After more than 100 years of repeated failure, the Chicago Cubs finally won the World Series again earlier this year. The collective excitement led to talk show appearances, a Saturday Night Live spot, random shenanigans involving Bill Murray and now, it's leading to a movie that will follow Cubbies catcher David Ross and the epic final game of his career that ended with the North Siders breaking the fabled Curse Of The Billy Goat.
The movie in question will be called Teammate: My Life In Baseball, and it'll be based on Davis Ross' upcoming book co-written by Don Yaeger. The book itself will focus on all the pivotal moments of Ross' career, but what's unclear is exactly how much the movie will concentrate on his pre-Cubs days as a journeyman catcher just trying to stay in the league and how much it'll concentrate on his final two seasons as the emotional leader of the Cubbies.
Ross, despite not playing everyday, turned into something of a folk hero in Chicago at the end of his career. His teammates rallied around him as an inspiration and an example of a guy who played the game the right way. The fans fell in love with his goofy personality and usage of "Forever Young" as his walk-up song, and all those good vibes culminated with a really big moment in Game 7 of the World Series. It also (probably) led directly to his current, better than expected appearance on Dancing With The Stars.
At this point, it's near impossible to speculate on the future quality of this movie. There are plenty of great sports stories, both real and make believe, that have been turned into wonderful movies, and there are plenty more that have been somewhere between bad and mediocre. This one has all the right elements, but it'll ultimately come down to how the story is presented and whether they're able to let us get to know Ross and his teammates or whether it'll just be a fluff piece summarizing the Cubbies getting to the Promised Land (no, not that Promised Land).
One would imagine this movie would be made with some pace, considering Radar Pictures will want to capitalize on the good vibes and high public interest, but much of it will depend on how the first script, being written by Ted Field and Ram Getz per The Hollywood Reporter, comes out. If there are rewrites or major changes, we could be looking at late 2019. If everything comes out well on the first try, we could get this movie by the end of next year. We'll just have to see.
Whenever the movie comes out, fingers crossed the Cubs have added another World Series title by that point. After all, that would probably be the only way to make this incredible story just a little bit more magical.
