Uhh, my favorite baseball movie is BULL DURHAM. I also like THE NATURAL.


As long as we're talking about baseball... it's been 86 years, but we've done it. The Boston Red Sox, my team since birth have finally done it. I've watch ZERO movies in the past couple of weeks because of the post-season (see Todd, I'm still talking about movies), but... the Sox, man. They did it. They really did it.

Whenever I think of baseball flicks my mind immediately wanders to THE SANDLOT. This might have more to do with the fact that I watched it as a child than it actually being a solid film. I'll have to re-visit it.

And when I think of the Sox's World Series victory I think ... "boring". That was one of the worst championships ever. The Cards were pathetic. That 3 - 0 lead in game four felt like a 20 - 0 lead. They just rolled over and died.

Of course, I don't think anything would be capable of matching that Yankees series

The only World Series performance worse than the Cardinals' was that of Fox. Missed pitches, poorly chosen camera angles, not enough replays and not from the correct angles, Chris Myers' fake interview with a fake Budweiser spokesman (which resulted in another missed pitch), closeups of anonymous fans instead of focusing on the on-field action, terrible broadcasting from the booth and even worse analysis from the pregame hosts. I'm willing to take a collection to outbid Fox for the MLB rights in two years. Who's with me?

BULL DURHAM is probably my favorite baseball movie too. FIELD OF DREAMS is great...A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN...BANG THE DRUM SLOWLY is interesting, although I haven't seen it since I was a little kid. BINGO LONG'S TRAVELING ALL-STARS AND MOTOR KINGS I remember as being a lot of fun too. I think baseball has spawned more decent films than any other sport for some reason. EIGHT MEN OUT is a terrific film by John Sayles.

Has anyone been watching CBS' new series CLUBHOUSE about a New York Yankee batboy? The only other TV series I can think of about baseball--Steven Bochco's BAY CITY BLUES (with Dennis Franz as a crusty coach) and sitcoms HARDBALL and BALL FOUR (starring Jim Bouton!)--were ratings failures. I wonder why baseball works on the big screen and not on the small.

What, no love for PRIDE OF THE YANKEES or FEAR STRIKES OUT?

On another note, I'm curious as to how Ken Burns' lengthy documentary BASEBALL is perceived by Mobians who are fans of the game as well as those who are not but have seen the film. I've been revisiting it a little bit at a time on DVD (usually very late at night after the WS games, when I should have been in bed) for the first time since it initially aired on PBS ten years ago. It came under a lot of criticism at the time for its perceived bias toward New York baseball to the exclusion of many deserving players from other regions of the country (I can still recall the howls of outrage from one Midwestern fan who expressed amazement that Stan Musial wasn't even mentioned in passing). It's also interesting that the distinctive style and sensibility which telegraphs "a Ken Burns film" now was still a relatively recent development then, as BASEBALL followed in the wake of his first high-profile PBS "event", the earlier, similarly lengthy meditation THE CIVIL WAR.

Dave

I was an extra B) in the very first scene of EIGHT MEN OUT, in which a newspaper boy runs down the street shouting "extra, extra," when the Black Sox scandal first breaks. I can be seen, barely, in the right hand corner of the frame as a very small man in a very small blue suit with a very small straw hat, looking at a very small Charlie Chaplin poster in front of a very small movie theatre, with a very small lady on my arm.

Eight Men Out is possibly the best baseball movie in terms of realistic looking play.

The Sandlot is the best baseball movie for kids since the original Bad News Bears (Richard Linklater is doing a remake, with Billy Bob Thorton in the Walter Matthau part by the way).

I can't stand Field of Dreams or The Natural- oversentimental pap.

Ken Burns' Baseball is an impressive work, but is indeed very flawed. The NY-centric approach does exclude way too much important baseball history. Just about any fan who's favorite team isn't the Yankees, Brooklyn Dodgers or NY Giants gets shafted (nothing on the Whiz Kids???)

I have not seen 61* yet, but have heard some good things.

I'm not a baseball fan, but I remember liking COBB, which I thought was an interesting cautionary tale about mass-media heroism and it's pitfalls. Not exactly an uplifting picture, though.

doug

How could I have forgotten COBB? I thought it was a really underrated film when it was first released theatrically, and it pretty much sank without a trace at the box office (I didn't even realize it had been released on DVD until I checked just now - I still have the laserdisc).

The article it was based on, Al Stump's "Ty Cobb's Wild Ten-Month Fight To Live", is one of the greatest pieces of baseball reporting ever written; it's been reprinted in various anthologies over the years since its publication and is well worth seeking out.

Dave

My favorite baseball movie? It's gotta be Friz Freleng's 1946 WB cartoon, "Baseball Bugs," in which our hero plays a one man game against the Gas House Gorillas, with a cameo appearance by the Statue of Liberty. After that, I tend to favor comedies that use baseball in a funny way, e.g. Buster Keaton's THE CAMERAMAN (1928) with its wonderful scene shot on location in Yankee Stadium or Harold Lloyd's SPEEDY (1928), in which Babe Ruth makes a hilarious cameo. And then there's Red Skelton's WHISTLING IN BROOKLYN (1943), in which the Brooklyn Dodgers appear, and the first Spencer Tracy-Katharine Hepburn teaming, WOMAN OF THE YEAR (1942) in which sportswriter Tracy takes political columnist Hepburn to Yankee Stadium for her first baseball game. Great stuff.

But as for actual baseball movies, I am partial to THE BAD NEWS BEARS (1977), which skewers the whole Little League culture, something I'd been waiting for since my own childhood. I'd once been a huge baseball fan--I'd followed the whole Mantle/Maris home-run contest during that golden season--but then the following year I joined the Little League, an experience which permanently killed my interest in baseball, with the exception of an occasional Yankees pennant race/world series now and then. I suppose I should take it up with my therapist--if I ever go to one.

But I tend to avoid serious movies about baseball. I somehow got roped into seeing FIELD OF DREAMS and thought it was utter tripe. And I avoided Ken Burns' baseball series. But I do remember liking the documentary "A League of Our Own," the one about women's leagues during WWII, which included a lot of color Kodachrome home movie footage of the actual women's games. It was much better than the Tom Hanks/Rosie O'Donnell/Madonna movie based on it. And I also recall an interesting documentary about the old Negro Leagues called, I think, "There's Always a Sun Shining Someplace." Which reminds me that I also actually liked the 1976 movie about the Negro Leagues, THE BINGO LONG TRAVELING ALL-STARS AND MOTOR KINGS, with James Earl Jones, Billy Dee Williams, Richard Pryor and Stan Shaw. As serious baseball movies go, I probably like that one the best.

As someone who watched the last three Yankees-Red Sox games, I have to say that, as saddened as I was over the Yankees' loss of the pennant :(, I have to give credit to the Red Sox for some really fine ball-playing. And it IS nice to see a curse finally lifted. :D

Coincidently I'll be hearing Ken Burns speak in about four hours on the state of the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities -- he's in town for the Texas Book Festival (as is Peter Bogdanovich). Hopefully Burns will show a few clips of his new documentary Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson. I'm a fan of most of Burns' documentaries, but Baseball was a big disappointment. It wasn't the approach, or the film, I wanted to see.

A heads-up to Austin readers -- Bogdanovich is introducing screenings of TARGETS and SAINT JACK at the Alamo Drafthouse Downtown tonight.

I envy you Austinites (sic?), two of my favorite Bogdanovich films on the big screen, and I'm sure, not screened that often anywhere.

Unfortunately Burns was a no-show due to having the flu, but I did hit SAINT JACK. God, Bogdanovich is such an incredible storyteller -- I could listen to him all day long. Got him to sign my THE LAST PICTURE SHOW DVD, too, which I treasure. I'm definitely putting his new book Who the Hell's in It : Portraits and Conversations on my Christmas list.

BANG THE DRUM SLOWLY based on the fine book by Mark Harris is my favorite baseball movie. I remember that Pauline Kael thought it's criticism of "ragging" was flawed, but I thought that was an odd criticism of the movie. (I'm also old enough to remember seeing Jack Benny praise this movie, over "pictures like LAST TANGO IN PARIS" on the Tonight show.) Sentimental at times, it's anchored by a fine performance by Michael Moriarty, a good pre-MEAN STREETS one by Robert DeNiro, and magical support by reliables such as Ann Wedgeworth and Vincent Gardenia.

I need to revisit it, but I enjoyed Ken Burns' baseball. I was a little disappointed in BINGO LONG AND THE TRAVELLING ALL STARS", but both films have a fascinating look at the black leagues and the great players there.

*61 was a solid film, and I also liked the recent documentary on Hank Greenberg. I wouldn't mind seeing the made for cable LONG GONE again, which I remember as an agreeable comedy about minor league baseball with William Peterson and a very memorable Virginia Madsen.

I'm looking forward to the reissue of DAMN YANKEES, which thanks to Gwen Verdon and Ray Walston, is one of the best 50s musicals made outside of MGM.

PRIDE OF THE YANKEES is my favorite baseball bio-pic, although more for the Cooper/Wright romance than the baseball scenes. I wish Spike Lee would get the financing to do his Jackie Robinson film.

One of the funniest episodes on the MISTER ED is missing from the DVD set - when Ed tried out for the L.A. Dodgers. Another memorable sitcom missing from DVD is the SGT. BILKO, guest-starring Dick Van Dyke as the hillbilly pitching sensation, with several of the New York Yankees of the late fifties.

The latest Videoscope memorializes New York Mets announcer Bob Murphy, who is one of the voices heard in BAD LIEUTENANT (along with Chris "Mad Dog" Russo), where baseball is used to a very haunting effect. I also like the way Joe DiMaggio's hitting streak is used in the background of FAREWELL, MY LOVELY and the various baseball trivia in THE LONG GOODBYE, though I doubt Chandler ever mentioned baseball in his novels.

Speaking of BAD LT., that was the last time ;), until the recent Red Sox feat, that a team came back from an 0-3 deficit to win a pennant series!