Fort Worth’s run to 2002 Little League World Series set for a Hollywood movie
Of the many sports stories to come out of Fort Worth in the last few decades, few were as charming, captivating, and ultimately heart-breaking, as the Westside All-Stars team that reached the Little League World Series in 2002.
The story has every single note required for a movie, which does not mean that it will be made into one, especially when those most directly involved are leery at the idea.
The coach, Jon Kelly, wasn’t sure he wanted this made into a movie. “I didn’t want people saying, ‘He can’t let it go,’” he said.
One of the players on that team, future Ole Miss quarterback Robert Ratliff, knew he didn’t want it made into a movie. And there is no movie without Robert Ratliff.
The movie is about him.
His father, Bobby, was going through brutal cancer treatments during that season. He delayed treatments to go with the team when it made it to Williamsport, Pennsylvania.
The team dedicated their season to Robert’s father. The following May, Bobby Ratliff died. For the funeral, the boys from the team returned and dressed in their Westside uniforms.
Nearly 20 years have passed, and the main players involved have agreed to proceed to bring this story to the big screen.
On Thursday night, actor and screenwriter Lane Garrison joined Kelly, and some members of the Westside All-Stars team, at Rivercrest Country Club to pitch the project to potential investors for a film tentatively titled, You Gotta Believe.
The early plan, assuming the funding comes through, is to shoot the movie in Fort Worth, and have at least a trailer completed by the time the 2022 Little League World Series begins.
Garrison, who had a supporting role in 12 Mighty Orphans and was one of the film’s screenwriters, knew the Westside story and thought there was a film there after he met with Kelly and his wife last November.
One of the executive producers from 12 Mighty Orphans, Fort Worth oilman George Young, has agreed to participate in this production.
Producer Houston Hill expects they need to raise anywhere from $2.5 million to $15 million to complete the movie. Whatever they can raise will determine casting, and whom is cast will go a long in way determining how “big” this sort of movie will ultimately become.
Garrison, who lives in Georgetown with his wife and daughters, needed a little more than three months to write the script — one that Robert Ratliff initially did not want to read.
“It was too hard to read it. That was such a special time and those are the last memories of my time with dad,” Ratliff said. “That [Little League World Series] was the last big thing we did together. You want to protect that.”
The script uses Westside’s run to Williamsport as a backdrop to detail the story of Ratliff and his father, and issue of questioning faith.
This is not intended to be a documentary. There is some “Hollywood” in this script.
Ratliff never questioned his faith through the process of losing his father, but Garrison understands that people in that situation often do.
Like Robert Ratliff, Garrison lost his father at a young age to cancer. His father died when Lane was 20, and his mother had died the previous year. “I wasn’t 12 like Robert, but I do know what that is like,” Garrison said.
When the two met to go over some ideas at Central Market in west Fort Worth a few months ago, they both broke down talking about their experiences.
Garrison is quick to say that You Gotta Believe is not a Christian-oriented or faith-based project, even if there are elements of that in the screenplay.
This was the first time in more than 40 years a team from Fort Worth reached the Little League World Series. Westside’s 11-inning 2-1 loss to the team from Louisville in the semifinals became an “Instant Classic” on ESPN.
The movie won’t be about that. This is more of a movie about fathers and sons, and family. That’s what sold Robert Ratliff, as did just the idea of having a screenplay in his hand to one day show his son.
“I don’t want to say any of this gets any easier because there are moments when you sit down and say, ‘I wish my dad was here,’” Ratliff said. “He could have come to parents weekend at Ole Miss and been on the field, but none of that happened.”
Ratliff, now 31, and works for an insurance group in Fort Worth. Six months ago, he and his wife welcomed their first child, Robert Wyatt Ratliff.
More than a decade ago, Ratliff and his younger brother, John, founded the You Gotta Believe Football Camp, which has been held every summer in Jackson, Mississippi. They had 28 kids in 2007, the first year of the camp. Last year, they had 352 kids.
Kelly said the filmmakers would like to receive permission from the players to use their names, etc.
“That was the greatest group of kids ever,” Kelly said. “They all went on to college, and all but one graduated. They all went on to become contributing members of society and responsible adults.”
All of the necessary elements for a film are present in Westside’s run to Williamsport and the Little League World Series.
It just needed a script, approval, and a lot of money. With all three, one of Fort Worth’s most endearing sports stories should soon be on the big screen.
