Fever Pitch

I rented it, for 99 cents plus tax, from the Box in Adams Morgan last weekend. I'm no fan of Jimmy Fallon, but it's not a terrible movie. And I'd say that they got most of the baseball stuff correct. And, for a mass-market, they sort of understood Red Sox fans. I'm happy to report that I didn't see myself in Jimmy's character because I've never, ever, ever had Red Sox bed sheets. I mean, come on.

On the other hand, the dramatic conclusion (SPOILER ALERT!!!) where Drew runs across the field and holds up game four of the ALCS while Sox fans look on happily was pretty ridiculous. I mean, we (er, they) were losing at the time, and Rivera was on the mound. I don't care if it's the most romantic moment in world history, no one's going to wait through that to see if they kiss.

Spoiler over.

I was pleased that they were good enough to edit Fenway to look like it would have in 1980, when Fallon's character went to his first game -- no Coke bottles, no seats, just a net over the Wall. Nice touch, but they would have lost me RIGHT THERE if they screwed that up.

In the credits, someone named "Lucciano" (or however you spell team President Larry's last name) was listed as an extra. Hmmmm.

It's funny -- there was a moment in the movie when Fallon is trying to explain to Barrymore why he cares so much about the Sox. Fallon dares her to explain if there's anything that she's cared about for 22 years, since she was a little kid. (Barrymore retorts: If I still wanted to marry Scott Baio, I think I'd want to kill myself.) That doesn't apply to me because I wasn't THAT big a fan at a young age. When I was in elementary and middle school, the Celtics were my world, not the Red Sox. Now, I did go to more Sox games than Celtics games but there were A LOT of factors in there distroring that fact's usefulness, most of all that Celtics tickets were essentially impossible to obtain.

I rooted for the Red Sox, and rooted hard. Dave Henderson's homerun in the 1986 ALCS (Game 5) was probably my happiest moment as a sports fan before last October. And I was so broken up over the 1986 World Series that I was actually a Cubs fan in the late 1980s. I think I really liked Mark Grace and Raphael Palmeiro, but I'm not sure why I was bouncing around teams so causally. Needless to say, it didn't stick.

I'm a bigger baseball fan with each passing year, so my current love of the sport isn't the same as Fallon's character's. For most people, I think, as they get older, they slowly shed the secondary sports in their lives and focus on one sport per season. The others are space-fillers until the lead sport returns. I shifted from the Celtics to the Red Sox about the time Larry Bird retired (I was touring Union College when I found out) (some people remember where they were when Kennedy was shot), and I haven't looked back ever since.

Go Sox.