“The Final Season” is primarily for those who love baseball and underdogs

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Got a chance to see a preview of the film ‘The Final Season,’ which will be released next Friday. The film is based on the true story of the baseball team at Norway High, which is located in the very small town of Norway, Iowa (pop. around 600). Going into the 1991 season, Norway had won an astonishing 19 state baseball championships in 24 years.

But the 1991 season was threatening to be the last one for the team and the school. The local school board wanted to consolidate Norway with a bigger school. When Coach Jim Van Scoyoc (played by Powers Boothe) refused to play ball, so to speak, and support the board’s decision, he is fired and replaced by assistant coach Kent Stock (played by Sean Astin), who had only coached baseball for a half season at Norway.

Director David Mickey Evans (‘The Sandlot’ and ‘The Sandlot 2’) keeps the dramatic tensions and accompanying subplots moving at an understated pace. The film is big on pumping Midwestern farm and life values -- none of the kids smoke or drink except for the film’s one rebellious teenager, Mitch Akers (played by Michael Angarano), and even he falls in line in order to play on the school’s baseball team -- and presenting baseball as the lifeblood of the town. ‘We grow baseball players here like corn,’ Boothe says in a voice that contains as much gravel as the backroads the farmers drive.

Comparisons to ‘Hoosiers’ will be inevitable, especially since each uses a championship game as the backdrop for its conclusion, but I don’t see ‘The Final Season’ earning the same sports movie status.

For one, basketball has surpassed baseball in popularity (and both lag behind football). And I’m not sure a story about a small Midwest high school that -- through no fault of its own -- has little diversity among its population will translate in bigger, urban locales.

Still, there are worse ways to spend a couple of hours. Rooting for the underdog to overcome seemingly impossible odds never gets old.

- Mike Terry