That was what he did at first. Later, the break is approaching and he hasn’t yet located the assassin who’s going to kill the Queen of England during the break, so he has to stall for time. That’s when he starts calling balls on obvious strikes, throwing extra balls in the air and so on.
I don’t care where you’re from or whether you understand American football. I defy anybody to watch Brian’s Song and hold back the tears when Billy Dee Williams (as Gale Sayers) gives the acceptance speech for the George S. Halas award:
I seem to remember this film being remade into this film, obviously altered into a proper sport 
Then of course you Yanks stole it back with this
Please steal it back. And take Adan Sandler too.
Some of those movies I find enjoyable and have had general releases here in Ireland as Yojimbo has stated above. I do sometimes get confused as to what people are on about. The last movie like this I saw was Invincible, on a plane. It was distracting enough but lots of the references to the sport itself and the mythos were completely lost on me.
Or even more than baseball or football in America! (Amongst kids, at least, according to tables on this site.)
FWIW, this American enjoyed **Bend It Like Beckham ** and… an Iranian movie (whose name escapes me) about young women cross-dressing to sneak into a Teheran stadium to see their national team in a soccer match. But those movies were more about young women’s love for the Beautiful Game than the game itself.
I also liked Cool Runnings, about the Jamaican Olympic Bobsled Team. (Although that wasn’t a foreign film, just a Disney kid-friendly movie about the Jamaican athletes and their coach [John Candy], who looked like he was devouring all their per diems’ worth of food.)
I’m thinking in For Love of the Game exactly why everybody is so tense for those last couple pitches might be lost, but you take it as a given and go along with it. All the flashbacks with his girlfriend would, of course, be universal.
A few years there was a British movie about football and in The Most Important Match, the officials added three minutes and everybody on the Heros’ side was really ticked. Not knowing anything about how time is kept, I figured I’d missed an improperly called foul or something*, but I knew they were mad and it was a set up for the Victory over Adversity trope.
*Dopers here set me straight when I asked.
I forgot to include this earlier… the original **Fever Pitch ** kicks the crap out of the American baseball-themed remake.
I don’t mind watching films like “Remember the Titans” because you don’t have to understand the sport, and films where it is made really obvious e.g. “we’re three seconds from the bell, you get this ball over the line and we win” what is happening.
Otherwise…really, really dull.
Thought of another one: Major League. The tension of the last game really depends on understanding baseball.