The newest Iowa baseball movie, "The Final Season" -My connection

Have you seen the new movie, "The Final Season?"My family and I went recently and noticed that hundreds of fellow Iowans couldn't wait to see this home grown flick. After all we have been waiting a long time. Stores have been trying to sell hats and shirts for nearly 2 years it seems.

If you are from Iowa or any small town you will love this movie! If you are from Arizona you will think it's as "corny" as Iowa.Is it a new "Field of Dreams?" No way. However, if you love sports movies, it's as refreshing as fresh cold glass of lemonade on an open porch. It's sweet and and feels good. We like that feeling in Iowa don't we? What's wrong with that?

Don't expect to be "moved" like you were in other sports movies that you have watched like "The Rookie," or "We are Marshall."These movies were better in everyway but if the real story of the Norway baseball team was to be told accurately, no one character could be developed because this was about a team and a town not about a few people. Even the star Sean Astin who played the lead in coach Kent Stock didn't get that much more screen time than most. The attempt at "rooting" for an individual was with the very fictional player from Chicago and dad played by Tom Arnold. It felt like the director's had to figure out a way to get Tom into the movie.

My personal connection to the movie was that i also played high school baseball in Iowa. in 1983 Norway was yes, already power house. It was my senior year when we played on that very field in Norway. I was the 3rd batter and faced a guy named John Kuester. He could throw in the low 90's and would later play at Kentucky. We lost 10-0 in 5 innings and myself and the best hitter on the team were the only guys who didn't strike out! That's right 13 strikeouts in 5 innings! The only reason that I didn't K is because he through me a change up and I leaned into it and flew out to left field. Our coach asked me if I could pitch the last two innings and I told him my are was really sore from the last game. In reality, I was shallow and selfish, only thinking about what these Norway guys would do to my statistics and not allow me to make all state. Sad, I know. I took my "sore arm" to the end of the bench and stared out at the soon to be state champs. By the way, the train that rolls by in the movie is real. Like they needed more ways to distract the visiting teams. Everything at that Norway field intimidated us.

Now it's 2007, and I am a Cedar Rapids Realtor and it's a day after I watched "The Final Season." I am 5 miles away from Norway after showing a buyer an acreage. You bet I drove to that field! I think I've only been there once since high school. It was a cloudy cold day, in the upper 50'. There it was....that field. It looked exactly the same as it did in the 80's when I played their last. I got out of the car and noticed that I was not the only one on the field. One man was manicuring the field. For who? In October? He wanted the field to look good for all of the visitors who would be stopping by over the next few months before the snow flies, I thought. Then all of a sudden, I felt very special. Because for that very moment he was grooming the field for me. Yes, it was the pitcher's mound he was grooming. Then I reached across my body and grabbed my pitching arm and it was really sore.