Setting Their Sights on Second Place

For some reason I thought Little Big League was on Disney + and I was in the mood for '90s baseball movies, but it's not. Rookie of the Year is, but like hell I'm gonna watch a movie about the fucking Chicago Cubs not being hapless stumblebums.

Anyway, I was thinking about '90s baseball movies, and it occurred to me that almost none of them end with the team winning the World Series. Major League ends with Cleveland beating New York in a one-game playoff to decide who wins the AL East. Then we find out in the sequel they were swept in the ALCS by the White Sox.

Pour one out for the days when the White Sox were considered a credible enough championship contender to be the bullies in a typical sports movie.

And Major League II ends with Cleveland beating Chicago in the ALCS rematch, which gets them to the World Series. We don't know what happened next, but given their track record over the last 25 years (being the only team the Atlanta Braves actually beat in the World Series, losing to the garbage-ass Florida Marlins, letting the Cubs break their curse), they probably lost to the Padres or someone like that.

Rookie of the Year I'm pretty sure has the Cubs beating the Mets to win the NL East, which just gets them in the playoffs. In Little Big League the Twins lose the one-game playoff against Seattle, because Ken Griffey Jr.'s body hadn't completely broken down in the mid-90s. I'm pretty sure Angels in the Outfield ended with the Angels just getting in the playoffs. At best, they might have won the ALCS.

Oh man, I went to see that movie in theaters with my grandmother. To be fair, she was a very religious lady, so the range of movies she would agree to attend with me was pretty limited. But it was still my idea, because it probably sounded like a cool movie concept. Because I was an idiot.

The only '90s baseball movie I can remember where the team does win the World Series is The Scout, which I recall being widely panned by everyone. Understandably, since whoever made the movie thought it would be a great idea to have Brendan Fraser's character play for the Yankees. No one wants to watch a movie that ends with the goddamn New York Yankees winning the World Series. That is the complete antithesis of the point of sports movies.  You don't need a movie about that, because it already happened 20-some odd times by that point.

I mean, I hate the Mets and wish nothing but ill upon the Pond Scum, but at least they could be a credible underdog franchise, since they'd gone back in the toilet where they belong by the mid-90s.

It's kind of strange that all these movies stop short of the ultimate goal. And not just one step short, usually a couple of steps. I don't know if the writers/directors thought winning the whole thing was too farfetched, or they were holding it back in hopes of a sequel, or what.

The only other conclusion I could come to was, an underdog sports movie usually requires a final boss to be overcome. The team that trounces them repeatedly. Because there wasn't interleague play in the early '90s, that team couldn't be one they'd face in the World Series. And with no wild card, teams have to win their division, and the other teams in their division are the ones they play most. So a divisional opponent made for the most natural rival. Doesn't really explain the ones where they lose, but I guess it's a "life goes on", "there's always next year" lesson.

That lesson never made much of an impression on me, I guess.