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Review of For Love of the Game (Basil Poledouris)

1999 Varèse

2024 Varèse

FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:

Buy it... if you seek the final exploration of heartfelt personal triumph and broad strokes of Americana in Basil Poledouris' celebrated career.

Avoid it... if you expect the primary themes of this score to firmly reside in your memory, the work's tone mostly perfect but the melodies lacking the lasting punch needed in this genre.

FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:

For Love of the Game: (Basil Poledouris) There are many things for baseball fans to admire about Sam Raimi's first mainstream motion picture, For Love of the Game. Its loyalty to an authentic game is exhibited in its visuals, its star, Kevin Costner, is a tested on-screen veteran of the game, and announcers Vin Scully and Steve Lyons have familiar voices. At its core, though, For Love of the Game is a love story. At the end of a long career with the dismal Detroit Tigers, Costner's 40-year-old starting pitcher is forced into retirement after the last game of the 1999 season. While he reflects upon his life and his lost love during one more outing against the New York Yankees, he flirts with a perfect game, leading to an opportunity for salvation on and off the diamond. The main detriment of the movie, aside from endless scenes outside of the white chalk lines, is the ridiculously slow pacing of the game play. Ironically, the story's format wouldn't have been remotely possible if was set after the institution of the pitch clock in the game years later to speed things up. When considering the movie's music, Raimi had a strong, lasting collaboration with composer Danny Elfman, and it would have been interesting to hear the composer's take on a blend of contemporary romance and the American pastime. More qualified might have been James Newton Howard, a mainstay of Costner's films during this period. The assignment went, however, to Basil Poledouris, a smart choice because of his lengthy history of writing personal scores with a touch of Americana. It is exactly that type of score that Poledouris provided for For Love of the Game, and it turned out to be the composer's final mainstream effort before illness and troubles in his personal life concluded his artistic contributions. Costner himself had forgiven Poledouris for backing out of his assignment on Dances With Wolves, which everyone soon realized was a fateful decision for the composer. It eventually became clear that the duo of Les Misérables and For Love of the Game were the last of the composer's truly engaging works. The latter score is far less spectacular, but it speaks to the roots of Poledouris' habit of reaching to the heart of characters on screen and provided them with appropriately warm music, not to mention a few throwbacks to his folksy inclinations.

Comparisons to heavily praised baseball-related scores like Randy Newman's The Natural or James Horner's Field of Dreams are tempting, but while For Love of the Game is a film with baseball as its narrative inspiration, the score is really about one man's recollections about his life. It's an upbeat, gracious, and easy-going work with a blend of contemporary rhythms and orchestral fortitude. Poledouris' knack for brilliantly balancing the organic and synthetic for a character score is legendary, and he's on his game here. A primary theme dominates the entire score, a heroic and expansive representation of perseverance in the game by the climax of "Last Pitch" while sensitive and tingling in the flashbacks of "Relationship Montage." A secondary theme for the personal relationships also mingles throughout, taking a far more restrained approach. The extremely affable "Main Theme" suite covers both of these bases, and in the solo woodwind renditions of the thematic material, Poledouris' music sounds remarkably similar in its slight stature to Kimberly the following year. Neither theme is really memorable, though. The resonance of the main baseball theme isn't as deep as some listener may desire, but it serves its purpose. Slight country and rock rhythms, complete with percussion suitable for an elevator speaker, are necessarily accessible though somewhat generic and bland. The score's outward confrontation moments pull hard towards a bluesy influence, and "Tuttle Knockdown" and "Gus Hits" may be challenging distractions from the otherwise more restrained atmosphere. The electric guitars in these cues are unacceptably obnoxious despite the intended abrasive personality; far better are the performances of the instrument when it accompanies the full orchestral ensemble. An acoustic guitar serves as the grounding element of the score's personality, strumming along with the composer's usual, upper-range synthetic effects and producing the same family-friendly, comfortable atmosphere as Free Willy. The piano is also used to a similar end in "Jane's Home" and "The Decision," both of which are as endearing as they are smooth. The latter cue features an impressive full ensemble variation on the theme, with piano adding elegant counterpoint. The mix of the solo instruments with the ensemble is notable, and the tingling electronics are, as typical in Poledouris' scores, well balanced in their use of the full sonic spectrum.

The finale cue at the culmination of the baseball game, "Last Pitch," is worthy of some discussion on its own, for its style totally defies the restrained demeanor of the remainder of the score. Three minutes of the cue adds an adult chorus to the mix of orchestra, electric and acoustic guitars, and synthetic rhythms. The resulting repetitions of the main theme, along with some generally pleasing chord progressions of massive scope in between, would be suitable for an adventure film of far wider implications. The momentous proportions of this choral cue are a surprising conclusion to an otherwise humble score, creating an outstanding listening experience on album but perhaps overplaying its hand with a dose of religious importance in the film. In terms of sports film music, For Love of the Game does not achieve the same amount of inspirational spirit that Jerry Goldsmith was able to conjure for other stories, though nothing in either Hoosiers or Rudy tries to generate the pious power of "Last Pitch." The triumphant explosion in that cue is a highlight of Poledouris' entire career despite its somewhat awkward, bombastic positioning in the scene. The score as a whole relies upon its minority of truly gorgeous orchestral contributions to survive. But survive it does, and that melodic portion, even if slightly anonymous, will be a necessarily inclusion for any Poledouris collector. At the time of the film's release, a fifteen-minute promotional album of Poledouris' score was floated in response to a commercial song-only album that featured only one small suite of the very best music from the score. This promo fetched hundreds of dollars in blazing online bidding, and these buyers must have felt silly when Varèse Sarabande eventually offered 33 minutes of the score on an album later in the year. Ironically, it's one of the rare circumstances in which a brief Varèse album of the era would have been better if a tad shorter, omitting the irritatingly rough blues and country tones in "Tuttle Knockdown" and "Gus Hits." Still, the presentation was well condensed to the highlights and a pleasant surprise for those disappointed with Poledouris' Mickey Blue Eyes earlier in 1999. The label expanded the score to a 78-minute presentation in 2024 that languishes in much of the additional, subdued material. More oddly, though, is a very restricted soundscape for the score; it sounds underwater and flat for its entire length on this product. For most listeners, the shorter album will more than suffice. In either case, the score stands as a bittersweet mainstream goodbye to a favorite composer in his waning years.  ****

TRACK LISTINGS:

1999 Varèse Album:
Total Time: 33:31

• 1. Main Theme (3:33) • 2. Relationship Montage (3:35) • 3. Tuttle Knockdown (1:47) • 4. Jane's Home (4:50) • 5. Gus Hits (1:09)

• 6. Lemonade (2:08) • 7. The Apology (1:57) • 8. No Hits (4:02) • 9. The Decision (5:13) • 10. Last Pitch (4:57)

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2024 Varèse Album:
Total Time: 78:13

• 1. Main Theme (3:35) • 2. New York* (2:41) • 3. Billy Traded (2:22) • 4. Run to Park (0:55) • 5. Park Farewell (1:44) • 6. Locker Room (0:49) • 7. Clouds (1:47) • 8. Tuttle Knockdown (1:50) • 9. Tuttle Out (1:37) • 10. Cat and Mouse (1:05) • 11. Jane to Game (1:47) • 12. Jane Putdown (0:42) • 13. Torn Dollar Bill* (1:20) • 14. Dinner/Elevator (1:35) • 15. OK Billy Chapel (0:55) • 16. Birch Strikeout (3:01) • 17. For Love of the Music* (1:50) • 18. Hard Pitching (1:48)

• 19. Old School (1:37) • 20. Heather Comes Along (0:44) • 21. Jane's Home (4:59) • 22. Relationship Montage (3:38) • 23. Gus Hits It (1:18) • 24. Accident (3:11) • 25. Coming Back? (0:37) • 26. Lemonade (2:12) • 27. Doesn't Matter Anymore (1:04) • 28. No Hits (4:49) • 29. Mickey Saves (2:50) • 30. The Decision (5:19) • 31. Can't Get Clear (2:42) • 32. Last Pitch (5:19) • 33. Gus Farewell (0:53) • 34. Apology (1:55) • 35. I Need You (3:09)

NOTES & QUOTES:

The insert of the 1999 album includes no extra information about the score or film. That of the 2024 expansion includes details about both.

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The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from For Love of the Game are Copyright © 1999, 2024, Varèse Sarabande, Varèse Sarabande and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 11/20/99 and last updated 8/15/24.