Could you imagine if Macaulay Culkin had played the 12-year-old Cubs pitcher in “Rookie of the Year”?
If it weren’t for the “Home Alone” star’s rise to fame, someone other than Thomas Ian Nicholas would’ve starred as Henry Rowengartner, a kid whose arm injury gave him a superhuman fastball that propelled the Cubs to a World Series championship in 1993.
Back in the early 1990s, Nicholas was doing mostly dramas.
“I remember I screen-tested for ‘The Good Son’ that was supposed to be opposite Elijah Wood, but then they gave that role to Macaulay Culkin because obviously he had ‘Home Alone’ and all that,” said Nicholas, 38, who attended his first Cubs Convention last weekend.
“I remember being so bummed, but if I had done that film I wouldn’t have been available for ‘Rookie of the Year.’ It was right around that same time.
“So it’s sort of like I fell into comedy even though drama was my forte, and then I got roped into comedy for a little more than a decade.”
Nicholas played Kevin Myers in the “American Pie” movies starting in 1999.
These days he’s focused on producing — he’ll star opposite Mickey Rourke in “Adverse,” coming in late summer or early fall — as well as his music with TIN Band, which just played the HVAC Pub on Saturday in Wrigleyville.
But he’s never too far from Rowengartner.
“Anytime I’m in Chicago or anywhere in Illinois, of course it’s ‘Rookie of the Year,’” he’s recognized for, Nicholas said, “but the rest of the world it’s ‘American Pie.’”
Nicholas and Oak Park native Amy Morton, who played his mom in “Rookie,” re-enacted the “float it” scene during Nicholas’ first pitch at Wrigley Field in September that marked the movie’s 25th anniversary.
“Rookie” is getting a remake, though Nicholas tried to sell 20th Century Fox on a sequel.
“My pitch — pun intended — was that Henry would be an adult, like myself,” he said. “My son is 7, so Henry could have a 12-year-old kid. So the 12-year-old could go through the same thing that Henry went through. That was my idea, that it would be like the next generation.”
Nicholas also wondered whether producers would feature a different baseball team.
“I don’t know if they’re sticking with the Cubs. The Cubs are not the underdog anymore,” he said.
If producers know, they’re not telling. A 20th Century Fox spokeswoman said Tuesday that the film is in its early development and the studio has no details to share.
Twitter @_phil_thompson
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