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Actor Luke Wilson holds a copy of Fort Worth Magazine's January 2003 cover story about the Westside Little League All-Stars.
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Lew Temple (The Walking Dead), strikes a pose.
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Luke Wilson says hi to widow Patti Ratliff on the red carpet just before the screening of "You Gotta Believe."
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"You Gotta Believe" director Ty Roberts talks with actor Greg Kinnear before the screening of the movie Thursday evening in Fort Worth.
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Robert Ratliff and his son Wyatt talk to attendees on the red carpet.
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The young cast who portrayed the Westside Little League All-Stars pose for pics on the red carpet.
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It’s been 22 years since the Westside Little League All-Stars took the baseball diamond at the Little League World Series. According to Robert Ratliff, one of the players on the team, this happenstance was as surprising to the team as it was to everyone else. What set this team apart wasn’t its skill on the field, but the common goal they all shared, which was to play for something bigger than themselves.
“We weren’t the best team in our division at the time,” Ratliff imparts. “We were just all on the same page as to what our goal was — to play for my dad.”
Ratliff’s father, Bobby, was diagnosed with melanoma, a form of skin cancer, during the Westside Little League All-Stars 2002 season. To show their support for Bobby, who was a coach on the team, they rallied behind the motto, “You Gotta Believe,” which is the name of the film depicting the story, which opens in theaters today.
To kick off the opening of the film, some well-known names, who portray these real-life characters, made a stop in Cowtown for the world premiere at a red-carpet event held at the AMC Palace 9 theater in downtown Fort Worth on Thursday.
Cast in attendance included the film’s marquee stars, Luke Wilson and Greg Kinnear, along with director Ty Roberts. The actual Westside Little League All-Stars we all cheered for those years ago, all grown up, of course, were there, too. For a little over an hour cast members and teammates, both real and those youngsters today portraying them, took turns posing for pics on the red carpet, which spanned a blocked-off Third Street, in front of the theater.
“I was actually working on another project when the film's writer Lane Garrison, who worked on ‘Twelve Mighty Orphans,’ was told about the 2002 Westside Little league team,” Roberts says. “He called me from Houston [Hill] and told me, ‘Hey, man, you gotta do this one.’”
Roberts says his involvement in this film happened in an organic way.
“The story really resonated with me, and after hearing about Robert’s father, I thought it was a worthy project to spend a little over a year on,” he says.
Although the film is based on a Fort Worth story, most of the filming occurred in London, Ontario, a polarizing choice for both cast and director.
Roberts says he didn't really want to shoot a film about baseball in the height of a North Texas summer, not to mention the savings on production costs by shooting in Canada. (That's something the Texas Legislature has worked on in the form of bills that provide incentives for filmmakers to do it all here.)
“I was very skeptical about going to Canada,” Roberts says. “I didn’t want to do it at all, but when they pay 30 cents on the dollar for whatever their incentive is, and more, you have a pretty significant savings.”
Wilson, a Dallas native, however, viewed shooting in Canada as sacrilege given the story's origins.
“I was really irritated that we filmed in Canada,” Wilson says. “Not to get sidetracked, but that was really the great thing about filming ‘Twelve Mighty Orphans’ right here. But for this, before we knew it, we were up in Toronto, doing a film about Fort Worth, but that’s the way the business goes.”
Wilson, who plays Bobby Ratliff, says he was excited to reunite with Roberts, given the two had already worked with each other on “Twelve Mighty Orphans” in 2021.
“When you get along well with people, and you get a chance to do something with them again, you jump at the chance,” he says.
Wilson says he tried to tell the most dramatic story he could playing a character who is terminally ill.
“I read about the family and got familiar with the story and wanted to do my best to give Bobby some depth,” Wilson says.
Kinnear, an Academy Award nominee, says he wasn’t happy about the filming location either. They did do some of the filming in Fort Worth, and there are a number of Fort Worth images throughout. “I felt like it belongs here," Kinnear says. "It’s a beautiful story, it should’ve been shot here, but you know a little film like this is hard to make and hard to do from a production standpoint, so there’s a reason they shot it up there and it looks damn good.”
Kinnear says he felt a real connection to his character, coach Jon Kelly, who was the Westside Little League All-Stars coach. Before he was diagnosed, Bobby Ratliff coached with Kelly. Lew Temple plays another staff member, Mitch Belew, portrayed as a larger-than-life mentor.
“I just read the script and felt like I understood who he was and the decency of the man and the dilemma he was in in the story and just went to work,” Kinnear says.
As the throng of attendees mingled with the cast of the film, some of Fort Worth’s best-known names were also in attendance to show their support. Among them were Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker, U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey, State Sen. Kelly Hancock, Pete Geren, former U.S. Congressman and Army Secretary, and current president of the Sid Richardson Foundation, and City Councilman Michael Crain.
Cast members and guests enjoyed an after-party at Joe T. Garcia’s.
“This is so surreal and emotional,” says Ratliff, while walking the red carpet. “This is absolutely amazing, and I am humbled to see the work that God’s done in the over 21 years since my dad passed away. This is a special group of guys. I’ll remember those guys forever because that was the last team I was on when my dad was still alive.”
