The Perfect Game

A group of boys play baseball in Monterrey, Mexico. They have no proper field, no uniforms and no equipment. A man working in a factory agrees to coach them; he had tried and failed to make it as a professional in the United States. The team enters the regional tournament, then leaves the country, and in 1957 goes all the way to the world championship in America. William Dear directs. The story is real. The Monterrey team won the Little League World Series in 1957, and in the final the pitcher Ángel Macías threw a perfect game, meaning no opposing player reached base. It remains the only perfect game thrown in a final of that tournament. The second subject is racism. The team meets discrimination in every town it passes through in America, and the narrative shows it without softening. The film has the shape of family cinema; the emotional emphasis is high and the characters stay inside types. The child actors and the sporting scenes are well worked, and the game sections are the soundest part. Its weakness is predictability; even a viewer who does not know the real events can see where it is going within the first half hour. Who it is for: viewers who like sports films and family pictures drawn from real events. Who it is not for: the script is formulaic, the emotional scenes are written thickly, and the game sections are long for anyone who does not know baseball.