The actual members of the Hong Kong National Baseball Team appear in the film as themselves, in a story set in 2004. Their isolated existence leads them to take unconventional choices in both love and friendship, and to summon great courage in the face of their lonely and disconnected existence.
Al Percolo (Albert Brooks) is a Major League Baseball scout with the New York Yankees who attends a game at a small college to see pitching phenom Tommy Lacy (Michael Rapaport). Al happens to be a fan of the film King Kong and he remarks to his fellow scouts sitting in the crowd that he is looking for the next King Kong.
Small-town pitcher Thomas Kelly (Thomas Meighan) is sent to Spring training with a minor league baseball team in Florida, but is fired by its jealous manager, Joe Cooley (Jack W. Johnston). Kelly is then talked into being the celebrity endorser for a Florida real estate firm, and his former teammates invest money in the firm through him. Still jealous of Kelly's popularity, Cooley conspires with crooked broker Morgan West (Robert Craig) to sell Kelly and the investors some worthless swampland. Kelly and his friends lose their money, but Kelly struggles to recoup the losses. He eventually makes a fortune, repays the investors, and is himself appointed team manager in place of Cooley.
Fifteen years ago Bobby (Marshall Caswell) and his friends tormented their little league teammate Billy Haskins after he lost them a big game. In retaliation Billy murdered two of their teammates and their coach before he was stopped and placed in a mental institution. Bobby moved away afterwards, but has returned years later in 1996 to reconnect with everyone. This reunion is cut short when someone dressed as an old fashioned umpire begins killing any survivors from the team, making the survivors fear for their lives.
The movie begins in 1906 at the Baltimore Waterfront, where 11-year-old George Herman Ruth, Jr. is taken away by Brother Matthias from George's abusive father to St. Mary's. When George is 18, his incredible baseball talent gets him hired to play for the Baltimore Orioles, and during the interview, he gets his "Babe" nickname. Babe becomes a successful baseball player, and is soon sold off to play for the Boston Red Sox. After a bad game, Babe wonders what went wrong at a bar, until he is helped by Claire Hogsdon that when he pitches he sticks out his tongue. He continues his success, landing a new $100,000 contract; he finds Claire, but she gives him the cold shoulder. During one game, Denny, a sick paralyzed child, watches with his father Babe Ruth play; when Babe says "hiya kid" to the kid, he miraculously "uncripples" and gets up. Babe soon becomes a player for the New York Yankees; during one game, he accidentally hurts a dog, and decides to take the dog and the little kid owner to the hospital. After arguing with the doctors that a dog is the same as a human, the dog is healed; but because Babe left a game to do this, he gets suspended from the Yankees. A depressed Babe Ruth finds himself at a bar, and amidst the crowd giving off negative vibes, he starts a fight and gets arrested. Soon, he decides to play Santa Claus at a Children's Hospital, where he runs into Claire again, visiting her nephew. She tells him that his actions affect the children of America, and Babe decides to keep that in mind. Miller Huggins, the same man who suspended Babe, fights to bring him back to the Yankees as the team has had a bad season. Babe is soon brought back, and the team wins the World Series thanks to him; with this, he and Claire get married, but soon after, Huggins dies from pyaemia. During Game 3 of the 1932 World Series, Babe gets a call from the father of a dying child, and promises him that when he goes off to bat, he will call the third shot and the ball will land at a certain spot; all of this will be for the boy. During the game, Babe does exactly that, and the boy hears the news and starts to get better. Babe retires from the Yankees at the age of 41, and takes a management position with the Boston Braves, even though they want him to play in the games despite his age. During one game, Babe gets stressed out and can't continue playing, and retires from baseball after that game. Sadly, this means he goes off contract by retiring during his time with the Braves, and is fired from anything related to baseball. Later, Babe complains of neck pain, and soon learns that he is dying of throat cancer. The news of this leads fans to send letters telling Babe that they care. The doctors decide to try a treatment on Babe with a chance that he'll survive; as Babe is taken to surgery, the narrator give words of encouragement to baseball fans, crediting Babe Ruth for America's love of the sport.
In modern-day Japan, the young Jubeh Yakyu practices his pitching and catching with his father only to discover that he has super powers by accidentally killing his father with the ball. This is seen by his younger adopted brother, Musashi Nakagawa. Some time later, Jubeh (Tak Sakaguchi), now 17, has become a juvenile delinquent responsible for 50 murders within a week. After being caught for his crime, Jubeh is sent to the Pterodactyl Juvenile Reformatory, run by governor Mifune (Ryosei Tayama), until his trial date. Jubeh shares a cell with the 16-year-old killer Shinosuki Suzuku, (Mari Hoshino) and also comes gets into conflicts with the chief warden Ishihara (Miho Ninagawa), who is the granddaughter of a World War II collaborator in the Nazis' genocide programme. In prison, Jubeh finds out that Musashi was also a prisonmate at one point but died there. Ishihara organises the prison baseball Juvie League and wants Jubeh to take his place in the prison's team, known as the Pterodactyl Gauntlets. Jubeh has not played baseball since the accidental death of his father, but after Ishihara threatens to kill Shinosuki he agrees to play on the condition that the prison food is improved and all the players are pardoned of their crimes. The next day the Pterodactyls take on the St. Black Dahlia High School team, composed of young female psycho-butchers.
When Eddie Everett was a rookie in 1992, he was one of the best pitchers of his time. He led the California Angels to the American League Championship Series, where they played the Boston Red Sox, and were one out away from making it to the World Series (this same situation occurred in real life, but in 1986, not 1992). When a rookie playing for the Red Sox hits a ground ball to Eddie, he bobbles it and is unable to get him out, while the runners he let on base score, losing a chance for the Angels to make it to the World Series. Ever since then, he had never been the same pitcher, or the same person.
Ruth stars in the film, playing himself, but the details of his life are completely fictionalized. In the film, Ruth comes from a small country town and has a loving home life, but in real life, he grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, and spent most of his childhood in a reformatory [1]. In the film, shades of the baseball movie The Natural, Ruth cuts down a tree to make his own bat.
Ryan Dunne is a local baseball prospect who gets an opportunity to play in the Cape Cod Baseball League for the Chatham Athletics. Dunne was born and raised in Chatham, Massachusetts and dreams of playing in the major leagues. He helps his dad with his landscaping business and takes care of Veteran's Field, where the Chatham A's play.
During the 1996 baseball season, Joe Torre, manager of the New York Yankees, not only needs to concentrate on his team, his brother Frank is in need of a heart transplant, facing the same condition that already took the life of their brother.