Kevin Costner Threatens to Make Movie About Cubs

The star of baseball movies Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, and For Love of the Game is apparently itching to make another baseball movie, this time about the Cubs.

Kevin Costner must be stopped.

While promoting his new movie Criminal — which you’ve no doubt heard of if you’ve listened to 670 The Score for 30 seconds — Costner dropped by Larry King Live to talk past roles, the movie industry in general, and his disdain for the mud-slinging in the 2016 presidential race. Perhaps it was that aggravation that led to the thinly veiled threat he leveled:

“I think I have one more [movie] in me. I has to do with the Cubs.”

“So you are gonna do it,” King rasped

“I don’t know, I gotta get it written.”

Hold on a second while I reach into my bag of nopes to find an appropriately strenuous objection to this idea. On second thought, there are so many in here that I’m just gonna grab the first ones I can. Not only do I fear that Costner’s artistic representation of the Cubs will be either overly sappy or clichéd, but we’ve already been blessed with a timeless classic centered around the team. So unless we’re talking about a futuristic piece set in a dystopic future in which Costner plays an aged Henry Rowengartner trying to save both his team and city from total annihilation, I’m not interested.

And what are the chances Costner can actually go 4-for-4 on baseball movies? Sure, he’s done a great job with them, even in the midst of some highly questionable choices otherwise. But expressing confidence that he could easily turn out a great flick centered around the Cubs is tantamount to saying a guy is just a triple shy of the cycle.

We’ve also got to consider the real-life implications of the project, which would include Costner singing the Stretch, throwing out the first pitch, and joining the cadre of on-field celebrities that already includes such luminaries as John Cusack, Jim Belushi, and Jeff Garland. Even if this movie turns out to be good, is it really worth putting up with all that rigmarole? I thought not.

At this point, the project is but an idea, albeit one that appears to have legs. My hope, however, is that they’re not strong enough to go the distance.