Joe Torre: Curveballs Along the Way

The only comment I have seen on IMDb was a spoiler with which I disagreed.

This movie never set out or purported to be an artistic classic. It is just a simple movie about a baseball player/manager, his family and his major achievement.

Yes I like baseball although cricket is the game I'm most involved with. Yes I enjoyed this movie as a baseball lover.

What you will miss if you just treat this as a one-dimensional clunker is the wonderful warm vignettes of Italian family life portrayed by brilliant actors wonderfully cast. Not overdone or clouded by the Italian-American propensity to view their families too sentimentally.

Then you have the portrayal of top level athletes in the confines of their dressing rooms. Not hysterical, over the top psychopaths but calm, dedicated professionals doing something they desperately love. Here I have to nominate Isaiah Washington for his beautifully underplayed yet insightful portrait of a man wanting to atone for past misdeeds.

Hollywood produces overblown garbage hyped to the limits to recoup investors' funds. Yet when a gentle, small but highly professional film like this is made we fail to recognise that telling simple stories in an unadorned manner is what movie making lacks. This move tells a story. Simply, effectively, with skilled actors within type, who inhabit their characters to illustrate the story.

This movie is GREAT! I call it a 10, that being the best! It is what it is, a baseball movie! How many of those are classics anyway?? C'mon, of course it's not going to make anyone forget "On the Waterfront" for example. But it's GREAT as far as baseball movies go! I loved it! Watched it five times already and just bought it the other day!The acting was great, the story was great! It's a Rocky in pinstripes!To me it was a .400 hitter!Joe Torre is one of the all time great managers now,a sure fire HOF candidate.All the years he toiled as a player and under appreciated manager turned around when he got the call from Mr. Steinbrenner. Torre as a Cardinal manager was very gracious to the fans even, never neglecting to sign a ball for instance.My friend from St. Louis said it was not uncommon for Torre to sign for fans for hours. Even after a game when the Cards got skunked!His stats as a player are just short of the HOF, and in fact he is better than many enshrined! Props to the movie!It's about time the man had a movie made about his life!Thanks for reading!



Thanks! It's a HOME RUN!

Instead of depicting Joe Torre as a regular guy who did a great job with a great team, it made him seem like Ghandi. It was over-dramatic and trite.

There might be a baseball movie out there that can rival how bad this one is, but I doubt it. For such great actors cast in some of the parts, I was sorely disappointed by the performances. The cinematography was poor, going from shots during a game that were obviously on a sound stage to crowd shots from any baseball broadcast. They would purposely do close up shots so you wouldn't see that nobody was actually there. Just not believable at all. I couldn't suspend my disbelief at all. Blech!

As a Yankee fan, as a Torre fan, as a Gooden fan I have to say this movie was awful. I looked forward to seeing it as I attended many of the games of the 1996 season, but it was dreadful. The close ups to game footage shots made my skin crawl. This should be an easy favorite for "Worst 100 of all time"