Zeit der Sieger

I thought this was an excellent movie for families to enjoy together.It is one of hope and excitement of imagination and of life.The direction and the cinematography was really beautifully captured and the era of the early 1900's were shown so realistically. The story follows young Joe Shosak,who is a poor and frustrated 9 year old baseball player and son who just can't seem to find any luck on the field and off.His big break comes in shape of a vintage baseball card of Honus Wagner , mysteriously he is sucked back in time and is in the body of a 25 year old version of himself and winds up face to face with Wagner and his Pirates at the World Series, Pittsburgh 1908.He then befriends and begins to follow Honus and his boys,he meets a devilish Ty Cobb and is faced with many exciting and comedic situations. The acting was genuine by all the cast.Matthew Modine is a great Wagner,playing him with a wink and smile,his love interest is played charmingly by Kristen Davis,and I especially enjoyed the endearing performance of Ryan Hollyman as the nervous pitcher. I would strongly recommend this movie to all who enjoy baseball and good old fashion family movies.

"The Winning Season" is a nice family movie whose plot seems to be a mix between two classic from the 1980's and even includes a similar "choose love or game" theme just like as "For the Love of Game". Here a kid (Mark Rendall) living in 1985 (where another famous film about time travel was released) has the magical chance to see many famous baseball players of the past (in 1909) after discovering a magical baseball card of Honus Wagner (Matthew Modine), and this card could solve all his family financial problems.

Instead of being a kid he's somehow is transformed into a young men, played by Shawn Hatosy, who is marveled by this time travel but he desperately wants to get home in the future. In the meantime he lives with Wagner and his future bride (Kristin Davis) and he has the chance to met notorious baseball players including Ty Cobb (William Lee Scott) and watch many incredible games.

The film is good, has a good message despite making a plot loan of many other great films (it's very similar to "Field of Dreams"), it's very charming, has some good humor moments and it's very delightful to see it.

The acting of the ensemble casting is good, although I enjoyed more of the boy's performance than Shawn playing him as a grow man. William Lee Scott was very interesting playing Cobb, the movie's antagonist.

Anyway, it's enjoyable in many ways, "The Winning Season" is a very positive TV movie. 9/10.

The direction on this TBS TV movie is good, the performances are fine, the photography is handsome and interesting, but the script is a bit of a muddled mess. Nominally about life lessons and the importance of following your dreams, the movie turns into a rather mushy and ill-defined wish-fulfillment fantasy all around.

Joe's family is suffering through a bout of poverty when he comes across a rare baseball card of Honus Wagner worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. But the card does not solve his family's financial problems. Instead it sends him back to the 1909 World Series where he meets Wagner, and makes him several years older. Then later, after it appears to have all been a dream, it works further, concrete magic. This is a problem with ill-defined fantasy: if it can do anything, then it fails to keep the story's allegorical sense straight.

The script is a bit better at hinting at the complexities of life as a professional ballplayer in the era that saw Wagner and Ty Cobb square off against each other in the World Series, but the main story is a bit random. Perhaps the novel it was drawn from simply had too many subplots for the screenwriter to handle elegantly.

THe film was overly sentimental and over dramatic. Moreover, in spite of the lavish attention to period baseball with the appearance of CGI stadiums along with period uniforms and gloves, it seems to me that they failed to understand a simple fact of baseball. In the final game of the World Series, played in Detroit, the main character, Joe, runs out on the field to play defense for the visiting Pittsburgh Pirates to start the game. The visiting team always bats first and the home team takes the field first. A gross error of judgment. I also agree with the other poster about the huge numbers of homers and long balls being out of place in the game of that era.

I just want to say that I love this movie. But I also want to say that it's a movie not be taken seriously. It's a fantasy. It's a baseball fantasy. Just like "Field of Dreams." As a pseudo baseball historian, I appreciate the details given to the baseball uniforms, the player's gloves and catcher's equipment and both team's stadiums. I also like how the stadiums were depicted in a neighborhood setting with the surrounding industries, which in 1909, they were. I admit that the movie does try to convey a message that takes awhile to get across. But once it does, it all makes sense and it makes you smile if you can forgive the historical inaccuracies.

This movie won't go down in history as a all-time great, but it will always be one of my favorites.