Mr. Baseball (1992)

User Rating:

5.4/10   

Director:

Fred Schepisi

Writers (WGA):

Theo Pelletier (story) &
John Junkerman (story) ...

Release Date:

2 October 1992 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Romance | Sport

Tagline:

An inspirational baseball movie.

Plot:

A fading baseball player is traded to a Japanese team and has trouble fitting into the society.

Plot Keywords:

Baseball | Baseball Team | Baseball Player | Male Nudity | Training

Cast

Tom Selleck	...	Jack Elliot
Ken Takakura	...	Uchiyama, Dragon's Manager
Aya Takanashi	...	Hiroko Uchiyama
Dennis Haysbert	...	Max 'Hammer' Dubois
Toshi Shioya	...	Yoji Nishimura, Jack's Interpreter / Guide
Kosuke Toyohara	...	Toshi Yamashita
Toshizo Fujiwara	...	Ryoh Mukai
Mak Takano	...	Shinji Igarashi
Kenji Morinaga	...	Hiroshi Kurosawa
Joh Nishimura	...	Tomophiko Ohmie
Norihide Goto	...	Issei Itoi
Kensuke Toita	...	Akito Yagi
Naoki Fuji	...	Takuya Nishikawa
Takanobu Hozumi	...	Hiroshi Nakamura
Leon Lee	...	Lyle Massey

Runtime:

108 min

Country:

USA | Japan

Language:

English | Japanese

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Iceland:L | Canada:PG (Ontario) | Germany:6 | UK:15 | USA:PG-13 | Singapore:PG

Filming Locations:

Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

DENTSU Music And Entertainment

Trivia:

At one point in the movie, when the pitchers refuse to pitch to Selleck's character because they don't want him to break the home run record, Selleck turns his bat the other way around and challenges pitchers to pitch to him as a sign of protest. This comes from a real-life incident a few years before the movie in the Japan Leagues when Hanshin Tigers slugger Randy Bass was on the verge of breaking the single season home run record there and pitchers refused to pitch to him. Bass similarly turned his bat upside down to protest.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: All of the Japanese scoreboards in the movie show the batting order using the numbers based on the players' positions in standard baseball scoring, i.e. 1=pitcher, 2=catcher, 3=1st base, and so on. The batting orders show Jack Elliot is the clean-up batter, which is fine. The Japanese use lights above the numbers to indicate who is up to bat. Even when Jack is up to bat, the clean-up position never gets lit. Mostly it's the second batter. Once, in an an away game, the other team has a batter lit up, even though the Dragons are at bat.

Quotes:

Yoji Nishimura, Jack's Interpreter: You rang, Mr. Baseball?
Jack Elliot: Yeah, I rang, Mr. Wise-Ass!

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "Married with Children: Dial B for Virgin (#9.7)" (1994)

Great movie

I agree with BigAlC - this movie actually prepared me for a lot of the cultural differences and practices before I went to live in Japan for a year in 1993. Tom Selleck does a fantastic job here, as always, and the movie is greatly humorous and educational. I'm a big fan of Tom Selleck's, and he blesses this part with his usual charm and charisma to this part, bringing the film to life in a way I can't imagine any other actor being able to pull off.

This film featured some first-rate Japanese actors, and it was highly entertaining to watch them as they interacted with Selleck - I can imagine the fun he had during the actual filming of the movie - Japan's an awesome place to go, whether you want to party, sight-see or just try to take everything in.