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Remember the Landmark Series of books – great events in history written (well) at a 6th-grade level? This could have been a movie version of one of those books, describing breaking the color barrier in Major League Baseball. It did make me wonder about the reality of the events depicted, in a more nuanced world where all the good guys didn’t go to the Hall of Fame and all the bad guys weren’t fired, or traded to Pittsburgh. All the melodrama did bring tears to my eyes and there were nice touches: Harrison Ford channeling his inner Daniel Day-Lewis to portray Branch Rickey, and Hamish Linklater providing good-guy Ralph Branca with a new legacy, 60 years after his home-run pitch to Bobby Thomson. As for the baseball scenes, you wonder how Jackie Robinson ever stole a base if he didn’t take off until the pitch had been delivered.