Jim morris the rookie tryout

(Some questions in this interview have come from another journalist present for the Q&A.)

At a San Francisco screening of "The Rookie" a couple weeks ago Dennis Quaid helped introduce the film, in which he stars as an aging Texas schoolteacher who becomes a Major League Baseball player, by saying if it wasn't a true story, he wouldn't have even finished reading the script.

"As a piece of fiction, it's totally unbelievable," he laughed.

Beside him was the man the movie is about, recently retired Tampa Bay Devil Rays and Los Angeles Dodgers relief pitcher Jim Morris, who discovered in his late 30s while coaching at a West Texas high school where he was also a science teacher that he was throwing harder than he had years before as a 25-year-old AAA player.

After noting that the kids weren't playing with any heart, he made a pact to try out for the majors if they made it to the state playoffs. They did, and Morris subsequently stunned scouts for the Devil Rays at a tryo