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9 tough critics where they live  On the first weekend after the
terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon,
the most popular movie in America--perhaps only coincidentally--
was the story of scrappy Chicago kids playing baseball.  This is
a review of that box-office hit by nine experts: Jimmie,
Marques, Javon, Larry, Jesse, Kyle, Deontay, Joshua and Curtis.
It's Wednesday afternoon and the movie critics--who also happen
to be players on the Zulus Little League team in Cabrini-Green--
sit in the Webster Place theaters gazing at a version of their
lives known as "Hardball."  Based on Daniel Coyle's book about a
Cabrini Little League team much like the Zulus, the movie stars
Keanu Reeves as a gambler who survives on pizza, chutzpah, Old
Style and Lucky Strikes. He reluctantly agrees to coach a team
of African-American kids to help pay his gambling debts. Right
now, up on the screen, a bartender threatens him with a bat.
"That's a ra