Compelling sports film, based on Bernard Malamud's 1952 novel of the same name, that follows the life of Roy Hobbs, an unknown middle-aged batter with a mysterious past, who appears out of nowhere to take a losing 1930s baseball team the New York Knights to the top of the league. With his bat cut from a lightning struck tree, Hobbs will rise to the fame he should have had earlier when, as a 19-year-old up-and-coming pitcher, he was shot by a young and unstable woman called Harriet Bird.