Kickstart Boys Of Summer - Second Base

The Boys of Summer - Second Base, sequel to the award-winning first documentary, began principal photography on March 13, 2014. We need your help. Please visit our kickstarter page and share it with your friends and family.

This also opens up a new phase of research for me. I start each morning with 60-90 minutes on a spin bike. I know what you're thinking: "boring!" Me too. Until I hooked up a little DVD player to the front of the bike and started watching movies as I sweat. It's a great way to make time fly and I literally experience the film differently because of the heightened state of my body during the work out. More on that in other blogs. For today, I bring my first review of what will be exclusively baseball movies over the next few months.

The Final Season

Release date: 2007

Starring: Sean Astin, Powers Boothe, Rachael Leigh Cook

Sometimes a review goes outside in, like a great slider. That’s how this movie works. If you get past the obvious plot devices early on, what starts to emerge are the things that work in many sports movies: overcoming long odds, discovering one’s self, redemption. All those elements are here. And while they may not be put together in the most artful form, the payoff is still resonant and meaningful. There is something about Iowa and baseball and it is captured well here. Perhaps “The Field of Dreams” got there and planted the seed first or most deeply. Perhaps it’s because the state, itself, represents the heartland, kindness and “American values” in so many ways. Maybe it’s corn, farmland and the base of our economy and trade these commodities give us. All these elements provide grounding for what many Americans would like this country to be seen as. Others would argue that this depiction isn’t “the truth” of what America is. I tend to agree with the doubters – but only in so far as a literal depiction is valuable. The problem with “the truth” is it’s subjective. So the minute one person offers it, the next set of eyes is going to change the parameters. Art, and narrative filmmaking as an art, has a great way of getting beyond the literal truth to depict something bigger, more resonant and metaphorical.

While The Final Season doesn’t offer “the truth” about baseball, America or the events it is based on, it offers a certain, specific truth that worked for me. I cared about the outcome. I felt for their triumphs and losses. I was happy they won. And that’s no more a spoiler than telling you the Titanic sunk.