You don’t need to know a lot about baseball to appreciate The Saint of Second Chances. It has enough going on to keep you hooked from start to end, beginning with Jeff Daniels’ inimitable voice as the narrator and Charlie Day’s inspired casting as the younger Veeck, all the way down to the Veecks’ fascinating ties with American sports history and Mike’s inspiring and heartwarming second-chance philosophy. It all gets a bit too much at times, as if the filmmakers themselves were overwhelmed with their abundant material and creative decisions, but it’s executed with so much care and love that it seems as if this is the only way it could’ve come out: a wonderful mess.
"The best parts of Morgan Neville & Jeff Malmberg’s “The Saint of Second Chances” are like hearing stories from a good friend over beers after a game."
— Brian Tallerico
Mike Veeck, son of MLB franchise owner Bill Veeck, blows up his father's career. Exiled from the game he loves, the younger Veeck spends the next few decades clawing his way up from rock bottom, determined to redeem himself.
This documentary tells the story of how Mike Veeck, son of Major League Baseball Hall-of-Famer Bill Veeck, carved a path for himself outside of his father’s shadow, while also following the personal triumphs and heartwarming realizations Mike made along the way.
Charlie Day! Reenactments are rarely this well-crafted and lively (often, they’re just faceless fillers), but Day and the filmmakers really seem to give it their all here. Furnished with slight prosthetics and costumed in era-changing outfits, Day commits to every heart-warming and rousing line he’s given. Mike Veeck is already an entertaining storyteller, filled with fanciful tales he injects with infectious laughs, but Day dials it up in such an impressive way, that it often feels as if the reenactments are their own standalone movie.
I don’t even like baseball like that (much less fully understand the sport), but I am a sucker for crowd-pleasing tearjerkers like this one.
