Imagine the Waltons pitched against a baseball team from Little House on the Prairie and you'll pretty much get the flavour of this wholesome yarn.

Now we all know that baseball is really rounders with knobs on - but the Americans take a rather more serious view of things.

They also like a story of a character overcoming adversity (his age) to get what he really wants (to play pitcher for a major league side). Especially if it's a true story.

If you can imagine the Jimmy Greaves of today running out at Wembley to bend it like Beckham then that would be the soccer equivalent.

Jim Morris (Quaid) is a thirty-something chemistry teacher in the baseball backwater of Big Lake, Texas, where he lives with his wife (Griffiths) and three kids.

Having had his own baseball career prematurely ended by injury, he coaches the high school side... but they're very much the poor relation of the football team.

Perpetual under-achievers, they are only galvanised into action when Morris, his arm miraculously cured, promises he'll try to get back into the big time if they win the league.

Of course, they walk it and Morris turns up, kids in tow, to chance his arm amongst high school athletes half his age at the field try-out.

Well waddya know, Morris's pitches are clocked at 98mph - faster than the time he was a young player and putting him in the nation's elite.

But does he go for it and leave the family behind, or take up a lucrative job offer just up the road?

It's a Disney film, so we have to sit through lines like "You quit on me and worse - you quit on yourselves."

However, it never pretends to be something that it's not and, in an unashamedly old-fashioned style, proves to be a compelling family film.

Tim Evans