I saw it last night. It was a bunch of cinema cliches in search of a movie. You had the obligatory black kid whose life was changed when he saw Jackie Robinson’s train. You had the obligatory white kid yelling “n*gger” because his redneck dad did, but whose whole outlook on race was changed when his hero, Peewee Reese, put his arm around Robinson’s shoulder. You had the obligatory bat busting in frustration, the obligatory turning of multiple cheeks, the obligatory “we’re saving baseball here” moments. And the actual baseball scenes weren’t that good.
Most, if not all, biopics add some fiction in order to make the movie dramatic because people go to such movies in order to be entertained.
I don’t mind that at all. What does bother me is when someone watches a fact-based movie and assumes that everything that took place in the movie happened that way in real life. But that’s really the fault of the viewer rather than the film-maker.
BTW, the writer-director said that the bat busting scene is fiction - added for dramatic effect.