ANGELS IN THE SAPFIELD

ANGELS IN THE OUTFIELD (1994)
dir: William Dear
The California Angels are baseball's worst team, and Coach Knox (Danny Glover) has a temper about it.

Meanwhile, deadbeat dad (Dermot Mulroney, here portrayed as Charles Manson) has lost his son Roger (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) to a foster home telling him flippantly that he'll get custody back “as soon as the Angels win the pennant”.

Roger takes this as a literal expression, and with fellow foster child J. P. (Milton Davis) goes to Angels games hoping they'll win. There he's visited by an angel (Christopher Lloyd) who manipulates the games but only Roger can see.

Roger tells Coach Knox he sees these angels, but Knox is skeptical and knows he can't tell anyone something so far-fetched. Roger makes a signal when he sees the angels and they always happen to be helping what look to the public like the most incompetent players, who end up bringing the team to the championship.

The owner of the Angels threatens to fire Coach Knox for taking advice from a kid and his superstitious beliefs if he says anything about them at their press conference. At the press conference, the foster mother defends the idea of sports players having faith. At the World Series, the Angels has Mel Clark (Tony Danza), a chain-smoker once considered a has-been, as their star pitcher. Roger keeps seeing the head angel in his food.

He has come to say he will not be helping the team, as they have confidence in themselves now, but will be taking Mel Clark after the game.

Now that the angels have won the World Series, Roger hopes his father will come back, but he doesn't. But he gets the good news that Coach Knox will adopt him.

Major League Baseball actually went on strike that year and didn't finish the season, that's the joke in that last panel.


Andy Simmons was the son of Matty Simmons, owner of National Lampoon. When Simmons got into a disagreement with editor Sean Kelly in the 1980s, he fired the staff and replaced them with his sons. When new owners took over, the Simmons family left and Andy Simmons became co-editor of Cracked, for which he was more suited.