By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO — Million Dollar Arm, a new Disney movie, stars Jon Hamm as J. B. Bernstein, a sports agent who figures if he can find some pitchers in India who can make it to the Big Leagues, Major League Baseball can start developing a fan base of some one billion people.
As non-kosher as the casting sounds, Hamm plays the Jewish Bernstein very well, taking the character on a trip of baseball discovery and self-discovery fraught with important lessons for the PG audiences who will watch it, not the least of which is “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”
To find pitchers (and incidentally to get his own career back on track), Bernstein traveled throughout India inviting cricket-players and any other comers to try to throw a fast ball in the strike zone. Thanks to director Craig Gillespie, movie goers are treated to a cinematographic tour of India while they learn some baseball lore. Coming along with Bernstein and sidekick Aash Vasudevan (Aasif Mandvi) is a retired scout (Alan Arkin) who listens to the pitchers with his eyes closed, explaining he can tell how fast a ball has been thrown by the smack it makes when it hits the catcher’s glove.
Eventually in Lucknow, India, two pitchers who can consistently hurl over 80 miles per hour are selected – left hander Rinku Singh (Suraj Sharma), who has trained as a javelin thrower, and Dinesh Patel (Madhur Mittal) – are pronounced the winners of the Reality TV baseball contest that had drawn tens of thousands of contestants.
After goodbyes to their families—and considerable hesitation about traveling so far away—the young men are transported along with a comedic interpreter/ guide Amit (Pitobash) , to Los Angeles, which is home base for the once successful JB (who in real life was known as Barry Bonds’ agent, but that’s another story).
Now it’s their time for culture adjustment, as they eat pizzas for the first time, meet Brenda (Lake Bell)—JB’s tenant and love interest—and train under USC baseball coach Tom House (Bill Paxton). Will Chang (Tzi Ma) who is financing this marketing effort puts the pressure on Bernstein to have the boys ready in six months – an all but impossible time table. This causes Bernstein to treat Singh and Patel as business investments rather than as vulnerable human beings, with results that you might expect.
In real life, Singh and Patel were in fact given minor league contracts with the Pittsburgh Pirates organization with Singh still playing today and Patel now back in India helping to coach other prospects as India begins the long process of learning to love baseball.
In the movie, however, the outcome of their tryouts is not at all certain, and there is considerable tension as Bernstein and his two proteges encounter obstacle after obstacle. Brenda (today Mrs. Bernstein) helps everyone keep their heads, their moral compasses and their humanity.
There’s no violence, only a hint of sex, and no foul language. Many parents will find the story a welcome relief from the usual fare of the movie houses.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com