by Rich Elias, Sep 16, 1999

• 133 Minutes
• Rated PG-13
• 2 1 /2 Stars

And that's all you have to know about "For Love of the Game" to unwind nearly everything about the movie. It may help to know that the night before the game, Chapel is stood up for a dinner date in his hotel suite by his girlfriend of five years (Jane Aubrey, played by Kelly Preston). Another useful fact is that the team owner tells Chapel he's selling the team and that Chapel has the choice of retiring or being traded to the Giants. So Chapel, in a major funk, decides the best thing to do is get drunk in his room. He's awakened the next morning by his real "wife," his catcher (John C. Reilly), a stubble-faced Joe who's developed this amazing chemistry with the team's star pitcher over oh so many years.

Male bonding is no substitute for male-female bonding, however, so when Chapel steps onto the mound and levels snake eyes at the first batter, he's not thinking of baseball but of his lost Jane The screenplay (by Dana Stevens, adapted from a novel by Michael Shaara) winds back and forth in time as Chapel recollects how he met Jane (they meet cute), how she set the rules of their relationship (no strings) but expected him to break them (strings), and so on. Meanwhile, there's The Game, whenever Billy can pay attention to it.

He's got a neat mind trick to shut out distraction. He says, quietly, "Clear the mechanism," and all of a sudden director Sam Raimi turns down the crowd noise so Chapel can concentrate on hurling one more perfect pitch. He strikes out one batter after another, even longtime friends. But between pitches, there's the memory of Jane, now on her way to London and out of Chapel's life.

So the big question is this: Is nineteen years at the top of the league enough for a guy like Chapel, or is he missing something? Granted, his shoulder hurts and nineteen years is an eon for a pitcher. Baseball has always come first, but now he's measuring the rest of his career in innings, and not many are left.

"For Love of the Game" depends entirely on Kevin Costner. Except for Jane and his catcher, no one else gets more than a few moments to create a character. We don't know who is on the team. We don't even know the team's record. And as for Chapel, the inexorable laws of baseball movies dictate his fate: slo-mo in key moments, a grudge match with some opposing batters, a gum-chewing manager ready to pull his pitcher.

Costner makes it work, investing Billy Chapel with qualities which have always served him well on screen: he's honest, uncomplicated, strong but sensitive. Jane calls him "the ultimate guy," and she's right. Billy's a guy's guy. But Costner, with his midwestern drawl and slow patience with the camera, locates some depth in the character. Not much, but enough.

He's believable. No one else is. Kelly Preston as Jane tries hard with a script that makes her into a Meg Ryan clone in the first half, perky and quirky, with shoulder shrugs, little moues of discontent, and all the appliances of an actress making the best of an under-written role. She's so banal you have to wonder why Chapel is carrying a torch for her.

Because this is a Kevin Costner movie and because it's about baseball, "For Love of the Game" tries to rise to myth. Baseball isn't just a game, nor is it just a business. It's MORE, as Billy believes. What that MORE is isn't very clear. On the level of myth, it's the aged hero facing one last battle before, like Ulysses, he chucks it all to go home to Penelope, provided she's still there waiting for him, but in the meantime still trying to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Costner likes to play heroes larger than life who are, nonetheless, regular guys. He pulled this off in "Dances With Wolves" but sank in "Waterworld" and "The Postman." His new movie limits his scope to the exact dimensions of a baseball diamond, which helps, as does the resonance of baseball battles in modern American culture. We're prepared to grant that a 40-year-old pitcher with an awful lot on his mind can become heroic with a capital H.

Raimi lets his star create the movie, adding few flourishes. "For Love of the Game" comes across not as a baseball movie, although it's about baseball, and not as a romance, although it has plenty of that. Call it a baseball chick flick.