by Rich Watson
In 1992, Nick Hornby, the English novelist and screenwriter, released a memoir called Fever Pitch, a love letter to his favorite sport, soccer. GQ called it “tears-running down-your-face, read-bits-out-loud-to-complete-strangers funny, but also highly perceptive and honest.” Time Out said it “transcends the mundane and the sporty to say something about the way we live.”
One might not have suspected Hollywood to have taken interest in a highly personal volume about a sport that never quite caught on in America the way it has in other countries. Hornby, however, was hot, and often, that’s enough.
So how did the movie version get turned into a romantic comedy about baseball?
