Bread-and-Butter Pitch: Costner returns to the ballpark in 'For Love of the Game'

On the road in New York, visiting baseball player Billy Chapel (Kevin Costner) charms freelance writer Jane Aubrey (Kelly Preston).


On a pivotal day in his life

      To paraphrase phantom New York Met Chico Escuela (alias Garrett Morris), "Saturday Night Live's" Weekend Update sports correspondent of the '70s, baseball been bery, bery good to Kevin Costner.
      After all, two of Costner's biggest critical and commercial hits celebrate the shimmering green diamond.
      Never mind that "Field of Dreams" does so with haunting reverence and "Bull Durham" with hilarious irreverence -- both adore the game with unreserved heart and soul.
      So does "For Love of the Game."
      But this last -- and least -- chapter in Costner's informal baseball trilogy signals it may be time for Costner to find a new cinematic pastime.
      Far from a bottom-of-the-ninth, clear-the-bases, touch-'em-all triumph, "For Love of the Game" isn't even a stand-up double.
      It's more like a smattering of bloop singles -- enough to get a few players on base, but hardly sufficient to spark a big inning.
      Yet there's no mistaking the movie's earnest, crowd-pleasing aims. "For Love of the Game" wants us all to love the game of baseball -- and the game of life -- and tries mightily to earn our affection.
      As mighty Casey discovered during that final at-bat for the ill-fated Mudville Nine, however, swinging for the fences doesn't always win the game for the home team.
      It's ironic that these batting analogies suit "For Love of the Game" so well.
      That's because it centers not on a hitter but a pitcher, an aging acolyte of the church of baseball appropriately named Billy Chapel (Costner).
      A perennial all-star heading into the late innings, Chapel has been the symbol -- and soul -- of the Detroit Tigers for his entire major-league career.
      Not that it's much consolation, with the Tigers in last place and a road series against the Yankees, poised to clinch their latest pennant, looming on the schedule.
      His team may not be at a crossroads, but Chapel certainly is.
      For one thing, the team's longtime owner (an appropriately mournful Brian Cox) is selling the team -- and the new owners, as their first order of business, may put him on the trading block.
      Then there's that ominous twinge in his shoulder -- which he manages to hide from everyone but his worrywart catcher, Gus Sinski (appealingly grizzled John C. Reilly), whom Chapel dubs "the ugliest wife in the league."
      Chapel has no wife, of course -- he's too devoted to the game and good times for that.
      But he does have a girlfriend, Jane Aubrey (pretty, perky Kelly Preston), a New York magazine writer who's just informed him she's leaving for a London editing job -- in part, because Chapel doesn't need her to complete his life.
      Suddenly, the pitching mound at Yankee Stadium seems even lonelier than it did before.
      Especially when Chapel finds himself in "the zone" -- and on track, inning by precarious inning, to pitch a perfect game.
      Like its source -- the posthumously published novella by Michael Shaara, a Pulitzer Prize-winner for the Gettysburg tale "The Killer Angels" -- "For Love of the Game" traces Chapel's quest for temporary perfection, flashing back and forth in time, interspersing action on the field with Chapel's memories of life off the mound.
      Unlike its source, however, the movie version doesn't believe in the power of restraint.
      Replacing the original's lean, stream-of-consciousness prose, screenwriter Dana Stevens (who transformed the soaring "Wings of Desire" into the bathetic "City of Angels") wallows in sloppy sentiment that's cornier than anything you'd ever find in "Field of Dreams' " Iowa locale.
      Blending connect-the-dots plotting that obliterates much chance for suspense, Stevens also clogs "For Love of the Game" with the kind of florid, achingly sincere dialogue no one could ever hope to utter convincingly. (Not even play-by-play guru Vin Scully, who announces the movie's make-believe game.)
      And director Sam Raimi, who helmed last year's spare, gripping "A Simple Plan," shows with "For Love of the Game" that he's only as good as the script he's got to work with.
      Slogging through sappy romantic complications with dutiful resignation, Raimi's vibrant visual style seems to spring to life intermittently -- but especially when "For Love of the Game" concentrates on the game, where the sights and sounds come alive with striking clarity, thanks to director of photography John Bailey's crisp camera work, and imaginative visual and sound effects.
      Alas, they're not much help as Chapel and Jane vacillate over their on-again, off-again game of love.
      It doesn't help that Costner and Preston generate only low-wattage sparks -- or that Costner still seems stuck in the emotionally flat funk that helped to sink "Message in a Bottle."
      But at least there are times when "For Love of the Game" lets Costner play to his strength: his easy, loose-limbed athleticism.
      Always an actor who's more compelling -- and more convincing -- in action than acting, Costner's Chapel conveys not only a jock's swaggering self-confidence but a champion's desperate pride.
      It may be for the last time, but Chapel knows he's got to go the distance -- to borrow a "Field of Dreams" catch phrase. And somehow, Costner does too.
      Like the game it glorifies, "For Love of the Game" doesn't always offer nonstop, riveting diversion. But it has its moments of suspense, its moments of grandeur, even its moments of grace.
      If only there were a few more of them to liven up the proceedings -- because, unlike our counterparts at the old ballgame, we movie audiences don't get a seventh-inning stretch.
     
      Review
     
      Movie: "For Love of the Game"
      Running time: 137 minutes
      Rating: PG-13; profanity, sexual situations
      Verdict: C
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