Eastwood plays Gus Lobel, an Atlanta Braves scout whose historic signings include Dusty Baker and Tom Glavine. As Trouble opens, Gus has been without a discovery for some time, is increasingly hindered by a wandering blurry spot in his vision, and is being challenged in his old-school conventional wisdom by a younger front-office guy, Phil Sanderson (Matthew Lillard), who gets his intelligence from a laptop and wants to see analog Gus scrapped when his contract expires.
Phil is set on using the Braves’ first draft pick on a high school slugger in North Carolina, so Gus dutifully goes to Swannanoa High School to see if the kid can play. He is joined, against his will, by his daughter, Mickey — as in Mantle — played by Amy Adams. On tense terms with her widower father since he banished her to boarding school, Mickey is today a fast-rising 33-year-old lawyer, pursuing her career with the same single-mindedness with which Gus pursued his; her reaching out to act as her ailing father’s helpmate is the last, best chance for either of them to make peace.
(There is no “Swannanoa High School.” Swannanoa kids attend Charles D. Owen High.)
Regarding a scene set in a local bar, loyal reader Kathi Petersen notes on Facebook that she doesn’t know any bars in Swannanoa where they clog every night. (Maybe this is an idea someone wants to run with.) But despite this, she adds, baseball movies are always good for light entertainment.
Amy Adams, Justin Timberlake and John Goodman also star.
There was a Swannanoa High School. It’s address was 235 Old US 70.