The abrasive manager (Danny Glover) of the California Angels is humanized by an orphan who becomes the team’s official mascota foster child with a pipeline to a flock of angels who end the team’s losing streak by invisibly assisting them on the playing field. Back in 1951, when this story was first filmedunder Clarence Brown’s direction, with Paul Douglas as the manager of the Pittsburgh Pirateswhat saved the potentially treacly material, if memory serves, was the good-natured sincerity. The same can be said for this version, directed by William Dear from a script by Holly Goldberg Sloan. Narrative suspense is admittedly kept to a minimum, and baseball purists may be offended by the role played by divine intervention. But as a neo-Dickensian Disney exercise in old-fashioned sentiment this has a certain charm and a sense of human decency that tended to win me over. The castGlover, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Christopher Lloyd, Tony Danza, Brenda Fricker, Milton Davis Jr., Ben Johnson, and Jay O. Sandersis better than average too. (JR)