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The Final Season

Sean Astin, Rachael Leigh Cook, Powers Boothe

As much as we love our Tiger Woods and Michael Jordans, the larger than life players who dominate the games they play, we are bigger fans of the little guy who comes up out of nowhere to challenge these icons, the sad sacks that come together and to win the championship game.  They are Horatio Alger stories played out on a few yards of grass, or in gymnasiums across the land. These stories give the average Joe and Jane hope, and communicate the very American story that if you just work hard enough, you too can succeed. In a complex world, they provide easy to understand examples of character, black-and-white moral lessons. Who cannot be moved after watching an almost crippled, blood pouring out of his side, Kirk Gibson, round the bases after hitting his game-winning home run in the World Series, underdog New York Jets quarterback, Joe Namath, running off the field with his index finger pointed in the air after winning Super Bowl III, or the aging Jim J. Braddock sitting on a stool, unable to lift his left arm due to arthritis, as his corner men beg him not to go back out there, and he replies, “I want to be carried out like a champion.”

          Our movies have always focused on such stories.  Jimmy Stewart played the one-legged pitcher, Monty Stratton, who made an improbable comeback to the major leagues.  Ronald Reagan, not only played the dying George “Gipper” Gipp, whose story Knute Rockne used to inspire Notre Dame onto victory,  but also played aging pitcher Grover Cleveland “Old Pete” Alexander, who battled injuries and pneumonia, to win an improbable World Series.  (Alexander was really an alcoholic, who shortened his career due to his love of the drink, even acquiring his nickname “Old Pete” because of his sneaking alcohol (a Sneaky Pete) during Prohibition, but that is not nearly as inspirational a story.) Yet, it was the success of Rocky, The Bad News Bears, and Hoosiers that brought the genre into its own.  In the last few years, we have gotten some pretty good David vs. Goliath sports stories, including Rudy, Cinderella Man, The Rookie, Miracle, Phar Lap, Seabiscuit, Cool Runnings, Dreamer, The Greatest Game Ever Played, and Invincible.  Now it is The Final Season’s turn to win the hearts and minds of Americans.

          This movie has all the corn a moviegoer could want – loveable losers who must band together, fresh-faced Iowa farm kids, a Norman Rockwell-like town, real cornfields, baseball, and hard-hearted state officials, all mixed in with a pudgy hobbit.    

The Final Season tells the story of the last season of high school baseball in the small town of Norway, Iowa.  This little farming town of 600 residents had won a record 19 state championships, often beating some of the largest schools in the state, under legendary coach Jim Van Scoyoc. Over the years, he had the pleasure of watching 16 of his former players make the Major Leagues, including Bruce Kimm and Hall Trosky. The most famous player to come out of the town was former Baltimore Orioles pitcher, Mike Boddicker, who won 134 games over the course of his professional career.  Over half the kids he coached ended up playing college ball. With less than a hundred kids in the entire high school, Van Scoyoc, known to his players as “Coach Jim,” worked such miracles, that in baseball circles his reputation earned him one National and three Regional Coach of the Year awards. 

          It was this reputation that made a former Ankeny resident, Kent Stock, want to work with him.  Stock, who was a decent baseball player at Luther College, had just accepted a teaching position at nearby Belle Plaine, jumped at the chance to be an assistant coach in such a legendary program.  Years later, Stock claimed it was the best summer of his life, learning from such a master craftsman. Even though Stock left teaching behind the next year to become a banker in St. Louis, he still paid attention to Norway baseball.  One day his friend and mentor, Coach Jim, showed up at the bank to tell Kent that Norway baseball, the one thing that brought the tiny community together, might be coming to an end.  In an effort to better use resources and cut costs, the state was pushing for the little town’s school system to merge with nearby Benton Community (called Mason Community in the movie). The state is represented by Polly Hudson (Rachael Leigh Cook). Her main job is to force the new school system and make things go as smoothly as possible. Kent decides to return to Norway and raise his objections.  Even though 80 percent of the community was against the merger, due to technical reasons, state officials are able to force it.  In the new school system, adding insult to injury, legendary Coach Jim is not offered a teaching position or a chance to coach baseball.  In fact, to make sure the transition goes smoothly, the legendary coach was not to be allowed to coach the final season of Norway High School baseball, so that there would be no way possible for him to win his 20^th state title.  Instead he has to take a minor league job with the Detroit Tigers. Kent Stock agrees to stand in for his mentor.

          One problem: because the Norway kids are going to be joining a much bigger school district in the fall, many of them know they will never see any playing time at the larger school next year.  So, why go out for a lame duck team? The school’s best player, Tyson Kimm, son of San Diego Padres coach Bruce Kimm, decides it would be better for him to play in the rookie league than return for his senior season. Those players that remained often had trouble getting along. The movie throws in the standard stock characters including the troubled kid transplanted from Chicago, Mith Akers (Michael Angarano), who smokes cigarettes and has trouble relating to the farm kids he is forced to befriend.  Tom Arnold pops up as his businessman father in a glorified cameo. You would have to be as clueless as Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Lindsay Lohan playing Wheel of Fortune, not to figure out where this movie is heading.  There would not be a movie unless there was a big game. No one is going to green light a film where a bunch of losers and screw ups continue to be losers and screw ups.  It is the golden rule of such films that you have to leave them feeling upbeat and happy. You also know that the new baseball coach and the state representative will be pitching a little woo, and knocking some knees. (Even though in real life, Stock was married at the time, and the real lawyer the state sent, was a man. Although, that twist might have made this a much more interesting movie.)

          In the midst of the joy and excitement of the big game, most viewers might miss the one major flaw in this movie.  No matter what happens on the field, the town loses it’s school.  Like a hundred other small towns in Iowa, the loss of a school is the beginning of rolling up the sidewalks of Main street. Playing in the big game in that situation is like joining the mile high club during an airplane crash.  It might feel good for a few seconds, but when everything is said and done, you are just as dead.  The local economy is going to soon be on life support, and no ballgame is going to change that.  After the 1991 season, Norway baseball ceased. The town is becoming a bedroom community for nearby Cedar Rapids, and Norway baseball is just a memory.

          The Final Season has been called the Hoosiers of high school baseball.  It is nowhere in the league of that film, but it hits all the notes that a film in this genre is supposed to. A big fan of the Gene Hackman film will notice that the writer of this film must have watched the 1986 classic several time and borrowed liberally from it right down to the sick father.  In a lot of ways this film is a lot like Iowa. There is no flash.  All the actors are solid, but there is nothing that makes the film stand out from the hundred similar films that have come before it.  If you see it, you will not be disappointed by it.  If you miss it, there will be no big loss. The romance between Rachael Leigh Cook and Sean Astin, pushes the bounds of believability, as does her change of heart about the merger.  Some of the lines and scenes are cheesy, and it must be noted that this cinematic tale is only “based on” real events. Stock himself admits that the film took liberties with his story, and those liberties are often the worst part of the movie. The story of Norway baseball is powerful enough in its own right without the fiction thrown on top. 

Verdict: Middle of the Road for this Genre.