Fever Pitch is a 1985 American drama film written and directed by Richard Brooks and starring Ryan O'Neal, Giancarlo Giannini, Chad Everett, John Saxon, and Catherine Hicks.

"[4] Sportswriter Steve Taggart volunteers to do a series of articles for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner about a compulsive sports and casino gambler he calls "Mr. Green" who is, in fact, himself.

He compounds his money and gambling problems by dealing with loan sharks, including the mean and dangerous Los Angeles bookmaker "The Dutchman".

After a day trip to Knott's Berry Farm, Taggart brings his young daughter Amy to Hollywood Park; at the track pressbox, they chat with his colleagues, including Jim Murray and Alan Malamud.

He still returns to Las Vegas, where he becomes increasingly acquainted with high-roller Charley Peru, in hopes of making a large score and breaking even.

Before returning to Los Angeles, to celebrate "kicking" his gambling habit, Taggart places a few dollars into a slot machine at the Las Vegas Airport, where he scores a huge jackpot.

It was originally to be produced by Dino de Laurentiis under the title The Fever and Brooks wanted Sam Shepard to play the lead.

"[8] The newspaper editorial office scenes were all filmed at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, which always had a popular horse racing page, and solid sports gambling coverage.

"[10] In 2016 Richard Brody argued in The New Yorker that the film was worthy of reconsideration, saying "still delivers the same terse, grim, and ironic power that it had when I first saw it.

Brooks... brings the same gifts to bear on his last film that he exhibited throughout his career—a sense of documentary filmmaking infusing fiction, a passion for journalism as a mode of knowledge, an overlay of reportorial observation on dramatic staging... there’s violence, horror, fear, and humiliation—the paranoid frenzy arising from a hit man’s ability to track Steve down and keep him in the virtual crosshairs.