I have to start my final article as a Daily Trojan staffer with a funny confession: I don’t care for the final sports film that I am writing about all that much. 

I certainly don’t hate it, but “Little Big League” (1994) is really just an average, forgettable movie. The Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer rates it at just 35%, and to make matters worse, only 20 critics have even posted reviews on the film. 

It’s not exactly a cult classic either. The audience score on Rotten Tomatoes sits at 54%, and the movie ultimately lost money, grossing only $12 million against a $20 million budget. 

But even though the film’s execution never stirred much in me, the story within it has been near and dear to my heart since I was young, as it’s one I was very familiar with.

A novel based on the film, “Little Big League” by Ronald Kidd, Gregory K. Pincus and Adam Scheinman, was released the same year, and I absolutely adored it as a kid. I read and reread the book over and over. 

I don’t have a super scientific explanation as to why I felt the film was forgettable, but the novel was a childhood classic. Perhaps the story just works better in print. The only thing I can say for certain is that the authors wrote a fantastic children’s novel that greatly stimulated my imagination. 

The story centers around 12-year-old Billy Heywood (Luke Edwards), who is fortunate enough to have a grandfather who owns the Minnesota Twins. The Twins are basically the laughingstock of the MLB during this story, but that doesn’t matter a bit to Billy, who is living every 12-year- old’s dream: going to baseball games for free all the time, with exclusive access to the players and other members of the organization. 

Early on in the story, Billy’s grandfather tragically dies. At his funeral, it’s revealed that he left  Billy with the ultimate gift: ownership and full control of the Twins, effective immediately. 

This comes with a fair amount of resistance, but Billy makes his mark on the Twins immediately. He decides to install himself as manager, and his childlike wonder and youthful ideas inspire the Twins to make a playoff run. 

The run unfortunately comes to an end with a heartbreaking loss to Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey Jr. and the Seattle Mariners in a one-game playoff for the American League Wild Card, and Billy decides to step down from the managerial role while maintaining ownership of the team.  

But I hardly cared about that. I couldn’t get enough of the journey in the middle, which is why I came back to the book time and time again. Would a 12-year-old ever manage a professional sports team in real life? Absolutely not. But as a 12-year-old myself, reading and rereading the book, it inspired me to think about how fun it would be to be in Billy’s exact position, even if it felt unlikely. 

But during my time at USC, I have been able to do things in the world of sports that felt as much of a pipe dream as managing the Twins when I was 12. 

I still remember the first time I went to a USC football press conference, following USC’s 2021 victory over Arizona. When running back Keaontay Ingram, cornerback Chris Steele and interim Head Coach Donte Williams entered the room, all of my disappointments about USC’s lost football season faded away and 12-year-old Ethan freaked out with excitement. 

I know I wasn’t exactly sitting in on a press conference with world-famous NFL superstars, but I hardly cared. I was an insider at a program that millions of people care about. I was living the dream. 

I’ve been lucky enough to experience that feeling time and time again within the ecosystem of USC and Los Angeles sports: at games, in my classes, during interviews, at press conferences and just walking around campus. I have met and even befriended childhood heroes and worldwide superstars. 

Every single athlete or coach I have interviewed — regardless of their skill level or fame — has helped me fulfill a childhood dream, and I can only humbly thank them for that. My inner child will never get over what I’ve been able to experience. 

But I have also found new dreams outside of journalism. I loved my film electives so much that I added a minor in cinematic arts and quickly took to screenwriting. I’d never considered writing a screenplay before I was a student at USC. Now, it feels essential that I get to make a film sometime in my life. 

I also saw myself purely as a writer when I enrolled, but my love for podcasting has skyrocketed. After college, I am thrilled to be podcasting professionally. 

The dreams don’t stop there. I want to write books, work directly for a sports team, coach youth sports, have a wife and children, make an impact volunteering at church, and probably many, many more things that I haven’t even discovered yet. 

Will all of that happen? Probably not. Some of those dreams are probably as likely as owning the Minnesota Twins was when I was 12. 

But this Wednesday, when I picked up a print copy of my final feature story in the Daily Trojan, about USC’s club hockey team, I got that familiar excitement of seeing a dream fulfilled in the form of “By Ethan Inman.” 

Regardless of what the future holds, I can look back on my time at USC with so much gratitude for what I have already accomplished. I have written stories I only dreamed of before college, and no one can take that from me. 

That will continue to inspire me, both with sentimentality for the memories I have already made and with motivation to keep chasing all those dreams, no matter how big and unlikely they may seem. 

Ethan Inman is a senior writing about sports films that have taken on a new meaning compared to when they were released. Inman’s column, “The 35mm Yard Line,” ran every other Thursday, and he is also a sports editor for the Daily Trojan.