The Perfect Game

In 1957, a barefooted, rag-tag team of boys from poverty stricken Monterrey, Mexico, defy extraordinary odds to become the first foreign team to win the Little League World Series—doing so in a perfect game—the only one in championship history. Based on a true story – and a book of the same name, the movie “The Perfect Game” tells the tale of how their miracle changed not only their lives, but an entire city’s destiny.In the pews of San Juan Bautista Church, Angel Macias and other boys of Monterrey’s slums try to escape the dismal conditions that surround them. Hunger, broken homes, alcoholic parents, dirt floors, corrugated shacks for houses—life holds anything but promise for these forsaken children. But there is one ray of light. After Mass on Sundays, their priest gathers them around an old radio where they listen to Spanish broadcasts of the Brooklyn Dodgers. One day, Angel finds an old baseball in an abandoned dirt lot. He begins to throw the ball against the wall of an adjacent dilapidated shack, only to awaken a transient factory worker named Cesar Faz. Angel goads the gruff man, whose siesta he ruined, into having a catch. He soon discovers that when Cesar was twelve years old, he lived in Texas and had been a bat boy for the San Antonio Missions, and later, a clubhouse attendant for the American League’s St. Louis Browns. A chance encounter with the Mexico City All-Star traveling team inspires Angel and his friends to form an organized Little League team. Their dream: to play one real game in the United States. But first they must build a field and convince the reluctant Cesar Faz to coach them. Averaging thirty pounds lighter and six inches shorter than their American counterparts, the boys journey to Texas for the first round of the 1957 Little League Tournament. Taking a bus to Reynosa, Mexico, they are forced to cross the Rio Grande on foot and walk twelve miles through scorching desert to the field in McAllen—wearing their uniforms and carrying nothing more than a change of underwear in paper bags. With a three day visa and barely enough money to last that long, they ready to play their one game. But a different destiny awaits them. Upsetting one great American team after another while overcoming racism, homesickness and a total lack of money, they pass through Corpus Christi, Fort Worth, and Louisville, Kentucky on their improbable way to a berth in the World Series in Williamsport, PA. In the final game against a heavily-favored team from La Mesa, CA, Angel Macias pitches a perfect game—the only one before or since in a Little League World Series final game. As the unlikeliest of conquering heroes, they have several more stops before they can return home. In New York City’s Ebbet’s Field, they are the guests of their heroes, the Brooklyn Dodgers. Days later, in Washington, D.C., they spend an afternoon in the White House with their newest fan—President Eisenhower. When they finally return home, three-quarters of the population of Monterrey take to the streets to give them an unbridled hero’s welcome—a twenty mile long parade through a sea of pride and tears of joy. The Perfect Game is a timeless tale of faith and the human spirit’s ability to overcome all adversity in pursuit of a dream.