For Love of the Game (1999) on Netflix
PG-1319992h 17mDramaRomanceSport
Billy Chapel, a forty-year-old pitcher for the Detroit Tigers, makes his last start at Yankee Stadium. The team's new owners plan to trade him, and Jane Aubrey is leaving for London.
- Netflix3.8/5
- IMDb6.6/1040,674 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes47%
Trailer
Plot summary
At forty, Billy Chapel is in the last days of a nineteen-year career with the Detroit Tigers, a club already out of playoff contention. On the morning of his final start, owner Gary Wheeler tells him the team has been sold and that its new owners intend to trade him to the San Francisco Giants, and suggests he consider retiring instead. Billy is also recovering from a hand injury. His girlfriend, Jane Aubrey, who is a single mother, tells him she is leaving that day to take a job in London, and he has come to know her teenage daughter, Heather. Between innings at the ballpark, Billy thinks back to how he and Jane met five years earlier.
Cast
- Hugh Rossas Mike Udall
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about For Love of the Game (1999)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The studio wanted to keep the budget to $50 million, so Costner waived his usual $20 million salary in exchange for a bigger percentage of the gross, and was also given final cut privilege, normally reserved for the producer or director, plus director approval.
- During post-production a handful of lines, roughly 10 seconds of film, were cut to prevent an "R" rating, and a week before release Costner voiced his complaints in a Newsweek interview, a breach of professional etiquette when speaking about a current film that one appears in.
- Universal compromised with Costner on length, allowing a final cut of 2 hours and 17 minutes, and, recognizing he might feel betrayed after waiving his usual fee, offered to pay him the full $20 million after all; Costner declined.
- The play-by-play of the game is announced by longtime Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully, who had himself called four perfect games in his career, alongside Steve Lyons.
- J. K. Simmons later joked about the fact that he was only nine days older than Costner, despite being cast as a 63-year-old.
- Before the version that reached cinemas, Sydney Pollack was slated as the director, with Tom Cruise cast in the part of Billy Chapel.
