How "Hardball" Dropped the Ball

Daniel Coyle's 1994 novel "Hardball: A Season in the Projects" was a nonfiction account of a group of Chicago businessmen, Coyle included, who volunteered to coach a little league baseball team in Cabrini-Green, Chicago's most notorious public housing project until its demolition. In telling the story of that eventful season, Coyle alternates between summaries of the team's games and the trials and tribulations of its players and coaches, both on and off the field. Coyle details the effect Cabrini and life within its treacherous high-rises has on the players who reside there, lending context to the coaches' struggles to unite, let alone field, a team that consists of children essentially residing in a war zone.

The Kekambas

I don't often condone critiquing movies based on novels by their faithfulness to the source material, but having read "Hardball" after viewing the movie multiple times, I feel that the filmmakers whiffed on the opportunity to convert an engrossing true story of urban poverty, inner city violence, and the unifying force of baseball into an edgy, engaging, and insightful movie. Instead, they resorted to timeworn cliches and formulaic plotting that resulted in a watered down version of Coyle's
novel.

Now, I understand that film adaptations of books don't need to be dutiful retreads. But, in the case of Hardball, the filmmakers made a series of missteps, and it resulted in a hackneyed tale of personal redemption via sports.

To begin, Keanu Reeves is horribly miscast as the coach, Connor O'Neill. The character in the movie is not a successful professional, but a gambling addict with a drinking problem. Reeves has never  been highly regarded for his emotional range, and here, he attempts to emote with the most gratuitous and distracting hand movements I've ever seen in a movie.

Keanu Reeves, talking with his hands.

The plot: after getting in deep with a couple of nefarious bookies, O'Neill goes to the Wacker Street office of a wealthy friend to beg for the money to pay off his debts. Instead of writing a check, the friend offers O'Neill $500 a week to coach an inner city little league baseball team with him. O'Neill begrudgingly accepts, and thus becomes the head coach of the Kekambas.

The team, of course, is comprised of a ragtag group of kids whose speech is laced with PG-13 profanity, who can't catch or hit, and whose uniforms are vastly inferior to the rest of the teams for no other reason than to remind us of how bad they are. Would you be surprised that the best team in the league has the nicest uniforms, or that they have the league's best hitter, who happens to be at the plate during two crucial at-bats against the Kekembas? Bonus points if you can figure out who comes out on top in these showdowns. An attempt is made to enhance the conflict between these two teams. The opposing head coach is a cartoonish caricature of the overbearing disciplinarian who cares about nothing more than getting his trophy by repeatedly busting players on the Kekambas for petty league rule infractions, but it's so forced that no real tension is produced.

Hardball also suffers from the common underdog sports movie ailment of the team transitioning from utter ineptitude to formidability despite no apparent coaching or strategy that elevates their gameplay. The players simply becomes good because the plot requires the team to appear in the big game at the end. Does Reeves's character know anything about coaching baseball? Aside from a brief scene of him hitting routine grounders and popups to the players, he doesn't provide the team with a lick of baseball insight, advice, or tutelage. Baseball is a complicated game, but you wouldn't know it watching Hardball.

DeWayne Warren as G-Baby

Finally, Hardball's greatest misstep is its focus on the Reeves character. Although he's an established Hollywood star and commanded the largest salary of the cast, more attention needed to be paid to the kids on the team. What are their hopes and dreams? What are their home lives like? We get three perfunctory scenes showing the menace of life in the projects (the movie was filmed at the now demolished ABLA homes on Chicago's west side), but these three brief scenes are all we see of the kids' home lives. We don't get to know any of them on a personal level. The film's most affecting scenes revolve around the death and funeral of the team's youngest player, G-Baby (adorable scene-stealer DeWayne Warren), and they demonstrate how the movie's emotional core should have been centered on the struggles and triumphs of these wonderful kids instead of on the personal redemption of their foolish coach.


I'm well aware that my thoughts may come across as dubious with this disclaimer, but I do not hate Hardball. I own the movie and have watched it several times, and I'll admit that I enjoy a standard underdog sports movie as much as the next person. I enjoy the performances of the child actors, the quirky John Hawkes, the radiant Diane Lane, and G-Baby is one of my all-time favorite movie characters. I love the idea of the pitcher who finds his rhythm through Notorious B.I.G.'s "Big Poppa." Hardball could have been so much more, and whether it's the fault of studio heads, the director, or both, this movie had the chance to transcend its genre instead of being another run-of-the-mill offering.

It's been 15 years since Hardball's release; maybe a remake is in order. If this pipe dream of mine were to come to fruition, I hope whoever decides to tackle it doesn't -- pardon the sports axiom -- drop the ball.