A 1994 American Sports Comedy directed by Michael Ritchie that has a disgraced scout (Albert Brooks) finding a troubled but talented baseball player (Brendan Fraser) in Mexico.
The movie also stars Dianne Wiest, Anne Twomey, Lane Smith, Michael Rapaport, Barry Shabaka Henley, J. K. Simmons, John Capodice, Art Garfield.
It was released on September 30, 1994.
Tropes for the film:
- Artistic License – Sports:
- First of all, a scout is just that: goes around scouting talent and reporting back to the team. This could be either an advance scout who watches opposing teams to help the manager establish his strategy against an upcoming opponent, and scouts analyzing prospects or free agents on whether the team should consider approaching them. He would not himself be the go-between for signing players, which would instead involve the team's owners and either the prospect or his agent.
- The young pitcher at the start of the film, Tommy Lacy, as a kid with no professional experience, would never have jumped right into the major leagues unless the team's ownership and management was utterly incompetent or dangerously impatient to see a return on the signing (there are real-life examples, but they are few and far between). He would have been started in the Minor Leagues first, and played his way up through the farm system precisely because of his unknown quality (in Real Life, highly-touted prospects more often than not fizzle out before they even reach the Majors). For the same reason it's incredibly unlikely that Nebraska would have pitched his very first professional game in the World Series.
- After the bidding war on Steve Nebraska, the other teams are able to force an agreement that he can only pitch if the Yankees make the World Series. However, other teams do not get to dictate such terms. Al also promises to Steve he doesn't have to pitch until then, but this leads to another problem: For a player to be eligible to play in the postseason at the time the film was made, he had to be on the team's 40-man roster at the close of the regular season. Which means unless the Yankees allowed Nebraska to take up a spot despite not playing, he shouldn't have even been eligible to pitch.
- The game at the climax is played in Yankee Stadium, An American League ballpark. At the time of the film, the American League had the Designated Hitter rule, in which the pitcher does not bat, and the National League did not, requiring pitchers to hit. The rule did allow teams to waive their DH and allow the pitcher to bat instead, but this almost never happened. note It's never happened in a postseason game, and will almost certainly never happen in the future because the NL adopted the Dh in 2022.
- The Cameo: sports commentators Bob Costas, Tim McCarver, and singer Tony Bennett appear as themselves in the film.
- Improbable Sports Skills: There's an utterly ridiculous scene in which Steve Nebraska 1) pitches a perfect game (possible if extremely difficult-there's only been 23 in MLB's 218,000+ game history.) 2) by striking out every batter, 27 in total (ridiculous, as no pitcher has ever struck out more than 20 batters in a game and more than 15 strikeouts is pretty uncommon) 3) on the minimum 81 pitches (about a billion times more unlikely than the 27 strikeouts).
- Tagline: "If you pray hard enough for a miracle...miracles can really happen!".
