Soul of the Game (1996)

After a shaky opening, with a reporter interviewing Willie Mays (played by an actor who looks nothing like the "Say Hey Kid") in 1954 as a device for a flashback to the 1940s heyday of the Negro Leagues, Soul of the Game settles into a surprisingly melancholy account of the breaking of baseball's color line. This is not a celebration of Jackie Robinson's immense courage, but a rumination on the cruel circumstances that denied his more talented colleagues, pitcher Satchel Paige and catcher Josh Gibson (cited by many baseball historians as the black Babe Ruth), their shot at history. The film devotes the most time to Paige, elegantly portrayed by Delroy Lindo as a proud man clinging to his dignity after almost two decades of playing in the Negro Leagues. Before Michael Jordan, Paige was the black athlete who could put fans in the seats just by showing up, and he often had to pitch every game to justify his cut of the gate (though, at the time of this story, he only pitched a few innings each outing). Gibson, played with glowering menace by Mykelti Williamson, was a troubled man, but the film is less clear about the source of his demons; only a postscript which describes his death from a brain tumor suggests that he wasn't totally in control of his health. Robinson's skills and character aren't fully dramatized here; he is only shown to be fast on the bases, and Blair Underwood's bland performance misses his coiled intensity. David Himmelstein's script does offer tantalizing sidelights about the political machinations behind Branch Rickey's courting of black ballplayers. The film winds up on a suitably sad note; an all-star game between Negro Leaguers and Major Leaguers, in which Paige and Gibson might have had the chance to strut their stuff in front an integrated crowd, is rained out, leaving the two veterans once again frustrated at what might have been. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide