A Little League team that's struggling to make it to the World Series miraculously, and the young players who support one teammate's father as he's dying of cancer — this story has all the makings of a Hollywood sports movie, but it's true.
In 2002, the Fort Worth Westside Little League All-Stars made history by becoming the first team from the area to win a championship since 1960. They dedicated the season to first baseman Robert Ratliff's father, Bobby, who attended every game despite battling cancer.
The film, “You Gotta Believe,” which premiered in Fort Worth on Aug. 29 and is scheduled to be released in theaters nationwide on Aug. 30, is about the team's run to the World Series, where they lost 2-1 in 11 innings to a Kentucky team in the semifinals.
The film stars Dallas native Luke Wilson as Bobby Ratliff and Greg Kinnear as Little League head coach John Kelly, and tackles fatherhood through the lens of sports, but it also raises existential questions about death and living a fulfilling life.
News Summary
Robert Ratliff remembers his father as a coach who treated all players equally. “Whether you were a good kid or a bad kid, he gave you a chance,” he said.
After his father died in 2003, just months after the team reached the World Series, Ratliff played baseball for a few years before taking up football.
“Every time I saw the bat or the mitt, I cried,” he said. “It was too painful to play because it's something my dad and I did together.”
To honor their father's legacy, Ratliff and his brother started the You Gotta Believe Foundation, which hosts baseball and football camps in Fort Worth and Jackson, Mississippi, where the brothers attended the University of Mississippi.
Their foundation's name was borrowed from advice their father frequently gave them.
“We grew up in a Christian household, so it started with believing in God,” Ratliff said, “but you can apply that to everything in life.”
He continued, “This started out as a simple little message and now it's going to be a movie.”
Photo of Robert Ratliff with his son Wyatt. (Matt Harvey)
Director Ty Roberts learned of the Little League players' story through longtime collaborator and screenwriter Lane Garrison, a North Texan.
The team's Cinderella-like run resonated with Roberts, whose love for underdogs dates back to his childhood growing up in West Texas.
“I love small towns full of tough, brave Texas kids who just came out of nowhere,” he said.
He was also moved by the Ratliff family's story from his perspective as a father, as he reflected on how serious illness affects a family and what good parenting looks like after a diagnosis.
This isn't the first time Roberts has teamed up with Wilson to tackle adversity in a Texas sports movie: The 2021 film “12 Mighty Orphans” tells the story of a high school football team that makes it from an orphanage in Fort Worth in the 1930s to the state finals.
While much of that film's filming was done locally, production of “You Gotta Believe” took place primarily in Canada due to budgetary constraints.
“Every dollar counted,” Roberts said of the tax incentives for filming in Toronto and the reduced wages and rental costs, though some exterior shots, including the Stockyards, were still shot in Fort Worth.
Wilson, who plays Ratliff's father, said he drew on his own experience of grief to prepare for the role. “I was in my early 40s when my father died and it was very hard on me. They were just kids,” Wilson said.
“I've got a family, a job, Little League games … it doesn't get any better than that.”
