Back in December, Lisa agreed to watch a baseball movie with me to make up for making me watch The Catcher in 2023.  The one we picked was Stealing Home, because it starred Mark Harmon and Jodie Foster and it looked like it would be a sweet movie.

Stealing Home opens with Billy Wyatt (Mark Harmon), a minor league baseball player who is getting ready to take the field and who is standing for the National Anthem.  I immediately liked Billy because he was standing for the Anthem and not taking a knee.  I also like aging minor leaguers because they’re still playing the game even though they know they’ve probably missed their window to move up to the majors.  Billy Wyatt loves both the game and his country.

As Billy waits to play ball, he thinks about another type of love, the love that he had for Katie Chandler (Jodie Foster).  Katie was six years older than him and encouraged him to always pursue his dreams, whether it was in baseball or love.  The movie flashes back to Billy living in a motel with a cocktail waitress and getting a phone call from his mother who tells him that Katie has committed suicide and she wants Billy to spread her ashes at a special place.  Billy then flashes back to his childhood and his teen years, in which he’s played by William McNamara who does not look like he could ever grow up to be Mark Harmon.  Billy’s best friend is Alan Appleby, who is played as a teenager by Jonathan Silverman and as an adult by Harold Ramis.  Jonathan Silverman growing up to be Harold Ramis seems even more unlikely than William McNamara becoming Mark Harmon.  Billy remembers losing his virginity to Appleby’s prom date, losing his dad to a car wreck, and a Fourth of July weekend that he spent on the beach with Katie and his mom (Blair Brown).

Only Jodie Foster plays Katie Chandler and we only see Katie thorough Billy’s eyes.  Jodie Foster gives a lively performance as Katie but she always more of a plot device than a fully rounded character.  We never find out why Katie killed herself.  Her father says that Katie was unhappy during her adult life but why?  Even after Billy gets her ashes and tries to figure out where she wanted him to spread them, he never thinks about why she killed herself.  In fact, he hadn’t even talked to her for years.  That really bothered me.

The movie ends with Billy stealing home during a game and proving that he’s still got it as far as baseball goes.  I love baseball but I still felt like Katie’s untold story was probably more interesting than Billy’s.  I liked Mark Harmon’s performance and I really wanted to like Stealing Home more than I did.  I wish the movie had been more about who Katie was instead of being about who Billy thought Katie was.