Last year, Disney hired screenwriter and actor Tom McCarthy to write the script for a film based on the strange but inspiring story of two Indian men who won contracts to pitch for the Pittsburgh Pirates on a reality TV show. And the choice seems great because McCarthy wrote Up and if that movie didn’t make you turn into a human sprinkler system, then you might be a robot.

As for this new project, Million Dollar Arm tells the story of Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel, who were discovered through agent J.B. Bernstein’s crazy TV competition idea to turn Indian cricket players into Major league Baseball pitchers, with the winners receiving $1 million contracts with the Pirates. Playing Bernstein, who looks like this, is Jon Hamm in his first leading role.

Bernstein repped top talent, but was burnt out and disillusioned until he watched the cricket game on late night TV and noticed how similar the game’s throwing motion was to that of baseball pitchers. He headed to India and wound up hatching the reality show Million Dollar Arm and auditioning 40,000 hopefuls. He brought back the two 19-year old finalists to the U.S., but it wasn’t as simple as signing with a ball club and heading to the minor leagues. (Via Deadline)

Singh and Patel had never traveled anywhere before, so they had to get used to America before they could play. I assume that involved eating pizza for every meal and Google searching Kate Upton for 17 hours a day. They were also the first ever Indian-born professional baseball players, so they faced a lot of media attention. Fortunately, they signed with the Pirates so no one cared.

I won’t spoil their inspiring stories if you’re looking forward to this film, but remember how you already knew that the Oakland A’s didn’t win the World Series in Moneyball? This is way worse than that.

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