It’s no shock that screenwriters who gave us “Hoosiers,” “Rudy” and “Men of Honor” could get a few tears out of a tale an aspiring baseball player struggling to overcome the degenerative spinal disorder he was born with and make it to the big leagues.

But what three credited writers, stars Dennis Quaid, Colin Ford, Bonnie Bedelia and Scott Glenn and director B-movie Jeff Celentano (“Breaking Point”) have a harder time managing is finding a point to “The Hill.”

The story is that Rickey Hill (played by Jesse Berry in his younger scenes) was born with that medical issue in the late ’50s, wore leg braces into his tweens, but practiced swinging a stick or a bat obsessively until that day he shed the braces and became a Texas teen hitting phenom.

His father (Dennis Quaid) was a “hardscrabble” preacher who never believed he could or should try to play baseball. He has a “higher calling,” Dad said at the time, with Mom (Joelle Carter) rarely objecting but granny (Bonnie Bedelia) and his siblings sticking up for little Mickey Mantle-obsessed Rickey.

The family struggled in near poverty but Rickey was hellbent on proving he could play, even if his father was sure his ability to memorize and apply lessons from scriptures was his true “calling.”

But if you haven’t heard of Rickey Hill, however miraculous or at least inspiring it was that he was able to play the game, you shouldn’t have. He never made it to the big leagues, one of the hardest journeys any athlete can undertake.

So, what’s this movie about?

The baseball episodes are rules, logic, tradition and reality-bending enough that the broadcast announcer for an exhibition “tryout” game doesn’t have to say “This is something that norally doesn’t happen,” because “Duh.” At least he isn’t the announcer from an earlier game, going on about “another game-winning home run” and the friends and family who marvel how Rickey’s four-for-four night “gets” his “average” “up to .400.”

If you don’t know how ridiculous that sounds, you don’t know what “season opener” means any more than three credited screenwriters — Angelo Pizzo, Scott Marshall Smith and Aric Hornig -do.

The kid doesn’t grow up (Colin Ford plays him as a teen) to embrace Daddy’s hopes for him and become a popular preacher.

So are we looking at another “Rudy” story here, some self-promoter who spends his life pitching the “miracle” of his “almost” overcoming-every-adversity story and gets a movie made? I honestly don’t know.

That said, the long flashback scenes recreating the 1960s childhood of growing up with a baseball-hating father who had little tolerance for backwoods Texas Baptists who smoked and chewed and spat tobacco during his (indoor) sermons are somewhat interesting.

What isn’t intersting is almost everything else — the little moments meant to be “a sign” when the preacher gets another job from the rich lady who happens to pick them up when they run out of gas, or the junkyard owner (Ray Clemons) who shrugs off little Rickey’s leg-brace long fly-ball (rock) that breaks a windshield on his lot and becomes the kid’s cheerleader and backer, etc.

Quaid is a terrific actor, and if you’re a fan, make a double-bill out of “The Hill” (PG) and “Strays” (hard-R) this weekend if you want a case of whiplash. But as righteous and stern as the character is, he’s one-dimensional and not scripted into being the one who brings you to tears.

That would be David Silverman‘s job as the bluff, no-nonsense elementary school Coach Don who doesn’t let us or anybody else know his lay preacher background until he confronts his fellow preacher to make him recognize his little boy’s “gift from God.” And Bedelia and Carter have some touching moments as well.

By the time Scott Glenn shows up as the famous baseball scout who bends all sorts of rules and and any sense of simple fair-play common sense to give the freshly-redamaged Rickey a last showcase chance to get signed, I was all out of eye-rolls to give.

Rating: PG

Cast: Dennis Quaid, Colin Ford, Bonnie Bedelia, Joelle Carter, Jesse Berry, Siena Bjornerud and Scott Glenn

Credits: Directed by Jeff Celentano, scripted by Angelo Pizzo, Scott Marshall Smith and Aric Hornig. A Briarcliff Entertainment release.

Running time: 2:04