welve-year-old baseball card collector Joe Soshack (Rendall) can't seem to make it through a Little League game without choking. Despite his dad's attempts to make him feel better about the situation, Joe is disillusioned about his ability to play the game. Beyond that, his dad's out of work and the family is facing serious financial problems.
Attempting to make some money on his own for a special baseball card, Joe visits Mrs. Young, an old lady for whom he does odd jobs. He agrees to clean out her attic and gets to work. Among the junk, Joe is shocked to find a rare mint-condition Honus Wagner baseball card.
When Joe discovers the card is worth a small fortune, he rushes home to tell his parents. At first excited, they soon discover that Joe hasn't told Mrs. Young about his find and they insist he return it to her. Joe disagrees. Mrs. Young told him to throw away everything in the attic, so he feels the card should be his. Angry about his parents' decision, Joe runs off and goes to the
Little League park.
Frustrated by the events, Joe stares at the card, which could help his family out of their tough financial situation. But then the card begins to glow and something magical happens. Joe suddenly finds himself grown up and walking around in 1909 at the World Series between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Detroit Tigers.
At the game, Joe finds a seat next to Amanda "Mandy" Henton (Davis), Honus Wagner's fiancée. At a game filled with some of the greatest baseball players of all time, Joe gets a chance to watch history being made. He meets Honus (Modine) and ends up bunking with the baseball player. As the last game of the World Series is about to begin, one player will attempt to change history, as Joe finds himself in an impossible situation that may trap him in the past forever.
Predictable but still pleasant
TNT's The Winning Season is a feel-good movie with interesting characters, but not a lot of surprises. While there is no doubt where the film is headed, it manages to hit home, with the exception of throwing a token villain into the piece, in this case Ty Cobb (William Lee Scott). It's the one sour note in an otherwise pleasant movie that focuses on the importance of family over financial concerns.
Once again, Matthew Modine (And the Band Played On, What the Deaf Man Heard, Flowers for Algernon) puts forth a terrific performance in a television movie. His portrayal of Honus brings to life a hero young Joe can believe in and learn from. Modine embodies the real-life legend to such a degree that we believe he could have been Honus, a man who loved baseball more than anything else except for the love of his life, Mandy.
While The Winning Season comes off as a Hallmarkesque family drama, it also has the unfortunate generic villain that too often is used in these types of films to move the action along. The character of Ty Cobb is nothing more than a stereotypical bad guy, and actor William Lee Scott is given little to work with. The character never comes alive, and exists in the story as a device to cause young Joe trouble. The screenplay spends so much time developing Honus, Mandy and Joe, it's a shame the villain was tossed in without any character development at all. If only the rivalry between the Honus and Cobb characters was as interesting as their real-life rivalry must have been, The Winning Season might have been great.
The Winning Season is the fourth film being presented as a Johnson & Johnson Spotlight Presentation. The partnership between TNT and Johnson & Johnson has been fruitful for good original movies, including the Emmy-nominated Door to Door.
