A light, breezy and charming documentary about Team Israel making it, for the first time, to the World Baseball Classic competition in 2017. (I didn’t even know there was such a competition, but I’m happily ignorant on most things related to baseball.) As you may guess, Israel is not known for its baseball prowess, so much of the team is made up of ex-professional ballplayers from the US. (WBC rules allows anyone to play for a country’s team if that person would be permitted to become a citizen of that country; Israel offers citizenship to all those who are Jewish or, with some restrictions, to all who have Jewish ancestors.) Once this underdog team is assembled — with a mascot that becomes famous in its own right — they travel first to Israel (a country most of them have never before visited) and become celebrities, then to South Korea and Japan to show what they can do on the field, to the astonishment of many who follow this competition. An enjoyable 1.5 hours of screen time.
