question:  What is the plot of For Love of the Game?
context: Apparently, Lester doesn't realize that snipped roses are garden-variety symbols of castration, or he'd know what he has lost. Ambient noise falls away, the crowd disappears, and there she is, Lester's angel, writhing in slow motion--just for him. Later, Lester envisions her on a bed of red petals, then immersed in a bath of red petals. Back in the roses for the first time in years, he's soon pumping iron, smoking pot, and telling off his frigid wife and faceless bosses, convinced that whatever he has lost he's getting back, baby. The movie is convinced, too--which is odd, since the fantasy of an underage cheerleader making a middle-aged man's wilted roses bloom is a tad ... primitive. The script, by Alan Ball, a playwright and former sitcom writer, carries an invigorating blast of counterculture righteousness, along with the kind of pithily vicious marital bickering that makes some viewers (especially male) say, "Yeah! More important, it has a vein of metaphysical yearning, which the director, Sam Mendes, mines brilliantly. A hotshot English theater director (his Cabaret revival is still on the boards in New York), Mendes gives the film a patina of New Age lyricism and layer upon layer of visual irony. Mendes can distend the real into the surreal with imperceptible puffs. Aided by his cinematographer, Conrad Hall, and editors, Tariq Anwar and Chris Greenbury, he creates an entrancing vision of the American nuclear family on the verge of a meltdown. A merican Beauty is so wittily written and gorgeously directed that you might think you're seeing something archetypal--maybe even the Great American Movie. Lester's wife, Carolyn, is even more stridently caricatured.
output:  An over-the-hill pitcher must commit to the game or the girl.
options:  An over-the-hill catcher fights to keep his place on the team.  An over-the-hill catcher must commit to the game or the girl.  An over-the-hill pitcher must commit to the game or the girl.  An over-the-hill pitcher fights to keep his place on the team.