Pastime Reviews

Not a great film, but an uncommonly decent one, PASTIME is a simple, minor-league baseball saga which wavers uneasily between the salty, knockabout realism of BULL DURHAM and the fairy-tale mythologizing of THE NATURAL. Roy Dean Bream (William Russ) is an aging pitcher on his way down, who's finishing an undistinguished career during the 50s with a club so threadbare that the owner Peter Laporte (Jeffrey Tambor), doubles as a hotdog vendor during home games. Through it all, Roy Dean managed to develop one good pitch that earned him "one cup of coffee"--a shot in the big leagues. Now, however, the owner has targeted Roy Dean as dead weight and has begun pressuring his manager, who keeps Roy Dean perpetually on the bench, to drop the reliever from the team to make way for young up-and-comers like erratic, prima donna starter Spicer (Reed Rudy), and new arrival Tyrone Debray (Glenn Plummer), the team's first black player. A friendship of outsiders develops between the shy, unassuming Tyrone and Roy Dean, who, despite his ill fortunes, has never lost his boyish enthusiasm for the game. That friendship eventually extends to Roy Dean's showing Tyrone his special pitch. In fact, the manager has kept Roy Dean on the team precisely to act as a mentor for new players like Tyrone. However, the owner issues an ultimatum to the manager that Roy Dean must show his worth on the field or be cut from the team. During a crucial game, the manager sends Roy Dean in to replace the foundering Spicer. Instead of coming through, however, Roy Dean pitches wild, losing the game as well as his job. Roy Dean, a little too obviously and a little too neatly, symbolizes the end of baseball's Golden Age, when it was the game and not the paycheck that mattered. Engaging at first, his unfailing decency and enthusiasm begin to grate after a while for its one-note quality. The film's melodramatic climax indicates a depth, and a darkness, to Roy Dean that he has kept within himself throughout the film. But it seems more precisely a darkness that screenwriter David M. Eyre, Jr. has chosen to keep hidden for the convenience of his scenario. In a wilting bit of heavyhanded irony, despite Roy Dean's abundance of heart as a player, it is his physical heart that gives out on him in the end. But Roy's swan song does not come before Spicer, Roy Dean's chief tormentor on the team, loses his job, and just before Tyrone becomes a big-league star by incorporating Roy Dean's pitch into his repertoire. If there's nothing new or groundbreaking about PASTIME's plot, however, it covers its well-travelled ground with style, grace and conviction. Its cast presents a feast of flavorful ensemble performances from new and veteran character actors who rarely get to bask in the spotlight as much as they do here. Behind the camera, director Robin B. Armstrong has a strong eye for detail and atmosphere that makes the film's time and setting come vividly and richly alive, as well as providing a sturdy framework for the capable cast. Making the most of its modest virtues, PASTIME is one baseball film that you'd like to see go into extra innings. (Profanity.)