Little Big League: The Kids Movie That Went Harder Than It Had Any Right To

Night Nurses from Jersey

Holy flashback. .. .My name appears in your video at 28:28 - best 3+ months of my life playing one of the Twins. Still have the items tucked somewhere including a copy of the script Thanks for acknowleding the true baseball we put into it. Jay Wange

This was my favorite baseball kid movie growing up, surprised to see how bad it’s numbers did. It had the most realistic mlb feel to it for sure. Great video as always man

They made Johnson and Griffey seem so damn cool. It was definitely my favorite baseball movie as a kid, but that's probably cuz I was a nerd who wanted to manage a big league team

They actually do setup the “Should we pinch hit for Scales” thing earlier in the film. One of Billy’s 1st games managing (maybe the 1st), he makes the decision to let Scales bat with 2 outs in the 9th and a chance to tie the game. Then the press asks him about it after the game and he says he wanted Scales to bat because he was confident in his offense. Then it comes back around & pays off in the climactic Mariners game.

They showed how managing a baseball team turns you into a different kind of person. Billy was the realistic kid for a change, not always upbeat and didn’t always do the right thing. Definitely not for kids entertainment but true baseball fans will stop to watch this classic anytime

growing up in Minnesota this was my favorite baseball movie as a kid. I got my teacher to let us watch it in class in 5th grade. I definitely got in trouble for the night nurses scene. Great video!

Second favorite baseball movie to The Sandlot. I'm dead serious. This movie took baseball seriously, while still being comedic. Felt much more legitimate in the way it dealt with strategy and tactics and the day to day grind of being an MLB ballplayer.

I think the issue with Little Big League is that as a kids movie it didn’t appeal to adults even with all the major leaguers in the film. And I feel that it was more “adult” than other kid baseball movies. There was no mythical beast as in The Sandlot, no Angels making a pro team commit 17 errors on one play, and no 100mph throwing 12 year old striking out pros. I loved this movie growing up, and I appreciate it more now as an adult for how well the baseball scenes are portrayed in the film. I will have to make sure I watch the whole video before writing my comment because you said exactly what I did😂

The thing with thinking of PHing Scales isn't in your face, but all through the movie people remark he's not a great hitter, when Billy shows confidence in Scales, and Mickey later says he likes Billy, he's told "of course you do, he's the only person in the world who thinks you can hit." Even when I was younger, thst wasn't out of nowhere like the Hilbert thing.

I love how eerily similar Tony Todd got his role is to Willy "Mays" Hays is played by Wesly Snipes. Both essentially just crashing a tryout.

I genuinely used Bowers’ mathematic formula in elementary school. One of my favorite silly scenes of all time but genuinely helps you learn how to calculate a real world situation

Being a little leaguer at about 9-10 when these films came out — in a small town — where there was nothing to do except play baseball and go to the movies… … ‘twas a magical time.

I loved little big league as a kid specifically because it looked like real baseball. I never liked movies like Rookie of the Year that the on field action was silly or it looked like all the pitches were arcing into home at 60 mph

One thing not mentioned here that I always liked about LBL was the ending. Movies like this so often end with the big win, it was refreshing to have them lose the big game. And yet it wasn't a downer, having the fans bring the team back out was more moving than simply winning would have been.

The Troy Startoni segment is absolutely wild.

On the subject of Billy Heywood, that the kid isn't some smiley doofus is what I enjoy so much about the film. It's about a kid who is thrust into an adult world in a position of leadership and really, Billy is using managing the team as a means of coping with his grandfather's death...keeping the team alive that season was his way of keeping his grandfather alive. Billy deals with real issues like grief, growing up without a father, and the burden of balancing responsibilities and personal relationships. Billy's arc is going through the 5 stages of grief and at the end he's accepted the death of his grandfather by becoming a kid again. He also has other negative traits that he overcomes or begins to overcome by the end of the movie. All of which really falls into the realism of the film. If Billy were just some goofy kid, the film wouldn't work. But Billy's own psychological struggles are reflected in his baseball struggles, so there is a lot more narrative weight behind the baseball play rather than winning or losing the fictional game.

In regards to the scene where Billy let Scales hit instead of pitch hitting... Earlier in the film, Scales made a comment in the locker room where he said that he like Billy as a manager because Billy believed in his abilities at the plate, one of Scales teammates tell him that he only likes Billy because Billy is the only person in the world that thinks Scales can hit.

This movie is what gave Griffey the cocky-but-loveable persona we all know him to be. And this movie is also what gave Randy Johnson the no-nonsense persona we know him to be.

So glad you did a full length video on this movie! I always remember it being my favorite baseball movie growing up, didn’t know why but this makes it all make sense! lol