by Andrea Mandell, USA TODAY

by Andrea Mandell, USA TODAY

For the feel-good baseball tale Million Dollar Arm (out May 16), based on a true story about a sports agent who staged an American Idol-style contest in India to find the next great MLB pitcher, Hollywood Boulevard transformed on Tuesday night.

Gone were the cars that line up during rush hour, and in their place stood a pitcher's mound, live ESPN cameras and nine qualifying, strong-armed amateurs, plucked from a countrywide search for anyone who could hurl 100 mph. The winner, promised Disney, would take home a whopping $1 million.

And there was Million Dollar Arm's star, Jon Hamm, almost throwing a pitch himself. While not one mere mortal landed that cash prize (the closest to a win was Josh Dahl from Glendale, Ariz., who threw a pitch that clocked in at 94.9 mph), Hamm put their efforts in perspective.

"I probably couldn't break 60," Hamm told reporters.

And there were plenty of ballpark accouterments to keep the crowd busy, from an AstroTurf-lined green (not red) carpet to cups of cold Budweiser and hot dogs from the infamous Pink's.

Barry Bonds was even there, and before the film rolled, boiled peanuts were thrown out to the crowd as a chorus of Take Me Out to the Ballgame rang out inside the El Capitan theater.

"It's like an out-of-body experience," said the real J.B. Bernstein, describing watching Hamm portray "all those things that happened almost exactly as they happened in real life," including how he traded the modelizer life for his no-nonsense wife, Brenda (played by Lake Bell). "It's not very Hollywood-ized at all."

In reality, Dinesh Patel and Rinku Singh not only readied for MLB tryouts in just 10 months, having never played baseball before, but they earned spots with the Pittsburgh Pirates.

"It was really great to have Dinesh with us," said actor Madhur Mittal, who portrays the Indian baseball player in Million Dollar Arm. "He would tell us all these anecdotes about when things were unraveling for them," he added. "You can just imagine these kids, they don't know the language, they probably haven't even been to cities in India. And suddenly they're pushed into the limelight."

Director Craig Gillespie added that audiences will discover a new side of Hamm, best known for his moody Don Draper in Mad Men. "The later scenes in the film call for a lot of emotion, which he brought, and I haven't seen that with him before on the screen."