Angels in the Outfield - We're Always Watching!

 As I've mentioned time and time again, I am a bit of a TBS junkie when it comes to my default TV viewing habits (although nowadays, during the daytime the TV is usually turned to Sprout). I do just love it though when TBS plays old school movies from my childhood as their late-night movie!

This past week I got to take a walk down memory lane and watch once again:

Remember this one from 1994?

Young Roger lives in a segway foster home with another foster boy, JP, in a neighborhood within walking distance to the California Angel's stadium, where the boys spend most of their summer afternoons watching the games from the nearby trees. One day Roger's widowed deadbeat dad shows up and Roger asks when will they be a family again. "When the Angels win the Pennant" dad tells him, basically implying it'll never happen, as the Angels are in last place. But Roger, being a naive kid, doesn't realize that and prays that maybe God can send a little help to Angels to make it happen. Pretty soon Roger and JP get to go to a game in the stadium and lo and behold, Roger meets Al, an angel in charge, overseeing some angels that seem to be helping the ball team do the impossible! However, only Roger can see them. Pretty soon, desperate manager George Knox takes notice of Roger being a sort of a lucky charm and eventually starts to believe the boy's claims about there really being angels helping out the team.

As a good Christian girl in grade school, and a bit of a tomboy at the time, I LOVED this movie. It combined baseball as well as good clean family fun with a plot based around faith and angels.

In the center: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Neal McDonough, and Adrian Brody.
I think that's Matthew McConaughey on the far right.

Watching it now, it's amusing seeing all the now-famous stars. Sure, the big names in it at the time were Danny Glover, Tony Danza and Christopher Lloyd - all early/mid-90s golden actors, as well as Brenda Fricker (aka the Pigeon Lady from Home Alone 2) playing the foster mom Maggie. But it also stars a young Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the main character Roger. And there's a young Matthew McConaughey, Adrian Brody, and Neal McDonough all as supporting actors playing Angels players. Dermot Mulroney (best known for playing love interests in My Best Friend's Wedding and The Wedding Date) plays Roger's deadbeat dad. Oh, if only we knew the stars these guys would become years later!

I gotta say, watching it nearly 20 years later, it still is a pretty good family feel-good film! I think I might even pick this one up on DVD at some point to share it with Jay - we can do a 90s baseball double feature, pairing it with another one of mommy's childhood baseball favorites, The Sandlot!