that whenever Preston and Costner actually do force themselves to kiss it feels creepy, disturbing and gross?

Deleted.

Now that would be great movie.

For what it’s worth, in the book - an unpublished draft of which was discovered among Shaara’s writings after his death - those chemistry-free relationship scenes are slightly, but only slightly, less interminable.

At the start of the current baseball season - in which the Giants are playing so well they would absolutely destroy the Atlanta Hawks, with or without Billy Chapel on the mound - I found myself thinking a lot about “For Love of the Game.” That’s the problem. Those pitching scenes are so well done they’ve become part of the way I look at baseball, and now, whenever I see an actual major league baseball game, at least once or twice, for a few seconds, I think of Billy Chapel psyching himself up, telling himself “This is gonna hurt a little” before throwing an excruciating curveball, coaxing and cajoling and tough-loving himself through pitch after pitch after pitch.

It’s one of those times where my love of baseball movies makes watching a real baseball game better - rather than the other way around.

And it’s certainly not because a European orchestra with an Oscar-winning composer at the podium starts blaring out rousing anthems every time the score gets tight and the bases are loaded (every baseball movie ever).

A pitcher hoping to throw a strike, or a batter trying for a home run, or a center fielder running backwards as fast as he can with his mitt raised in the air and a high fly ball coming his way are dramatic because doing those things are hard. Heck, to most of us, they are impossible. Such moments are dramatic because sometimes those players will succeed but sometimes they will fail. And that’s life. That’s our life. Those of us watching baseball on TV or up in the stands might not be able to do a fraction of what those players do, but every one of us has experienced some version of that chest-filling thrill of success and that soul-crushing pain of failure.

And yes, “Rhubarb,” the aforementioned baseball cat movie, is an actual film.

A couple of months ago, Will Leitch — a writer for Major League Baseball’s official website — published a list of what he believes are the 25 best baseball movies of all time. At the top of his list, in the No. 1 spot, is “Bull Durham.” Many of the other films I’ve name-dropped above are on the list, along with “The Bad News Bears,” which would most likely be the choice of the Argus-Courier’s sports editor Johnie Jackson.

In the last spot, at No. 25, is “For Love of the Game.”

In his description, Leitch mentions the movie as one of Costner’s three baseball-themed films, and says, “This is definitely the worst of them, but still has its moments. I will think about it every time a veteran pitcher takes a no-hitter late into the game, for the rest of my life.”

Me too, Will. Me too.

Now if only we could do something about all the other parts.

“Culture Junkie” runs every other week in the Argus-Courier. You can reach David at david.templeton@arguscourier.com.