Plot
Conor O'Neill is a gambler who secretly bets $6,000 on his dead father's account and is now severely in debt with two bookies. In order to repay the debts, he is told by a corporate friend that he must coach a baseball team of troubled African-American fifth grade kids from Chicago's ABLA housing projects in exchange for $500 each week, for ten weeks.
Worried only about getting his $500 check, Conor shows up at the baseball field to a rag tag bunch of trash-talking, street-wise, inner city kids who live in the projects. Some of the players include: Andre Ray Peetes, a smart-mouthed jokester, captain of the team who knows about all the players and forms a strong bond with Conor; Kofi Evans, a troubled, angry boy who has a rivalry with Andre, a quick temper, but is the best player on the team; Jefferson Albert Tibbs, a sweet, overweight, asthmatic player; Jamal, Andre's best friend and the oldest on the team; Miles Penfield II, the brilliant pitcher who listens to The Notorious B.I.G.’s Big Poppa to pitch well; and Jarius "G-Baby" Evans, Kofi's much younger brother who is too young to play so he becomes Conor's assistant.
Conor's efforts are hindered from the onset by the fact that he does not have nine kids to make up the team. The older kids tell Conor it is because their teacher, Elizabeth "Sister" Wilkes, is making several boys finish a book report. Conor visits the teacher, but his life is threatened repeatedly by his bookies for not paying his gambling debts. He is visited by the mother of two boys and her sister's son that are allowed to play in exchange for him tutoring them.
Conor works to get the team to support each other and stop trash-talking each other's bad plays; but the team nevertheless loses its first game 16–1, which fosters hostility between the players. Conor brings them together by buying them pizza (trading sports tickets for the pizza) and leads the team to win their second game 9–3. The team starts to come together as Conor tries to kindle a romance with Wilkes.
Conor risks everything and makes a $12,000 bet with a new bookie to cover the $12,000 debt he owes to the other bookies. His stress, already high from his gambling debts, runs higher at the baseball field because Jamal is pulled from playing after a competing coach questions the boy's age and Myles can't wear headphones while he pitches. Conor takes offense to the league president's threat to be removed, after he voices his objection to his team having to wear ratty T-shirts while the other teams have full uniforms. In protest, he announces it was his last game which draws dissension and resentment from his players.
Conor barely wins his $12,000 bet, pays off all his debts, and refuses to turn that bet for $24,000 using the winnings. Conor connects with the kids and finds it harder to leave than he thought. He surprises them with second row seats (behind Sammy Sosa's dugout) to a major league game. He stops gambling; his relationship with Wilkes grows; he gets new uniforms for the players (sponsored by one of his former bookies, who owns a bar); and he assumes a fatherly role in leading the team to the championship game (called "going to the 'ship" by the boys).
In the semi-final game, against the same team whose coach Conor had confronted before, the team soon falls behind, but with two outs in the final inning, with the bases loaded, Conor sends G-Baby, who's the only one left on the bench he can use, to pinch-hit. The movie then flashes forward to after the game, where Kofi and G-Baby are dropped off at their apartment building, but get caught up in a gunfight between two gangs, and G-Baby is killed by a stray bullet. At G-Baby's funeral, Conor delivers an eulogy where he tells everyone about what happened at G-Baby's at-bat, where he's barely able to swing the bat, but manages a weak hit that wins the game, and Conor tearfully says that in that moment, as G-Baby and the team celebrated, he felt he was in a better place and became a better person because of them. After the funeral, Conor tells the rest of the team that the league offered to cancel the championship game out of respect for what happened, but the team insists on playing. At the championship game, the team's nearly forced to forfeit without a full roster, but Kofi shows up at the last minute so they can play, and the team wears black armbands for G-Baby as they take the field.
In the final shot of the movie, the team is shown to have won the championship and along with Conor, hold their championship trophies in celebration.
