Tom Selleck, ken Takakura, Aya Takanashi

The subject—American baseball players playing in Japan—is not a burning issue. The director, Fred Schepisi (The Russia House), is an Australian who doesn't understand baseball very well. The movie's undercurrent of Japan-bashing, and reciprocal America-bashing, is discomfiting. Yet this film manages to be quite warm, appealing and successful.

Selleck, such a fan that he wore a Detroit Tigers cap through all eight years of Magnum, P.I., is characteristically affable as a Yankee slugger whose talent has faded while his superstar ego remains at full flush. Then his agent signs him up with Nagoya's Chunichi Dragons. Selleck's baseball playing is respectable, though Schepisi so often shoots him from long-distance that it's tough to see him. Selleck is used better in the romantic subplot involving him with Takanashi as the daughter of the Dragons' imperious manager, Takakura.

Takakura effectively embodies the Japanese corporate mentality that makes a group effort of even such an individualized enterprise as playing baseball. (Selleck is discouraged from arguing with umpires and even from sliding hard to break up double plays, lest he "dishonor" his team.)

Dennis Haysbert derives earnest fun from his role as Selleck's only American teammate. Ex-major leaguers Leron Lee (who played in Japan as well as with the St. Louis Cardinals) and Greg Goossen appear in bit roles. Writers Gary Ross, Kevin Wade and Monte Merrick rely mostly on clichés—Selleck even denies that he is in a "srump"—and show little knowledge of baseball: In a light game, Selleck is supposed to bunt with the bases loaded, a ludicrously unlikely strategy for a home-run hitter. Everything predictably winds down toward a big game between the Dragons and the Tokyo Giants. Selleck and Takanashi's convention-defying romance gets sticky too, although the film's most interesting relationship is between Takakura and Selleck, epitomizing the clash between Japan's reverence for authority and America's affection for free spirits. (PG-13)