JOE TORRE: CURVEBALLS ALONG THE WAY (1997) **1/2 Paul Sorvino as Joe Torre is very good casting, but the script plays to his weaknesses as much as his strengths. Joe, like Paul's best characters, is the strong silent type, a man of few words. Joe does occasionally say things that aren't media-friendly aphorisms, but that's almost entirely what they give Pauley. They set him up with these one-liners all the time, and the hokey tv sets and production values. Splicing in so much real baseball footage is not a bad idea, but the splicing in the middle of pitches, for example, is not. You've got this actor who has Dwight Gooden's facial gestures and mannerisms down well, but who obviously has never pitched and couldn't throw 30 mph if he had to...so you've got this guy going into his windup, then suddenly there's a cut and Doc throws an explosion at someone. With Wade Boggs they have a petulant guy, but don't even bother trying to do his batting stance. For all of that it's a great story, perhaps the basis of which was written in the halls of Heaven where they create gifts for Hollywood, and there's no questioning the very real cameraderie between Sorvino and Robert Loggia (as Frank Torre--hey did you ever notice that the Torre brothers have the same first names as the Hardy Boys?). Good things do happen, and prayers do get answered, and marathons are won by guys who don't give up when they fall behind. That's all very important stuff, and well worth mentioning as often as possible. For Mets fans there's the additional problem of...not even voting for the Yankees, but being pleased that they won. I mean, I have no problem cheering movies about those historic teams with Babe Ruth, or Joe Dimaggio, or the all-time partying troika of Billy Martin, Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford, but...nuevo Yankees are different, and to be despised as a point of honour. I mainly got over that by realizing that it all happened anyway, so why not take whatever joy out of it you can. Torre, Gooden, Daryl Strawberry and David Cone were, after all, at one time Mets.