Stealing Home (1988)

I loved it. Having spent my life in sport (athletics, skiing, curling and golf), I thought this film - and The Natural - really caught the spirit of competitive sports. I was also enchanted by the poignancy of the two love stories and the flashbacks really worked for me. In many ways it is a tragic coming-of-age drama with a baseball player who so very nearly made it suddenly receiving news that his childhood sweetheart (Jodie Foster) has committed suicide and left the disposal of her ashes up to him. On his way home, he recalls his past with Foster: early days as his babysitter, the time they made love, and the summer conversations they had on the New Jersey shore. He looks up his best friend played by Jonathan Silverman who has never really forgiven him for sleeping with his prom date (and this leads him to renew his relationship with that girl, now a divorced mother). He finally realizes what he must do with Foster's remains and the film ends with him casting her ashes into the wind at the end of the pier.

Burnt-out baseball player Mark Harmon, upon hearing of the suicide of a childhood friend, hearkens back to his younger days, eventually returning home to put peace to the past. As Harmon's boyhood muse, Jodie Foster is a bit like Auntie Mame at 20, raffish and exciting--but what happens to her character is a writer's pretense and it just doesn't wash (it fails to jibe with the blossomed young woman we've been watching). This light drama, a labor of love for writer-directors Steven Kampmann and William Porter, is awfully slight, relying heavily on comedic asides and nostalgia to round it off (even erring on that score, as the nostalgia seems distinctly falsified). However, Foster has a handful of scenes that touch on something deeper than woozy sentiment and reminiscences; she finds the heart of this piece and manages to give the picture some depth. ** from ****

Loved the movie...esp. Jodie! She was divine. Happy, free-spirited and beautiful. What most girls would love to be. She helped Will navigate life. From his grade school years, to high school and then into his thirties. After his father died she tenderly loved him. When she died, she gave Will the task of disposing of her ashes. Her death brought him home, where he was loved. In finding the perfect location for her ashes, he was able to resolve the loss of his father and get off his sidetracked life.I would watch again and recommend it to anyone. HATED the music! That saxophone made me wince!!!! Very distracting. Kenny G anyone? Yuck!

"Stealing Home" takes place over a number of years, perhaps 25 or so, from the 1960s to the 1980s. Billy Wyatt as a young boy of 10 has Katie Chandler (20-something Jodie Foster, playing a 16-year old) as a babysitter. Katie is unconventional, smokes and borrows the car without permission, and Billy is attracted to that. Even with their difference in ages, Billy never gives up.Mark Harmon plays the adult 30-something Billy, and as the movie opens we see him arriving at a baseball stadium, not major leagues, at 5:45AM, he stripes the field, does a few other things, and dresses into his uniform. Most of the movie is then told in flashback.As a teenager Billy (William McNamara) was a promising ballplayer, and was even invited to a big league summer camp. But Billy never realized his dream, and got sidetracked.SPOILERS. As a down and out adult, not very happy, Billy gets news that Katie has died. She leaves her ashes to Billy, saying that he will know what to do with them. He is puzzled, has no clue, but gradually remembers his times with Katie, her love of the water, and scatters them at sea from a pier. He also gets the motivation to return to baseball, and that's where we found him in the opening scene. He gets on base, has to steal home from third base, mirroring a scene from his teen years. Thus the name of the movie.