Movie Review: The Perfect Game

The year is 1957. TV is black and white. Families gather around the radio. And baseball is king. Far from the glamour and thrill of New York’s Yankee Stadium, in Monterey Mexico, a group of boys play baseball in the dirt. Using a ball of string for a baseball and a crooked, carved tree limb for a bat, they play for the love of the game. Along with their priest, Padre Estaban, they gather around the radio to hear the play by play from distant Major League teams.

Cesar, a fellow baseball lover whose dreams of the Major Leagues were dashed by anti-Mexican discrimination, returns to Monterey to nurse his wounds. The boys need a coach and Cesar needs respect, so they form a little league team and cross the border to Texas to play the Americans.

“The Perfect Game” is the true story of a dirt-poor, scrawny Mexican little league team that came out of nowhere to win the Little League World Series and of the pitcher Angel Marcias, who pitched the only perfect game to ever occur in the Little League World Series.

If things had turned out just a bit differently, Cheech Marin, who plays priest Padre Estaban in the film, might have met the players on the field instead of on a movie set. “I was playing in the same tournament that they were,” he told me in an interview last week, “I mean, we got knocked out in the first game, so I didn’t ever encounter them. But if we had kept winning and they kept winning I would have played this team.”

Marin, who grew up as a huge baseball fan in LA listening to the Dodgers on the radio, remembers the 1957 Little League World Series vividly. “I was in little league when this story happened. They were exactly the same age as I was.  I remember it like was yesterday. This was big news because I so identified with the kids because they were Mexican and they were little. And I was both of those.”

Indeed, the surviving members of the 1957 team visited the set in and met the cast of the film. “Seeing them in present day,” director William Dear said, “They were heroes: gracious, quiet and unsung heroes. We were at lunch once in Monterey with Angel, Pepe, and a few other players. A person came up behind Angel and just stood there quietly. Angel finally noticed him. He wanted an autograph and Angel was very gracious and gave him an autograph. These people, fifty years later, are regarded as heroes. They don’t have big heads. Everything about them rang true.”

Jake T. Austin (Wizards of Waverly Place) played Angel Marcias. Austin, a die-hard Yankees fan, also enjoyed meeting the original team, now in their sixties. He called Angel Marcias “A great guy. He’s a dreamer and a very down to earth person, even though he accomplished so much. He was very excited and supportive of the whole film in general.”

“They were cool,” Marin laughed, “We kind of ask each other different questions than the kids ask, ‘How’s your health? How you doing? What do you do when you get cold at night?’ And when I told them I was in little league at the same time, oh, such bond.”

Marin plays a priest, a man who gives the children hope, encouragement, and spiritual blessing. The role of faith in the film is deeply respected, with the boys refusing to play in one game until their gloves are blessed. Was it difficult for Cheech Marin, of “Cheech and Chong” to play a priest? Not at all. “I just had to pick the tone I wanted to play”, he said, “Very sympathetic and encouraging. He’s an authority figure, but a soft authority figure. He didn’t have to domineer the boys. I think I’ve played four priests. I’m looking for cardinal or pope next. Maybe I’ll play Russian Orthodox or Greek Orthodox, grow a beard. I discovered this little niche of being The Mexican Barry Fitzgerald. The Mexican priest, not the Irish priest. The Irish priest drinks a wee bit.”

The lovely film should thrill baseball lovers and appeal to baseball novices. It’s the tale of an ultimate underdog, battling racism and poverty to chase dreams, with a bit of family drama and romance thrown in. Squeaky clean, it’s rated PG for some thematic elements, most noticeably the racism the Mexicans encounter. William Dear was sold the moment he read the script “It was the father-son story and the story of accomplishment, the story of underdogs [that affected him]. I like the story of an underdog, the story of against all odds, getting to realize a dream.”