Casey at the Bat(1986)
Down-on-his-luck baseball player Casey Frank (Elliott Gould) follows his dreams to become the biggest star in the game.
Down-on-his-luck baseball player Casey Frank (Elliott Gould) follows his dreams to become the biggest star in the game.
Casey is a slovenly junk man in a turn of the twentieth century hick town who has a remarkable ability to play baseball. An unscrupulous New York scout signs him up, so Casey and his equally dishonest manager go to the big leagues. Eventually, the scout and manager conspire to get him drunk and bet against him for a crucial game with the pennant at stake.
In his career, De Wolf Hopper recited Ernest Lawrence Thayer's "Casey at the Bat" thousands of times. Here, wearing a tuxedo, he emerges from behind a curtain as if at a theater, gives a short introduction, and launches into the poem. The camera is stationary, and although Hopper stands in one place, his hands and arms, his face, and his voice are animated throughout. In delivery, it's a minstrel performance.
"The umpire makes a decision that Casey doesn't like, and an argument follows, during which Casey deftly trips him up, and continues the argument on the ground. The other players run from the bench and join in the rumpus. The fielders come running in and the pile on the home plate looks like a foot ball scrimmage. A solemn warning to all rotten umpires.".
A baseball team from the fictional town of "Mudville" (the home team) is losing by two runs in its last inning. Both the team and its fans, a crowd of 5,000, believe that they can win if Casey, Mudville's star player, gets to bat.