"Rookie Of The Year" Is 22 Years Old, And Surprisingly Good

The Chicago Cubs seem like a team of destiny this season. It is 2015, after all, and as we all know, every single prediction made in Back To The Future II has to be reified lest Marty McFly's children fade away into nothingness—a "Cafe 80's" on every block and a dehydrated pizza in every oven or we finally lose Crispin Glover's body double forever. That said, the sports content of Back To The Future is minimal, even when you throw in the Gray's Sports Almanac subplot and the 3-D CUBS BEAT FLORIDA hologram. If you are a Cubs fan looking to indulge in cinematic fantasy, you will have to go back to 1993. Do this, steel yourself for a lot of Gary Busey, and rest easy, for a child shall lead you to fictional glory.

For a film that came out a little over 22 years ago, Rookie Of The Year holds up surprisingly well. It is almost but not quite as good as The Sandlot, as far as early 1990's children's baseball comedies go; it is much better than Little Big League, the reasonable counterpart that substituted baseball fundamentals and Timothy Busfield for ROTY's whimsy and Gary Busey. Seriously, have you ever seen Little Big League? It's like a kids movie written by George Will. Rookie Of The Year is like a kids movie written by funnier-than-average kids. That's a compliment.

Thomas Ian Nicholas is Henry Rowengartner, a millennial pitching in the bigs before Generation K even got a chance to burn out. Rowengartner wears number 1 for the Cubs, like so many once and future Phillies before him. But unlike Cubs legends Richie Ashburn, Doug Glanville, and Larry Bowa, Henry spends his entire month-and-a-half career in Chicago, leading the Cubbies to the pennant and profitability. If Rowengartner wanted to, he could still pitch in the majors; at 35 he'd only be two years older than current Cubs semi-closer Jason Motte. Nicholas is very good in the title role, knowing when to act like an actual kid and knowing when to act like a kid in a movie where he's leading the freaking Chicago Cubs to the division title.

At the beginning of Rookie Of The Year, Rowengartner is a just a replacement-level kid. As an adolescent he has yet to know love, but as a Little Leaguer he knows all too well about negative WAR. With a glove on his hand, Henry couldn't catch a cold at Wrigley Field in April. But he can trip on a baseball, which causes him to breaks his arm, and then undergo an accidental Tommy John surgery that becomes his origin story.

If there is one thing that the culture remembers from Rookie Of The Year, it is when Henry accidentally hits the doctor in the face with his newly powerful arm, forcing this poor man's Dr. James Andrews to exclaim "FUNKY BUTT LOVING." The unfortunate doctor is obviously hit on the ear or, at most, his left cheek, not his nose; we can assume he's okay. The sound effects of Yung Rowengartner's arm winding up like a slingshot, not to mention Henry's friends sticking medical supplies in their ears and nostrils in the background, are what make this scene a classic in the genre.

Having physically assaulted a medical professional, Henry is rewarded with Cubs tickets. Some nameless Montreal Expo hits a homer, which Rowengartner catches in the stands. He tosses it back in what is likely the greatest poorly CGI-ed ball in film history, sending it soaring over 400 feet back to home plate. After avoiding some really bitter Bleacher Bums, Henry is offered a contract with the Cubbies. Suddenly he's in the majors; Dan Hedaya, the team's GM, had evidently never heard the story of David Clyde.

It makes sense to make Rowengartner the team's closer, in terms of plot if not in terms of the psychological wellbeing of a 12-year-old. Dan Hedaya gets what he wants—which is always nice, because Dan Hedaya always looks like he's just gotten really bad news about his health—and saves the Cubs from bankruptcy, Gary Busey finds true love, and just about everyone working in the Chicago theater scene in the early 1990's gets a paycheck. Wins all around.

You feel sorry for Henry, because he is being exploited by Cubs management and his would-be stepfather. His friend George treats him like crap because he mistakes the exhausting effects of child labor for snobbishness on Henry's part. At one point Henry is sold to the New York Yankees, which is perhaps the movie's least realistic twist; even George Steinbrenner was not that evil. The relationships between Henry and his mother (Amy Morton, who is very good in this) and the team's aging ace Chet Stedman (Gary Busey, who is very Gary Busey in this) are strengthened. He even gains and regains respect from both his friends and the team's grumpy first baseman, played by the acclaimed comic actor Janitor From "Scrubs."

It says something that I enjoyed Rookie Of The Year more today than I did 22 years ago, although it might say something about the type of kid I was. It also certainly didn't help that Henry Rowengartner was presented as "a normal kid," and that 1993 was near the peak of movies where "normal kids" went through very traumatic experiences, and my mother considered such delightful films as My Girl, Man Without A Face, and Radio Flyer appropriate for my little sister and me. Deep in my subconscious, I was prepared for Henry to get beaten up by a disfigured bee monster.

Instead, everything that happens in Rookie Of The Year is happily absurd. Sure, Joe Nuxhall made his MLB debut at the Rowengartnerian age of 15, but only because it was the middle of freaking World War II and no one else was available during a blowout. Suspension-of-disbelief is the order of the hour, and not just because (spoiler alert?) the Cubs win the World Series. Rookie Of The Year is a nominal remake/ripoff of Roogie's Bump, an obscure 1950's film in which some other kid saves the Brooklyn Dodgers from themselves. It seems safe to assume ROTY is far superior, if only because it so deftly plays to audiences' universal love for "PITCHER'S GOT A BIG BUTT" taunts.

Daniel Stern is more successful in directing Rookie Of The Year than in portraying pitching coach Phil Brickma. It doesn't help that Brickma is eccentric because of one too many beanballs. But take away the chaw and the possible CTE, and even Brickma has a few good moments, especially the infamous "hot ice" scene, in which he suggests actually boiling ice as a substitute for IcyHot. I finally got that joke after 22 years, and it was well worth the wait.

Stern is great at physical comedy, and the broader moments of Rookie Of The Year show his influence. He also gets a great deal out of a loaded cast, many of whom were Stern's peers in the Chicago theater scene. Ian Gomez, for instance, is pretty funny in his one scene as a bellboy, and Bruce Altman brings a proper sense of dickishness to the Mom's Awful Boyfriend role. We also have W. Earl Brown and the aforementioned Neil Flynn on the 1992-ish Cubs, which is more talent than the actual '92 Cubs could claim.

Dan Hedaya is great at portraying a more Nixon-esque Ruben Amaro, Jr.; like Hedaya's character, Ruben will also likely be selling hot dogs at the end of this season. It's hard to see the great Eddie Bracken play senility for laughs as the childlike owner of the Cubs, but he does his job, and he does it well. Albert Hall, best known as Chief Phillips in the family classic Apocalypse Now, is great as a manager who develops undying respect for his closer Gardenhoser or Rosinbagger or whoever. The legendary John Candy, sadly phoning in one of his last roles, makes a poor substitute for Harry Caray as the Cubs announcer, which is something he has in common with everyone else on earth.

The non-Steppenwolf players in Rookie Of The Year are also fun to watch. Seeing Barry Bonds, Bobby Bonilla, and Pedro Guerrero whiff in 1992 is much more fun than anything that has happened to them since. Former MLB hurler Tim Stoddard will always be Tregoraw, the big-butted Dodger pitcher who had to throw to Rowengartner.

Rookie Of The Year is far from perfect—no movie where a tweenage white kid lip syncs to "You Got The Right One, Baby" can ever be perfect—but I enjoyed it as much if not more than I did as a boy. If you have a kid or a nephew or a niece that needs babysitting for a few hours, Rookie Of The Year delivers well above replacement level, even though it might take some of them—even the smartest and best-looking ones—more than two decades to get some of the jokes. It might also be worth a re-watch this winter, just in case Back To The Future really did get its predictions for 2015 right.