Forget Hill Valley: The kid from Rookie Of The Year is going back to Wrigley Field tonight
While the potential of a Chicago Cubs World Series win has been charging the internet’s flux capacitor for weeks, October 21, 2015 will also be an important day for movie fans who are more prone to exclaiming “Funky butt lovin’” than “Great Scott!” ESPN reports that actor Thomas Ian Nicholas—who helped the fictional Cubs break what was then a relatively quaint 85-year World Series drought in 1993’s Rookie Of The Year—will be in attendance at Wrigley Field tonight, as the Cubs attempt to stave off elimination in the National League Championship Series.
In a change from previous Wrigley visits, Nicholas tells The Worldwide Leader in Sports that he’ll wear a jersey emblazoned with the name of his Rookie Of The Year character, 12-year-old tendons-wound-tight flamethrower Henry Rowengartner. It’s a move that will hopefully brush some magic from the film (which, in its understanding of human anatomy, is no less fantastical than Chicago sweeping “Miami” in a best-of-nine series) off on the suddenly slumping Cubs, while also ensuring that the cleverest of Wrigleyville denizens will be shouting “Rosinbagger!”, “Runnamucker,” and “Gardenhoser!” at Nicholas all night.
Nicholas’ presence has added significance, since the circumstances of this NLCS were foreseen on the big screen long ago—specifically in Rookie Of The Year, in which the Mets are the primary antagonists to Henry and his teammates. In the eeriest of its prescient visions, the villainous, fictional slugger played by actor Tom Milanovich bears a striking resemblance to (and shares a fearsome tendency for teeing off on Cubs pitchers with) real-life villainous Mets slugger Daniel Murphy. Sure, the former bats right-handed while the latter’s a lefty, but both have a habit of making hurtful, hateful statements in public. In the event that Nicholas doesn’t prove to be the Cubs’ good luck charm tonight, The A.V. Club expects to see Murphy yelling playground taunts like “This one’s for mommy” in the actor’s general direction.