Mr. Baseball

But at the heart of the movie, the story is all about accepting foreign culture. Jack butts heads with Japanese culture. He is loose, relaxed, and immature. The Japanese are tight, uptight, and very serious. As long as everyone sees him as an outsider, they will respect him in public but doubt him in private, and he will never truly fit in.

After a series of humiliating losses, he finally reaches the point where he realizes that his strength and skill are not enough to defeat his problems and he turns to the coach and Japanese culture to help him overcome his ego. The coach admonishes him to stop feeding off of his past successes lest he eat all those successes away, look only to the future in other words. He does so and the rest of the movie shows Elliot becoming stronger in the stadium and spiritual world. By embracing the Japanese Way, he becomes a better person.

However, the flip side to this movie is that the Japanese Way has led to a failing baseball team. Despite the coach's best efforts to harangue the players into playing well, they are too gunshy to play their best. It isn't until the coach accepts that the softer method of coaching based on encouraging the players and fostering a team spirit that the team's slump ends. Jack Elliot made his own mark on the team by bringing trademark American-style attitude to the team.

In the end the message is clear. At the micro-level, the Japanese style of living with its emphasis on detail, cooperation, and austerity is beneficial, and the American style emphasizing laziness, freedom, and individuality is detrimental. At the macro-level, though, the message is quite the opposite. Success is brought by each individual's freedom to make mistakes, being relaxed, and not having an oppressive culture looming above.

It's a fun movie with a lot of insight into the Japanese culture as well as insight into American culture. Well worth renting at least once.

A US baseball star (Selleck) is traded to a Japanese baseball team and finds himself at intellectual loggerheads with the extant coach of the team. This, plus a slight romantic sub-plot as he falls in love with the coach's daughter.

Barring some minor cheesy moments -- e.g., when the coach takes Selleck to a golf driving range and makes him hit the balls with a baseball bat, only to hear "I want to hit balls" instead of "I want to hit baseballs"...hmm -- the accuracy of Japanese life is truly stunning. Including, eating ramen with vociferous slurps, digging chopsticks vertically in rice bowls being a no-no, the language used to communicate between the American/Japanese, even a scene with a real on-sen. A refreshing break after stereotype galore seen in movies of that time, including the entertaining "Black Rain" or the absolutely goofball "Rising Sun".

To cut to the chase, this is an under-rated gem of a movie, very well shot, some messages about life and profession as seen from two very different perspectives that are likely to resonate with either side. Selleck takes the cake with his acting, baring his tush (literally, I may add) to portray a grouchy American, snubbing people relentlessly and throwing tantrums in public, then letting us inside this character to understand his views. Takakura Ken, needless to say, is fascinating as usual.

A must watch if you are interested in Japan, or baseball, or a good light-hearted cross cultural take on life and sport.