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| Talent for the Game | |
|---|---|
 Home video release poster | |
| Directed by | Robert M. Young |
| Written by | David Himmelstein Thomas Michael Donnelly Larry Ferguson |
| Produced by | Martin Elfand |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Curtis Clark |
| Edited by | Arthur Coburn |
| Music by | David Newman |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 91 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $336,396[1] |
Talent for the Game is a 1991 film directed byRobert M. Young and starringEdward James Olmos,Lorraine Bracco,Terry Kinney,Jamey Sheridan, and Jeff Corbett. The plot concerns abaseball scout.
Scenes were filmed on thePalouse in the small town ofGenesee,Idaho,[2][3][4][5] betweenLewiston andMoscow, and nearbyGarfield, Washington. Other scenes were shot innorthern Idaho atKellogg.[6]
After a disappointing debut in a limited number of theaters in Florida,[5] it went quickly to video.
Virgil Sweet is a veteran baseball scout for theCalifornia Angels. He is in danger of losing his life's work because the Angels' new owner, Gil Lawrence, is unhappy with thefarm system and threatening to eliminate the team's scouts.
Virgil hasn't discovered a great young prospect for quite a while. One day, when the car that he and girlfriend Bobbie, who also is employed by the team, are driving breaks down on a rural road, Virgil happens upon a country boy named Sammy Bodeen who has a pitching arm worthy of themajor leagues.
Greeted back inAnaheim with considerable skepticism, Virgil arranges a tryout for Sammy. The boy is wild at first and Virgil's great find appears to be a big joke. Once he calms down, however, Sammy proves to have everything it takes to make it big.
Team management, desperate for a new star, immediately begins to overplay the arrival of Sammy with wildly overblown hype. A public-relations blitz promotes the boy as baseball's next great star, even though he has yet to throw a pitch in a big-league game. By the time Sammy takes the mound for his first Angels game, expectations are so high that he cannot possibly live up to them.
He is roughed up by opponents in the first inning, humiliating the owner and making fans furious. But, gradually, with a surprise assist from Virgil on the field, Sammy settles down and begins to look like a star in the making.
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