[Amazin69]

Just saw The Rookie the other night, and I'm surprised it gets no love here. Dennis Quaid does a damn fine job as Jim Morris, the early part of the film (with Quaid as a high school coach motivating a bunch of familiar faces from Buffy the Vampire Slayer guest spots [Chad Lindberg, Angelo Spizzirri [RIP], Ben Gonzalez]) to go win their division worked well to set up Morris chasing his own dream, and they didn't change the story so that Morris leads the Devil Rays to the World Series or anything such as that. I enjoyed it.

As a Mets fan, it was interesting to learn that Carlos Mendoza was on the 1999 Durham Bulls with Morris (I didn't even know that Carlos was a 1997 Met for 15 games!), and I was even more intrigued to find out that part of Morris's two-month continuation into 2000 was that he was the man who relieved Dwight Gooden in the only game of the "Hit Show!" 2000 D-Rays that I actually watched all the way through!

(April 27, 2000, Tampa Bay at Anaheim. Doc had absolutely nothing and the Angels were hitting the ball very hard…but many of them went right at somebody, and the Angels hit into enough DPs and ran themselves into Outs On Base that Gooden somehow lurched through five innings and escaped with the lead, and then the Devil-Fish had their hitting shoes on and tacked on some runs while Morris and future Mets Rick White and Roberto Hernandez brought the W home for Doc.)

All in all, rather enjoyable. With a good perfromance by Brian Cox as Morris's dad. And enough dirt for me to never want to move to Texas…