For Love of the Game

For Love of the Game (1999) — watch online on iFILM, a sports drama directed by Sam Raimi with Kevin Costner as Billy Chapel, a Detroit Tigers pitcher on the mound for what may be his last game in the majors.

Yanks Stadium is packed. Chapel's arm is fading. And as he throws pitch after pitch, the film cuts back through five years — the woman he loved and lost (Kelly Preston as Jane), the trade that would ship him out of Detroit, the slow realization that baseball has been both his salvation and his cage. John C. Reilly plays his longtime catcher, Brian Cox the team's owner. Raimi keeps the action tight to one afternoon, but the emotional weight carries two decades of a man's life.

Based on the novel by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Shaara, the film takes the sports-movie formula somewhere quieter and more personal. Stream For Love of the Game (1999) in full on iFILM.