Customer Reviews

A Player to Be Named Later

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One of the best documentaries I have ever seen. It was brilliant and entertaining throughout, and you don't need to be a baseball fan to enjoy it. The personal stories are so compelling, the characters are inspiring and the editorial comments are brilliantly witty.

AT

I think the most telling statement in the 85-minute documentary came early on when a Milwaukee Brewers' executive noted that only six percent of all players playing minor league ball ever get a taste of Major League Baseball.

That sort of set the tone for the rest of the documentary, which focuses on the Indianapolis Indians, the AAA farm club of the Brewers. It follows the team during the 2001 season. Specifically, we follow a handful of players and see the struggles they and - in most cases - their wives go through.

As far as I know, most of the guys never made it. I know of Marco Scutaro who now plays with the Boston Red Sox. He's a shortstop/utility guy who hails from Venezuela. His wife is beautiful and both are well-spoken for two people raised in a different language than English. Actually, all the players profiled are well-spoken. One is a Stanford grad.

We also meet Micah Franklin, Kyle Peterson, Brad Tyler and other players. One of them, who I believe is playing in Seattle as of 2009, is Allen "Meat" Levrault, a big pitcher

Some of the stories are kind of sad, like Peterson, who has arm problems and didn't play after the season shown here on the documentary. Brad Tyler and his wife, I think, were the most impressive people. Peterson, Tyler, Franklin and others are about at the end of their dreams and it's a shame. You feel for the people in this film. Baseball is a "field of dreams," and for most, those dreams are never realized.

We also meet "Miss Jackie," the number one fan of the Indianapolis team for 40 years, a woman who bakes cookies for the all the players.

All in all, anyone who loves baseball should enjoy this film.

By now most baseball fans have heard of and belive they undersand the difficulties and hardships involved in playing minor league baseball. But this movie makes a compelling case that it's tougher than we've been led to believe. Two factors, the grand instability of a player's life coupled with a seemingly unfair system are the hub of this movie. A player bounces from a midwestern home with his family to a motel room in Mexico and back within a year; another player finishes the season high-lightered in the movie with six homers in seven SWINGS and never gets a shot at the major leagues...the same player, by the way, (which the movie fails to point out) who hit .324 in his one major league stint with the Cardinals a couple of years before the season in the movie.

With 95% or more of minor leaguers never getting major league service

time, this movie does a fine job manifesting the love of the game that is the core of minor league baseball.

A great companion film to "Bull Durham". Anyone who loves baseball and wants a fly on the wall perspective of real life drama in the minor leagues will love this film.

I don't want to reveal any spoilers, but one of the players struggling to make the Major Leagues during the 2001 minor league season documented in this film is now a cult hero and fan favorite with one of the San Francisco Bay Area major league teams.

really nice to see an inner peek into baseball and the lives of those involved in it. nice that the players and families allowed the cameras. wish more could be like that but understandable why not.