Not quite the home run I'd hoped for

DH asked for two movies for Christmas: Miracle, about the 1980 US Olympic hockey team that beat the Russians (which he insists was one of the greatest moments in American history -- sorry Gen. Washington, emancipated slaves, and sufferagettes!), and The Rookie, about a middle-aged high school baseball coach who tries out, and then plays for, the majors. Both have recently been added to the pantheon of sports movies that make him cry.

Neither of those titles was at Walmart, the easiest place to haul the girls, so I had to make a trip to an actual movie store. Oy. I put it off for a while, but finally trudged off to Hastings on the morning of Christmas Eve where I found Miracle right away, but not The Rookie. I had no shopping cart. The baby dangled precariously from one arm and my death grip on the toddler's hand was loosening, leaving her poised at any minute to careen wildly in a random path of destruction. I figured screw it, The Rookie is really freaking boring anyway.

I picked up Fever Pitch instead. Neither of us had seen it before, but I thought it looked cute -- who doesn't like Jimmy Fallon? -- and at least it was in the same sports genre! Baseball is baseball is baseball, right?

Except that I forgot the cardinal rule of gift giving: Apparently it's not nice to get your husband a movie that glorifies the team that beat his hometown ball club (to a pulp, I might add) in a recent World Series.

It took me a few hours to figure out his lack of enthusiasm. But then I did, and offered to take it back. "No, no," he said, a single tear staining his manly cheek (okay, I made that part up). "This is fine. I'm sure it's a good movie." (Heavy sigh from him.) He watched Miracle twice (big eye roll from me) before he screwed up the courage, but we did watch Fever Pitch this afternoon while the girls napped.

The verdict? I loved it -- it's a sweet and funny romantic comedy (with enough sports to make up for the romantic part, as far as boys are concerned). DH laughed out loud several times. And, luckily, the World Series win that eradicated the Curse of the Bambino at the expense of DH's beloved Cardinals was only mentioned / shown very briefly at the end of the show.... I think in the future we could watch the entire movie up until about the last 40 seconds, and it would be a perfectly satisfying entertainment experience for him.

So it wasn't quite the home run gift I'd hoped for, but it didn't turn out too badly despite my thoughtlessness, lol.


~RCH~