12-year-old Henry Rowengartner, whose late father was a minor league baseball player, grew up dreaming of playing baseball, despite his physical shortcomings. Although he's close to his mother ...

the 1993 movie “Rookie of the Year” reads as a love letter to Chicagoland. The story follows 12-year-old Henry Rowengartner, an ambitious Little League benchwarmer played by Thomas Ian Nicholas.

Nicholas has a special relationship to Chicago dogs: he got hooked while playing youth phenom Henry Rowengartner in the ... the book of the same name). The movie — at least the version that ...