Yoda Reviews Baseball Movies [Archive]

Yoda

07-23-24, 01:30 PM

Hardball (2001)
2

In a sentence: Keanu Reeves has to coach an inner city Little League team.

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There is a singular sin that torments all bad sports movies, and even a few good ones: an unwillingness to let the movie be about the sport.

This sin manifests in ways both mortal and venial. The venial is the obligatory romantic subplot. The broken man hits bottom and finds himself on (or around) some pathetic team, and then around (and eventually on) some lady with a way better grip on life. This woman is always pretty but never ostentatious. She is perceptive and skeptical. She intuitively senses that he is incomplete, mid-transition from caring about shallow things into caring about the things that really matter. She's a teacher, like, half the time. She is Diane Lane, literally in this case, and spiritually in most other cases. In sports movies, you do not "get the girl," you win over the woman.

You win her over because she's the yogi of getting your life together. She is the yardstick by which the broken man measures his personal growth, because she cannot commit to him until he "gets it," until he fully integrates himself into the sport and the people playing it. Only then can she swipe right, her love acting as a reward for (and confirmation of) his self-actualization as both teammate and human being.

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In a vacuum, this isn't terrible. Being a good teammate is a pretty good metaphor for being a good partner. Hell, not even a metaphor: among the things you might use to evaluate someone's long-term romantic suitability, I'd put "functions well in team sports" above the proverbial "is nice to waiters." But the idea's as well-worn as a hand-me-down catcher's mitt, and any time spent on it beyond the minimum feels like runtime padding. To some degree, you simply have to accept this. But you don't have to like it. You don't have to like the condescending nod to the girlfriend and/or non-sports-fan that gets dragged to the film, some pandering romcom-shaped fig leaf to placate the uninterested. Ideally it's funny, well-written...and short.

This is one area where I'll give Hardball a little credit: it doesn't spend more than the usual amount of time on this subplot. Unfortunately, the reason it doesn't spend a lot of time on it is because it spends an incredible amount of time on the other non-baseball subplot.

It hardly matters what this non-baseball subplot is, because they're interchangeable. Bad and mediocre sports movies are a game of Mad Libs: player/coach/manager who has suffered addiction/professional disgrace/a breakup finds renewed purpose playing/coaching/managing a baseball/football/curling team.

This time, the second value resolves to "addiction." Specifically, gambling addiction. The really funny thing is that even though he's a gambling addict, and even though he's betting on sports, they have him bet on...basketball. Not even baseball. And as far as I can remember, they don't even do the inverted thing, where he doesn't bet on baseball because he doesn't know anything about it, making his position as Little League coach all the more ridiculous. Nope. They just have him betting on basketball a lot. In a baseball movie.

Except, maybe it's really a gambling movie. Because my God, do we spend a lot of time on the gambling. Hardball is constantly showing us Reeves' character talking to some burly man who insists he'd better Have the Money, to which he says yes, I will Have the Money.

Let me be clear: it is not bad that the protagonist in a sports film is broken. They have to be. Their growing appreciation of the sport and its participants has to fix something. But the focus should be on the transition. If your character is an alcoholic (like in The Mighty Ducks, which is about hockey), you don't need to show this over and over after it's established. At most, you may need a brief relapse, a Campbellian sacrifice about two-thirds of the way through. But when you spend more time on it than necessary, it signals the same thing as dwelling on the romance: that your sports scenes don't have a lot going on, and you're trying to fill time.

How's the Baseball?
Pretty bad. Every ground ball involves a fielder diving headfirst and missing it, and we get maybe five or six separate instances of players sliding into a base safely for no real reason. We also have half a dozen cutaways to the scoreboard at weird angles that are strangely hard to read. We have multiple examples of Reeves telling the kids what the score and game situation are to make sure the audience is up to speed.

Obviously the quality of play shouldn't be high, because this is Little League, but if you're depicting sports in a film it's incumbent on you to tie the events to character arcs and/or find creative solutions to the players' foibles. You know what I'm talking about: the heavy kid is slow, but he hits for power! This kid can't hit but boy is he fast! This kid is talented but the coach needs to come up with an out-of-the-box solution to help him get over some mental block. And so on.

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There is shockingly little of this. Only one real example of this trope shows up, with the pitcher. In a better movie, the team would discover he was actually a great pitcher organically. Maybe he throws to first too hard, or gets frustrated and hurls the ball over the fence, causing everyone to gawk in wonder at his arm strength. Instead, he literally just says "I should be the pitcher." So they let him pitch, and he's great. And that's it.

He does have a quirk, though, and it's kind of the only one in the film: he wears headphones and listens to "Big Poppa" by Notorious B.I.G. on repeat because it helps him pitch. The moment we learn this, the rest is obvious: he'll pitch well, someone else will object (or the headphones will break at some key moment), he'll have a crisis of confidence, and then his teammates'll sing it for him and he'll be great again. All of this happens, because it must. But it kind of works because it's sweet and different.

The only other time the film really charms is when a player, having stormed off in frustration after a loss, sends his younger brother to the coach to "negotiate" an incentives-based returning focusing primarily on pizza. I can assure you that, when I was in Little League, being given more or less money to spend at the concession stand depending on how well we played was, indeed, a huge motivating factor.

The ideal version of a film like this would have three or four times as many players with quirks or skills or foibles, with creative or funny solutions for all. But there's just no time for that here. Because our baseball movie needs more scenes of John Hawkes describing free throws and Diane Lane crossing her arms disapprovingly.

Do They Win?
In sports terms: they win. Not just the big game against the rival, but the championship, though we see the latter part in a photo epilogue. Why? Because of all the time we spend on the non-sports ending:

The youngest kid on the team, a kid too young to technically play at all, plays nevertheless, gets the game-winning hit...and then gets shot and dies. I'm serious. The end of the film is that a little kid gets shot and dies. Reeves literally gives a eulogy (though it must be said, a pretty good one, and for some reason I feel like I need to watch and consider every fictional euology, for reasons I may get into another time). This is one of a few facile nods to the inner city setting.

If this sounds like a downer, it is, though they try to mitigate this by giving us the events out of order. We cut from the kid getting ready to hit to his murder, and ther funeral, euology, and end of the game are all interspersed.

-

This isn't a good movie, or a good baseball movie, but there's an awful lot to be learned from it. It's the kind of genre exercise that should never be watched, only studied.

seanc

07-23-24, 01:53 PM

I really liked the book Hardball, so I was super excited when this came out. Oh young naive 20 something Sean. Yeah, I didn’t like it either but am definitely too far removed to articulate why, and don’t foresee a reason to try again.

Well written review Yoda. Who could have seen that coming. ;)

TONGO

07-23-24, 02:18 PM

Holy crap. The insight of reviewing this 2 dimensional flick is like Gordon Ramsay talking about Chicken McNuggets. Got way more attention than it deserved, but I know now not to see it :) Thank you, but my head will explode when you review Moneyball as there's alot more meat on that bone

This thread inspired me to buy 2 baseball movies off Prime, $5 each, that I haven't seen yet. Mr 3000 and Million Dollar Arm. I'll still see them even if they're trash. HelI I saw Major League 2 so why not?

Thief

07-23-24, 03:13 PM

Haven't seen Hardball, and weirdly enough, I don't think I've seen a lot of baseball movies. The first two Major League? Bull Durham? Moneyball? That's about all I can remember so this might be a good thread for recommendations.

PD: Can you include a bonus review of "Homer at Bat" from The Simpsons, please?

Wyldesyde19

07-23-24, 03:19 PM

This thread fails unless it includes Field of Dreams. You’ve been warned

Takoma11

07-23-24, 03:40 PM

A quick note about Hardball: I've never seen it, but whenever it is mentioned or I come across it, I remember that it did surprisingly well at the box office because it came out right when 9/11 happened. There was an article in Entertainment Weekly about its surprising success in theaters because people wanted to see something kind of predictable and "friendly".

Mr Minio

07-23-24, 03:44 PM

This thread already failed by the sheer fact of being about baseball.

And Yoda'll never review the only masterpiece film that is (partly) on baseball.

Citizen Rules

07-23-24, 03:53 PM

Ah, I see the recommendations are afoot. So with the Musical Countdown in progress, I hope to see a review of Damn Yankees (1958). I'm not a baseball fan but I loved the look at the old stadiums, now long gone. Fun movie and it qualifies for the countdown.

TONGO

07-23-24, 04:02 PM

This thread already failed by the sheer fact of being about baseball.

And Yoda'll never review the only masterpiece film that is (partly) on baseball.
Mr. Go ?

LAMb EELYAK

07-23-24, 09:30 PM

Can you include a bonus review of "Homer at Bat" from The Simpsons, please?

On a(n un)related note, here's a deep dive into the career of Bugs Bunny: http://www.ussmariner.com/2006/03/12/bugs-bunny-greatest-banned-player-ever/

Wyldesyde19

07-23-24, 09:34 PM

This thread already failed by the sheer fact of being about baseball.

And Yoda'll never review the only masterpiece film that is (partly) on baseball.
And yet, still better than Pink films.

Harry Lime

07-23-24, 10:12 PM

I sometimes wish I loved baseball. Well maybe I'd settle for liking it more than I do. I like it but I never watch it. I played a couple seasons as a kid. I've even had Ken Burns' Baseball in queue for a while now. But I do really like a lot of baseball movies. So many good ones. In fact I watched The Sandlot again not too long ago and that a lot of fun. Hardball was trash though.

gbgoodies

07-24-24, 01:04 AM

Baseball is one of the few sports that I enjoy watching, so I'm looking forward to reading your reviews.

Hardball (2001)
2

In a sentence: Keanu Reeves has to coach an inner city Little League team.

The movie Hardball is basically a remake/ripoff of a better movie (TV movie) from 1980 called The Comeback Kid starring John Ritter.

It's on YouTube if you want to watch it. (It's not a great copy, but it's definitely a better movie than the Keanu Reeves movie.):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiC75ns8PCw

gbgoodies

07-24-24, 01:12 AM

If you're looking for a good baseball movie that rarely gets talked about, check out Bang the Drum Slowly (1973) starring Michael Moriarty and Robert De Niro, (before De Niro was famous).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV_X9UJWQNU

Mr Minio

07-24-24, 03:26 AM

And yet, still better than Pink films. What's better than Pink films?

Wyldesyde19

07-24-24, 03:34 AM

What's better than Pink films?
Baseball movies. But I didn’t stick the landing on the joke.

Mulligan?

Robert the List

07-24-24, 03:37 AM

@1.13 It's a great scene. The benchmark for the stadium drama.
https://youtu.be/afA0M0rO72I?t=74

Mr Minio

07-24-24, 03:47 AM

Baseball movies. There's one baseball movie that's better than any Pinku. On average, Pink Film is a much superior genre than Baseball Movie.

Wyldesyde19

07-24-24, 03:53 AM

There's one baseball movie that's better than any Pinku. On average, Pink Film is a much superior genre than Baseball Movie.
Nah. Pink films are among the worst. Just a rung above nunsploitation and their related ilk.

Mr Minio

07-24-24, 04:48 AM

Nah. Pink films are among the worst. Just a rung above nunsploitation and their related ilk. This is exactly what a normie would say/think. Don't be a normie.

But let's not hijack Yoda's thread. Want to talk about Pinks, make a new thread.

Yoda

07-24-24, 01:52 PM

The Natural (1984)
2
In a sentence: A preternaturally talented player emerges from nowhere.

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There's a difference between story and myth. Stories are full of people, and people have to overcome challenges. Myths are full of emblems and inevitabilities. Stories are about the journey, but myths are about how they end.

The Natural is a myth.

Contra nearly every other sports movie, which is about a ragtag group of whatevers that learn to work together, Roy Hobbs (the titular "natural") doesn't really have to overcome anything, and he doesn't really need anyone else's help. Sure, there are obstacles, in the way a toddler clinging to your leg is an obstacle. But they exist only to be run over (the obstacles, not the toddlers).

To be fair, the movie announces its intentions almost immediately: after a brief opener where he plays catch with his father (more on that later), we jump forward to said father's death. The same night he dies, a tree outside their farmhouse is struck by lightning. Roy takes some wood from the broken tree and fashions a bat out of it, which he names "Wonderboy." He even carves a lightning bolt into the barrel. He is the baseball Prometheus, given a gift by the Gods and then gracing the rest of humanity with it. Within minutes he's striking out the best ballplayer in the country in an impromptu roadside challenge. This is obviously fantastical, but it's especially so for baseball, which is famously hard to dominate. It's a precise, strategic game where excellence is a mix of physical ability and experience; most players hit their peak at least several years into their career.

The only way in which he resembles a real person is that he's kind of a jerk, in keeping with what you'd expect both from someone whose success is immediate and effortless, and with what we know of the dispostitions of the most competitive athletes. He talks about wanting to break every record, and when someone asks him "and then?" he's left only to more or less reiterate this desire.

Emblems still have needs, I suppose, because he finds himself involved with several women. The first is Glenn Close, a childhood sweetheart. The second is a stalker who shoots him. The third is Kim Basinger, a bookie's girl who tries to manipulate him but sure seems to have fallen for him in the process.

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Basinger's presence is appropriate, because Roy Hobbs is essentially what you'd get if you turned James Bond into a baseball player. Most men are threatened by him, and most women love him. He has a pithy rejoinder for everything and is unflappable. He has struggles, but they largely consist of a) self-inflicted distractions and b) literally getting shot. The shooter is the aforementioned stalker (in an event drawn from real life). But you can't kill a myth, so all it does is slow him down. We jump forward 16 years and he enters the majors around what should be the end of his career.

It's tiring listening to the gamblers or the managers or the journalists come at him verbally only for him to swat them down with something that we're apparently meant to find clever or quick-witted, but which mostly boil down to "I don't care."

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Hobbs has to fight his way onto the team because he's old and because that's one of the few ways a perfect character can be made to face adversity, I guess. As soon as he gets his chance he supplants the normal right fielder (who literally dies, in the most dramatic Wally Pipping imaginable) and takes the league by storm. He struggles at some point, but it's never because he's not good enough or overmatched by the competition. His failures are all self-inflicted, down to personal distraction. He even blames himself for getting shot, saying that he should've seen it coming. He can only be defeated by himself.

There are, we learn, some lingering effects of the shooting. The wound is, of course, on his abdomen, because in addition to being emblematic of Greek myth, he's apparently Baseball Jesus, too. I hasten to add that the wound is on the wrong side, but this is presumably because he's left-handed. I will not be fielding questions about whether God is ambidextrous.

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One of the bigger flaws here, in something that echoes the obligatory romantic subplot stuff discussed elsewhere, is that the film kind of tries to have it both ways. The childhood sweetheart stuff is there just to throw a curveball later in the film, when that sweetheart resurfaces and eventually reveals that the teenage boy she's got with her is, of course, his. And after he almost dies trying to play through his injury, we abruptly flash forward at the end to show him playing catch with his son in an echo of the film's opening. This is too little, too late in the character department. There isn't any sense throughout the film that he's learning or growing out of his obsession with greatness, or has come to any profound realization about the life he'll have to live after baseball. It's just a superficial reward tacked onto the end of the film, a destination we never saw the journey towards.

How's the Baseball?
Mediocre. The swinging is awkward and fake looking, and Redford runs like his elbows are attached to his sides. But the throws are decent and the movie manages to orient us without having people just read out the score and inning over and over. It conveys the stakes and situations naturally. But yes, it resorts to the classic newspaper headline montage, too. But I find that particular cliché charming.

Do They Win?
It's a myth, so of course they do. But how they win is the only reason anybody loves this movie. There are two key elements in the finale that have kept it in memory:

First, the imagery. Hobbs hits a pennant-winning home run into the stadium lights, shattering them and short circuiting the system. The entire sequence is in slow motion, and it ends with Hobbs and his entire team celebrating while sparks rain down on them. It might be the single most beautiful shot in any baseball movie, rivaled only by the shot moments earlier where the entire scene is reflected in the manager's glasses:

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Second, the score. The word "iconic" is horrendously overused, but it has never been more apt. The music is pitch-perfect and elevates everything. In the way Maurice Jarre's score for Lawrence of Arabia has become evocative of the desert, Randy Newman's orchestral theme has become synonymous with baseball. When Major League Baseball unveiled its All-Century team at the 1999 All-Star game, they played it throughout:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjSGPGWkoe4

Note that the intro here is an homage to Field of Dreams. And yet they use the score from The Natural under it. It's status as the definitive example of baseball music is so thorough that they use it in place of the score of other baseball movies.

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There's a little audio easter egg I include at the end of all the podcasts I've done for this site. It's from Adaptation. where Brian Cox, playing Robert McKee, says:

"Wow them in the end and you've got a hit. You can have flaws, problems...but wow them in the end, and you've got a hit."

That sums up The Natural. It's not a good film, and it doesn't have many interesting characters. But it wows you in the end, and Hobbs got a hit.

One of the most intoxicating things about baseball is the way amazing things can happen at any moment, regardless of circumstance. They can lie in wait during a meaningless blowout between last place teams on a Tuesday afternoon in September. Entire seasons turning on a dime, entire careers bouncing off of pebbles. You have no idea what's coming next. So it's strangely appropriate that The Natural is so well-regarded. Because like so many futile seasons it trudges along out of necessity, only to surprise us with a singular moment whose shadow reaches back across the long summer that led to it.

A swing, and a myth.

Yoda

07-24-24, 02:07 PM

my head will explode when you review Moneyball as there's alot more meat on that bone
I actually reviewed that way back when it came out, but I'll definitely write something about it here. I might reproduce the review and add a little extra commentary, not sure yet.

This thread inspired me to buy 2 baseball movies off Prime, $5 each, that I haven't seen yet. Mr 3000 and Million Dollar Arm. I'll still see them even if they're trash. HelI I saw Major League 2 so why not?
I haven't decided exactly how long I'll do this or for which films. You can safely assume I'll cover a lot of the classics, and a handful of lesser-knowns one, too. I think Million Dollar Arm has a decent shot of making the cut.

Yoda

07-24-24, 02:09 PM

This thread fails unless it includes Field of Dreams. You’ve been warned
No-brainer. It'll definitely be in here.

A quick note about Hardball: I've never seen it, but whenever it is mentioned or I come across it, I remember that it did surprisingly well at the box office because it came out right when 9/11 happened. There was an article in Entertainment Weekly about its surprising success in theaters because people wanted to see something kind of predictable and "friendly".
I actually remember that! It was ultimately one of those factoids I considered mentioning but decided would interrupt the flow of the review, but yeah, it came out right after and that ultimately got it a lot more attention than it deserved, or would've otherwise had.

SpelingError

07-24-24, 02:13 PM

I remember liking The Natural quite a bit, but I'm also not likely to revisit it. I was mainly sold by the cinematography and the cast, which balanced out its simplistic plot to a degree.

Citizen Rules

07-24-24, 02:43 PM

I haven't seen The Natural, but it sounds like a film I'd like. One of these days I'll get to it. I'm betting because I'm not a sports fan but do love many sports movies that I'd like it.

TONGO

07-24-24, 02:56 PM

2 put of 5?! Two?! :bawling: Please don't hold a grudge against this movie due to me naming my 2011 Fantasy Baseball team after it ;)

This movie was all the mythical tales told about players (exaggerated stories told by players from 75 years ago where there's no proof), games, and moments (the Babe Ruth point) all brought into a movie. The tempo of how it is on a ballfield during practice was handled accurately, with Brimley and Forrester shooting the bull in the dugout. My Dad used to play ball and adored the flick, and even read the book afterward. He said the book was completely different.
I look at The Natural as everything Moneyball wasn't. I liked Moneyball more, but this flick still has a place in my heart. It probably helped me seeing it when I was a kid.
4 STARS - TONGO HAS SPOKEN! :)

ynwtf

07-24-24, 02:56 PM

Snap to it, bubbs! It's been what, a whole 24 hours or so and there's only TWO reviews up?! OMG! I have work to procrastinate! How can I do that on only TWO friggin reviews?! I need a write-up on Eight Men Out! The Sand Lot!! For Love of the Game!?! 61*??!1?!!?! GET TO IT! You have earned vacation time. USE IT!

:D

I'll help with a quick review of Moneyball. Best movie ever that should have cut the daughter singing scene. You're welcome.
<3<3<3

seanc

07-24-24, 03:09 PM

So far I am right with you on your ratings. I don’t remember The Natural well either though. That one I would have seen in high school, so I will leave the math up to you guys.

Yoda

07-24-24, 03:20 PM

Snap to it, bubbs! It's been what, a whole 24 hours or so and there's only TWO reviews up?!
I know this is sarcastic, so I'll just say I'd planned to have these trickle in over weeks or months but I decided I'd just start on the first one, and an hour later it was done. And then I had so much fun with that that the same thing happened this morning with the second one.

I'm determined not to be too precious about these, or else they'll take forever.

ynwtf

07-24-24, 03:27 PM

I know this is sarcastic, so I'll just say I'd planned to have these trickle in over weeks or months but I decided I'd just start on the first one, and an hour later it was done. And then I had so much fun with that that the same thing happened this morning with the second one.

I'm determined not to be too precious about these, or else they'll take forever.

Be as precious as you see fit. I love sports movies, especially well paced baseball films. Looking forward to coming posts.

*Looksit watch*
;)

Takoma11

07-24-24, 03:30 PM

Snap to it, bubbs! It's been what, a whole 24 hours or so and there's only TWO reviews up?

Gosh, long stretches of what feels like inaction, waiting for something exciting to happen? It's almost like . . . um . . . hmmm, well the analogy escapes me now. I'm sure it'll come back to me.

Stirchley

07-24-24, 03:36 PM

Gosh, long stretches of what feels like inaction, waiting for something exciting to happen? It's almost like . . . um . . . hmmm, well the analogy escapes me now. I'm sure it'll come back to me.

Cricket?

Sedai

07-24-24, 04:22 PM

This is my official request for a review of Trouble with the Curve ;)

Yoda

07-24-24, 04:35 PM

This is my official request for a review of Trouble with the Curve ;)
https://i.imgur.com/ESiYZCQ.gif

Sedai

07-24-24, 04:46 PM

https://i.imgur.com/ESiYZCQ.gif

And before doing that, can you stop by my house and move everything in my basement over to the left by precisely 5/8"?

Great, thanks!

ynwtf

07-24-24, 06:41 PM

This is my official request for a review of Trouble with the Curve ;)

I was on the fence mentioning that one! Glad it was you >=P

GulfportDoc

07-24-24, 08:41 PM

For decades I've liked watching baseball; first the Pirates, then the Dodgers, then SF, and now the Astros.

Carry on...;)

gbgoodies

07-25-24, 03:04 AM

The Natural (1984)
2
In a sentence: A preternaturally talented player emerges from nowhere.

It's been a long time since I watched The Natural, but I thought it was better than a 2-star movie. I'll have to rewatch it with your review in mind to see if it stood the test of time.

Yoda

07-25-24, 12:58 PM

It's been a long time since I watched The Natural, but I thought it was better than a 2-star movie. I'll have to rewatch it with your review in mind to see if it stood the test of time.
I'm on a bit of an island with this one, for sure, though hopefully the review explains why. The capsule version is that the rating is for its value as a movie, first and foremost. So I don't give it a lot of extra credit for the baseball feelies it gives me. But I get why its finale, which lands extremely well, will cause a lot of people to think highly of it, and even talk a bit about the psychology of that.

Gideon58

07-25-24, 01:26 PM

My review of The Natural:

https://www.movieforums.com/reviews/2107456-the_natural.html

TONGO

07-25-24, 06:06 PM

Movies I hope will be in here

The Bad News Bears with Walter Matthau, not the remakes
Moneyball
Major League
For the Love of the Game
Fever Pitch (don't know if this counts because it's about a fanatical fan)
The Battered Bastards of Baseball (documentary)
Cobb
Ken Burns Baseball (the Documentary, and they've released a 10th Inning which was awesome. Burns promised to release an 11th inning if the Cubs won a world series. They have :) )
Edit in- Bull Durham, but already been said it'll be here

Any not listed here and getting a great review will assuredly make me want to see them.

Yoda

07-26-24, 01:19 PM

Bull Durham (1988)
3
In a sentence: A career minor-league catcher and a hot shot young pitcher vie for the affections of a baseball groupie.

One difficulty in critiquing older films is that you have absorbed tropes through cultural osmosis that were, at the time, novel. Trailblazing films get short shrift because we often see them after having internalized all their copycats. Some films are classics because they're great, and others because they're influential.

Bull Durham is both, but its status as a classic baseball film is down mostly to its influence. Because before, most films about baseball were romantic. They were about the magic of the game, about boys and men daydreaming about the Majors. They were sanitized fairy tales about the game, the way old war films were about handsome men running up hillsides rather than people dying miserably in trenches.

This baseball movie is about those trenches. It's about all the young ballplayers who die having never crested the hill. It's about grime and grit and drinking and sex and sweat and struggle, sometimes all at once. It hardly depicts the Major Leagues at all. It's about the minors. It's about the guys who haven't made it yet, and about the guys who never will. It's about the way our pit stops become our final destinations.

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Right off the bat, the film tells you it's going to be different: it opens with narration from someone who isn't a baseball player. Or a manager. Or a scout. It doesn't have a single primary character, but our entrance point into its world is Annie Savoy. "Savoy," incidentally, is the name emblazoned on the replacement the bat boy selects for Roy Hobbs at the end of The Natural.

Everyone remembers Crash's "I believe in..." speech to Annie, but for my money the best lines are all from her narration:

"The world is made for people who aren't cursed with self awareness."

"Baseball may be a religion full of magic, cosmic truth, and the fundamental ontological riddles of our time, but it's also a job."
That second quote is emblematic of the stuff most people quote the chracter on: her waxing philosophically about the "Church of Baseball," a tongue-in-cheek comment that nonetheless conveys something true about the way fans and players approach the sport.

Baseball is undoubtedly the sport most like a religion. It's tied up in tradition and routine. It's a sport with a borderline cathecismic rulebook, and just as many unwritten rules. And it's the only major sport that tracks a statistic called "Sacrifices."

Baseball games turn on fickle things like random gusts of wind and bad bounces that bring to mind an angry Pagan deity, the kind of pre-Christian god whose gaze you mostly tried to avoid. And in Bull Durham we have not one primary character, as I said before, but a veritable trinity of them: Crash, Nuke, and Annie. The father, son, and Holy Ghost of the game. And of course they mirror the three transcendetals: Heart (Annie), Head (Crash), and Hands (Nuke). You find the same structure across so many famous stories: Frodo, Gandalf, and Aragorn. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.

Annie follows the team religiously, and knows the game inside and out. Each year she gives players advice and each year she picks one in particular for some hands-on coaching, which she claims always leads to the best year of their career. She scouts the local talent, as it were. And Nuke is that talent. He's got a "million dollar arm and a five-cent head," to quote one of the film's best lines. She gives him herself, her sage wisdom, and his nickname. What, you didn't think Nuke was his Christian name, did you?

Kevin Costner plays Crash Davis, a veteran catcher who has the dubious honor of approaching the all-time minor league home run record. His career is winding down, which makes him as poor a prospect for catching as he he is for copulating. Annie won't waste her magic touch on a player on the downslope, about to be excommunicated from the Church of Baseball.

Of course, he's more age appropriate, and wiser, and we know right away they're a better match than her and her latest prospect project. Is this the obligatory romantic subplot again? Refreshingly, no. The relationships here are weird, atypical, and come adorned with little comedic baubles to keep them fresh and interesting even as most of us will be pretty sure where the whole thing'll end up. A dumber film would expect us to be in genuine suspense (and genuinely care) about the romantic intrique, but Bull Durham recognizes that it needs these stories to be interesting in their own right, even if you know where it's going, and even if you don't much care.

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How's the Baseball?
Really good. The action itself is real and accurate and clearly orchestrated by people who know how the game actually works. But what sets this film apart are all the subtle things outside of the games themselves.

Specifically, it captures the dinginess of the minor leagues at the time. The way so many are in smaller towns, the way the local community can center around them like a job-giving factory or industrial hub. The announcers have weird lisps and accents, the fans are many of the same people each night, and the presence of goofy stage acts and gimmicks ("Hit this sign, win a steak!") betrays a lack of confidence in the quality of play itself. These teams often were, and are, kept alive by a small group of local diehards, like Annie.

And it captures the psychology of baseball. The issues of pride and cosmic inequity that arise when a smart, hard-working player is utterly dwarfed by someone stupid and lazy, but insanely talented.

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The story is almost entirely about Nuke's inability to simply pitch the way everyone knows he can, and the many things he tries to achieve some measure of consistency. And it does the same thing with Crash, albeit on a more granular level: it shows him reacting to each pitch, talking to himself, stepping out of the box, and muttering little mantras about where to put his hands. Baseball is about repeating a tiny thousand things as often and as accurately as possible, about replicating an insane kinetic chain that can break if even a single link is corroded.

Crash is a classic "quadruple-A" player, someone who's a bit too good for the minors but never quite good enough to stick in the majors. They are players without a team, men without countries, doomed to struggle, to learn from that struggle, and then cursed with the resulting wisdom to forever teach the more talented. The head must direct the hands, and is left to despair and despise when they don't do what they're told.

Do They Win?
Not really. There is no Big Game, no cheap athletic stakes to slot in as a third act, another thing which sets this film apart. It's all about Annie's choice, Nuke's development, and Crash's reckoning with the end of his career. And on that front, yes, everybody "wins." Annie grows out of her groupie status and realizes she loves Crash, Crash accepts that his playing days are over, and Nuke makes it to the majors, still dumb but having absorbed enough wisdom from Crash that he'll clearly be okay. The head gets the heart, and the hands wave goodbye.

-

It's often said that baseball is about failure. The greatest teams in history lose a third of the time, and the best hitters fail seven out of every 10 at bats. Crash's triumph is in accepting that he won't. That he's not the savior, that his role in the history of the game is to teach, to pave the way for players like Nuke. To be John the Baptist in the Church of Baseball.

Wyldesyde19

07-26-24, 01:43 PM

Love Bull Durham
Am lukewarm to The Natural. I like Money Ball.

seanc

07-26-24, 03:20 PM

Five star review of a five star movie. Your rating was my only issue.

Thief

07-26-24, 03:26 PM

Haven't seen it in a while, but I really like Bull Durham.

gbgoodies

07-27-24, 02:23 AM

Bull Durham (1988)
3
In a sentence: A career minor-league catcher and a hot shot young pitcher vye for the affections of a baseball groupie.

Bull Durham is a fun movie. Every time I see an interview with a young player who recently got promoted from the minor leagues, I think about Crash teaching Nuke how to answer questions and then watching Nuke getting interviewed at the end, using the answers that Crash gave him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SB_LjL0lUJ4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZprAlFcQLA

And I love how Crash teaches him not to shake off his signs. :laugh:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBUS3vQtDCA

TONGO

07-28-24, 10:14 AM

Watching Mr. 3000 for the first time. Very light and predictable, it's no Bull Durham though lol

Mr Minio

07-28-24, 10:22 AM

Very well-written again. Simple words and sentences are used to articulate your points pitch-perfectly.

To think what you could achieve if you reviewed some of the world cinema masterpieces instead...

Also, I can't stop myself from commenting on baseball as the most religious of sports. Well, I agree because it's equally BS. :lol:

TONGO

07-28-24, 10:32 AM

matt72582

07-28-24, 10:35 AM

This thread already failed by the sheer fact of being about baseball.

And Yoda'll never review the only masterpiece film that is (partly) on baseball.

What is the title of this masterpiece?

Mr Minio

07-28-24, 11:36 AM

Oh. Mini. I didn't know I was renting space in your head. You keep on telling the world how you know better, one day we'll catch up ;)

Of course you do. I'm still thinking about Godzilla kicking your ass.

Mr Minio

07-28-24, 11:37 AM

What is the title of this masterpiece?

Youth

TONGO

07-30-24, 09:32 AM

Looking forward to the next one.
Hey, it's Monday. Back to work and again proper motivation to focus on this thread instead :)

Sedai

07-30-24, 10:56 AM

I...have never seen Bull Durham.

*Hangs head in shame*

TONGO

07-30-24, 11:19 AM

I...have never seen Bull Durham.

*Hangs head in shame*
It's more of a Rom-Com than a baseball movie. Now if you told me you'd never seen Moneyball....

Sedai

07-30-24, 11:21 AM

It's more of a Rom-Com than a baseball movie. Now if you told me you'd never seen Moneyball....

Multiple times, that one!

Whew!

Yoda

07-30-24, 11:44 AM

42 (2013)
3.5
In a sentence: The story of Jackie Robinson, the first black player in Major League Baseball.

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My favorite part of the Jackie Robinson story has always been how pragmatically it unfolded. It's the closest thing sports has to a fairy tale, and because of that it has a Hallmarkian quality, a Vaseline-smudged-on-the-lens feeling in its recounting. This is true of many historical events, but this one happened just late enough, and was just well-documented enough, that we can see the distinctions between the legend and the messy, realpolitik way it happened.

This was not the story of some perfect golden boy destined to break the color barrier. It's a story of calculation, anger, and steely resolve. We have a way of looking back on righteous causes as if they were inevitable, destined to succeed. We give D-Day the same treatment, but this operation, like that one, was the result of incessant planning and consideration.

-

The first thing to understand about breaking baseball's color barrier is this: good enough wasn't good enough. There were many Negro League players with the skill and talent to excel in the majors, and many more good enough to at least contribute. Unfortunately, we'll never know exactly how many. But most of them would've been poor candidates to become the first over the wall. Caesar's Wife must be beyond reproach, and the first black ballplayer in the majors must not only belong there on merit, but clearly belong there. He must be undeniably contributing to the team's chances of winning, and he must rise above the resistance he'll meet with grace and dignity.

All potentially legitimate objections must be eradicated, so that only the illegitimate remain. This is how you break barriers, by denying bigotry anything with which to cover itself. His being black must be the only thing people object to. It must be an isolated variable.

That's how you get Robinson. Tremendous fielder, great hitter, superb baserunner. And then all the things that aren't about baseball: a young man, about to be married. A veteran. Instances of civil disobedience...but not too much. Just enough to let them know he's a fighter, but the kind that can pull his punches.

-

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Oh, who's "them"? Among others, Branch Rickey. Most of the specifics of how this unfolded were not inevitable, could have been otherwise, but it's hard to imagine anyone other than Rickey orchestrating this. He was and is widely recognized as one of the shrewdest and gutsiest general managers in baseball history. The kind of guy that's smarter than others, and knows it.

He bonds with Robinson over the fact that they're both Methodists, a commonality which transcends their race and which he draws on for personal strength; to power his fiery rebuke of others, and to buttress Robinson in his darkest moments. A lesser, made-for-TV-style film would've made Rickey a footnote, but 42 is smarter than that. In the same way Robinson, as a player and person, had to be beyond reproach, only a general manager as respected and established as Rickey was in a position to finally do what needed to be done.

-

One thing 42 has to contend with is the formulaic nature of these things, sometimes from reality itself and sometimes made inevitable by the mere act of retelling. Even if you've never heard this story, you can probably imagine most of the beats. People will be mad and not want to give him a chance. He'll be good anyway. He'll suffer adversity. At least one opposing player or manager will goad him. Some of his teammates will shun him, others will rally around, and at least one will start in the former camp and end up in the latter, won over by his bravery and/or skill and/or status as the protagonist. And yeah, all that happens.

But a lot of it's just...what happened. There's one moment in particular (that I believe the film changed the sequencing of for narrative purposes) that seems made up, where star shortstop Pee Wee Reese (you've gotta love old-timey baseball names) comes out and stands next to Robinson on the field as he's met with boos. This, famously, actually took place, even though it seems contrived to the point of being emotionally manipulative. But that's the thing about stories, isn't it? To remind you that these things are possible. We've come full circle: amazing things happen, people tell stories about them, people keep telling stories to remind you they can happen again...and then they happen again, in part because the people responsible grew up on those stories.

42 doesn't break any new ground, even though 42 did. It is predictable and formulaic in the best way. Some kid is going to see this and persevere through something. Another kid is going to see it and realize how important it is to stand by people through their trials. And the cycle begins anew.

"Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."

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How's the Baseball?
Very good. Yes, we still have a child explaining to his mother why such-and-such happened. We still need surrogates like that explaining to the audience anything remotely subtle about the game, a surefire signal that the film has aspirations that its audience will expand well beyond fans. But it's rare, and it excellently represents the speed and violence of the game. Slides are dirty and hard. The ball whizzes into the batter's box, buzzes in on throws from the outfield. It flies off the bat. In the way a good racing film conveys the speed of the cars, 42 conveys the speed of the game. And how vulnerable you are standing in that batter's box.

Do They Win?
The question hardly makes sense in this context (what fool wrote it?), but: yes. The Dodgers win the pennant, Jackie Robinson perseveres and is honored, not just now, not just much later, but in shocking proximity to the tribulations he went through. He is inducted into the Hall of Fame, wins an award created essentially for him (Rookie of the Year), and is the only player in MLB history to have his number retired leaguewide.

It's a real life fairy tale, after all. You know how it ends. But behind the curtain there's rope and rigging and bags of sand, and stagehands scurrying around to support the man out on the stage, the one whose job it is to suffer slings and arrows and tomatoes. And that man has to be risking something, has to have an otherwise real future, put at risk by being out there. Looking the dragon in the eye, holding a sword he never uses.

Wooley

07-30-24, 11:57 AM

Bull Durham (1988)
3

What the F***?!!!

Miss Vicky

07-30-24, 12:25 PM

I really couldn't care less about baseball, yet a couple of my long time favorite movies are about it so I'll probably keep an eye on this thread for when they show.

So far the only movie you've reviewed that I've seen is Bull Durham, but it's been too long since I last saw it for me to comment much. About the only thing I remember is Tim Robbins in a garter belt.

Austruck

07-30-24, 12:35 PM

*vie

You're welcome. :D

Bull Durham (1988)
3
In a sentence: A career minor-league catcher and a hot shot young pitcher vye for the affections of a baseball groupie.

Yoda

07-30-24, 12:39 PM

What the F***?!!!
People hated my rating of The Natural, too, but the ratings themselves are judging these as Movies, not as Baseball Movies. How well they work as Baseball Movies is usually in the review proper.

One thing about Bull Durham is that it kinda peters out. Some of the scenes at the end go on way too long, and they do that weird 80s thing where all the love scenes are twice as long as necessary for some reason.

Yoda

07-30-24, 12:40 PM

I really couldn't care less about baseball, yet a couple of my long time favorite movies are about it so I'll probably keep an eye on this thread for when they show.
It'd be perfectly cool for you to list them, if you wanted. Lots of people in here already saying they hope such-and-such makes it.

Miss Vicky

07-30-24, 12:41 PM

It'd be perfectly cool for you to list them, if you wanted. Lots of people in here already saying they hope such-and-such makes it.

The two that leap to mind are The Sandlot and A League of Their Own.

Yoda

07-30-24, 12:44 PM

The two that leap to mind are The Sandlot and A League of Their Own.
Oh yeah, they're both making it. I've rewatched both already in preparation.

Takoma11

07-30-24, 01:36 PM

This is how you break barriers, by denying bigotry anything with which to cover itself.

The pressure that this puts on people attempting to break those barriers cannot be overstated. To know that you must be perfect where someone else----by virtue of some demographic element---can get away with mediocrity, is a weight I can't even imagine.

There are a lot of great books about Robinson's story, but I have one in my classroom called We Are the Ship that I think is really excellent. It's about the whole history of the Negro Leagues, and goes up through the 1940s.

Wooley

07-30-24, 02:47 PM

People hated my rating of The Natural, too, but the ratings themselves are judging these as Movies, not as Baseball Movies. How well they work as Baseball Movies is usually in the review proper.

One thing about Bull Durham is that it kinda peters out. Some of the scenes at the end go on way too long, and they do that weird 80s thing where all the love scenes are twice as long as necessary for some reason.

But that's my point. It is not only, arguably, the best Baseball Movie, it is also a very good movie about human beings. It is a good romance. It is a good comedy. It has actual depth to it, not just the name-checks of famous poets and philosophers but a certain examination of the conflict between aspiration and real-life. I consider it to be a film that speaks more deeply than something like Field Of Dreams (which I do love for what that movie is) about life itself. Real life, the life most people actually have to live.

Yoda

07-30-24, 06:08 PM

But that's my point. It is not only, arguably, the best Baseball Movie, it is also a very good movie about human beings. It is a good romance. It is a good comedy. It has actual depth to it, not just the name-checks of famous poets and philosophers but a certain examination of the conflict between aspiration and real-life. I consider it to be a film that speaks more deeply than something like Field Of Dreams (which I do love for what that movie is) about life itself. Real life, the life most people actually have to live.
Serious question: are you reacting to the review, or just the rating? I wonder if I should dispense with ratings altogether, now that I think about it, regardless of your answer.

Anyway, Bull Durham has plenty to recommend it, and I detailed a lot of it in the review. The grittiness, the way it shines a light on the underbelly of the minor leagues, or at least the way they were at the time. But as a movie I think it drags, and I don't find it as funny as most. I more appreciate the jokes than I actually laugh at them. Probably because there's a lot of outrageousness-as-humor, which doesn't usually land with me.

But I can tell I've stumbled on a superfan, given that you're aghast at me giving it only an above-average rating. ;)

TONGO

07-30-24, 06:54 PM

Always do the ratings. We must or we will become soft. If we can't handle such a trivial disagreement then just burn this mutha to the ground.

Yoda

07-30-24, 07:37 PM

I think everyone can handle it, it's more just about whether they use them as a replacement for the review itself. They're relatively unimportant in the broad scheme of things.

seanc

07-31-24, 10:13 AM

On the same page again with 42. It’s overly melodramatic, but it’s the kind of melodrama I enjoy. If it had came out when I was in my teens it probably would have been a favorite. The scene you described with Pee Wee was the one i was going to bring up as well. It encompasses the movie really well. It gets to me despite my brain knowing I am being manipulated. I have a soft spot whenever that actor pops up too, because of my love for Sling Blade.

Holden Pike

07-31-24, 10:46 AM

My Top 9 Baseball Movies:

1. Eight Men Out (1988)
2. Bull Durham (1988)
3. Sugar (2008)
4. The Bad News Bears (1976)
5. Moneyball (2011)
6. Field of Dreams (1989)
7. A League of Their Own (1992)
8. The Natural (1984)
9. The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings (1976)

seanc

07-31-24, 10:57 AM

Wooley

07-31-24, 11:56 AM

Serious question: are you reacting to the review, or just the rating? I wonder if I should dispense with ratings altogether, now that I think about it, regardless of your answer.

Anyway, Bull Durham has plenty to recommend it, and I detailed a lot of it in the review. The grittiness, the way it shines a light on the underbelly of the minor leagues, or at least the way they were at the time. But as a movie I think it drags, and I don't find it as funny as most. I more appreciate the jokes than I actually laugh at them. Probably because there's a lot of outrageousness-as-humor, which doesn't usually land with me.

But I can tell I've stumbled on a superfan, given that you're aghast at me giving it only an above-average rating. ;)

Both. I will concede that review seems far more positive than your rating but I took that as a reflection that you were being kind because ultimately you felt it was merely a 3-star film, on the same level, apparently, as Jackass 3D and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. So yes, I am reacting to that somewhat.

And yes, I (and everyone I know in real life) consider it a Timeless Classic. Hence my surprise.
Maybe it's a generational thing.

Yoda

07-31-24, 12:05 PM

Both. I will concede that review seems far more positive than your rating but I took that as a reflection that you were being kind because ultimately you felt it was merely a 3-star film, on the same level, apparently, as Jackass 3D and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. So yes, I am reacting to that somewhat.
I might be a little idiosyncratic here, but I don't think of ratings as summaries of reviews. I think of them as another measure entirely. Specifically, I try to rate things based on how well they achieve what they're trying to achieve, and only deviate from that in exceptional circumstances. In a vacuum Bull Durham is a much better movie than Jackass 3D, but whether it's a better version of itself is tougher to say.

And yes, I (and everyone I know in real life) consider it a Timeless Classic. Hence my surprise.
Maybe it's a generational thing.
I think that's a pretty good guess. I "found" it quite late, after having seen lots of other baseball movies. For example, I'd probably seen Major League (which obviously owes it quite a debt) a dozen times before I ever saw Bull Durham, which is one of the reasons I led with the bit about influential films and how we see the things they influenced before we see the source. To me Major League was just as fresh, in the baseball-but-for-grown-ups sense, because I'd never seen a movie like that before. And I find it funnier and more moving. Would I still find it as fresh and delightful, comparatively, if I'd seen the films chronologically? I'll never know.

seanc

07-31-24, 12:06 PM

ultimately you felt it was merely a 3-star film, on the same level, apparently, as Jackass 3D and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. .

I love doing star ratings because they are a nice barometer, but this sentence right here is why I sometimes think I want to do away with them. There are lots of factors that go into rating a movie. Sometimes you appreciate them on a craft level, sometimes on an entertainment level, sometimes on a thematic level. The ones that hit all those sweet spots are the ones we usually give 5’s to.

I say that to say every time I give out a 3, it doesn’t mean that I think it’s the same exact movie as every 3 I have given out. It’s how it hits me at the time I am watching it. I think most people HAVE to approach it this way, even if they don’t realize it. It’s inevitable when you have thousands of movies doing multiple different things, even within the same movie, and we have 10 different ratings in a 5 star system.

Plus, you shouldn’t have brought up 1 star movies as your example as 3s. So there’s that.

Citizen Rules

07-31-24, 12:45 PM

I haven't seen any of these well known baseball movies. Actually I've never even seen a baseball game:shifty: So I can't really comment on Yoda's ratings directly but I do have a question for Yoda. Is a rating_3 an average movie or above average in your mind? I ask because I think us MoFos sometimes view the popcorn ratings differently than the next person.

Holden Pike

07-31-24, 01:07 PM

Yoda

07-31-24, 01:22 PM

So it goes. Nobody experiences cinema chronologically. And if something comes along that iterates on someone else's innovation, you may well like it more. And yeah, I find it much funnier, freshness aside.

Yoda

07-31-24, 01:24 PM

I haven't seen any of these well known baseball movies. Actually I've never even seen a baseball game:shifty:
what!

So I can't really comment on Yoda's ratings directly but I do have a question for Yoda. Is a rating_3 an average movie or above average in your mind? I ask because I think us MoFos sometimes view the popcorn ratings differently than the next person.
Oh yeah, there's also that, about how ratings don't just mean different things to different people, but even the numbers themselves translate differently even aside from the thing being measured.

I'm sure I do this imperfectly, but generally I think of it in perfectly straightforward terms: 2.5 is average.

Citizen Rules

07-31-24, 01:34 PM

...I think of it in perfectly straightforward terms: rating_2_5 is average.That was MarkF's philosophy on rating movies (I believe). I know it seemed like he rated movies he liked low, but 2.5 was the mid mark between 0-5 so an average film. There's no right or wrong way of course, but I think other MoFos including myself consider a 3 average as they don't use or consider a 0 rating as legit. Anyway, what I'm getting at is your 3 rating is equal to many of our 3.5 ratings so your rating might seem low but isn't. Hope that makes sense:p

Yoda

07-31-24, 01:40 PM

That makes sense, yeah.

It feels like most people rate films as if they know the filmmakers, or the people involved might read the review, and sort of nudge it higher. We've got almost 40,000 ratings in the database, for example, and the average is just under 3.5. Granted, there's probably some selection bias in that people tend to rate films they like more than ones they don't, but I don't think that explains all of it. I think people's center of gravity on ratings is probably closer to 3.

Yoda

07-31-24, 01:49 PM

A League of Their Own (1992)

In a sentence: Two sisters join a women's baseball league that springs up to compensate for the young men off fighting World War 2.

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Baseball is a distraction.

All sports and games are distractions, but baseball is particularly well-suited to the task. For one, it's complicated. This is easy to forget if you grew up watching it. I played softball with a man from Trinidad a few years ago, who had never played before, and it wasn't until I tried to explain the rules, exceptions, and edge cases around baserunning to him that I realized just how strange and unguessable so much of it is. Baseball requires focus and physical precision, but cannot be brute forced like some other sports. It has neither the simplicity of soccer or the intuitiveness of basketball. It is not fully a game of strength or finesse. It is incredibly contrived and can only be played in ideal conditions.

Never is baseball's role as distraction more obvious than in times of turmoil. Its long history, its day-in, day-out nature, it's constant thereness, make it like a friend who talks you down, takes you out somewhere to forget your troubles. Who does this lonely nation turn its eyes to, but Joe DiMaggio?

It's in times of crisis that things like this can be the most valuable. During World War 2, baseball continued, but some of its greatest players were gone. There was a void, a need for something fun, energetic, and fresh. And that something was the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. A league filled with women. Women left at home while the fate of the world was being decided, women cutting back or contributing in other ways, women trying to get through the day like everyone else who stayed behind. Some of them living in constant fear that any day a man with a letter and a flag would cut their life in half.

-

If you've seen this film you're probably wondering what on earth I'm talking about, because none of the above conveys what A League of Their Own feels like. It is not full of dread and despair, but of hope and humor. It, like the game it depicts, walks right up to those fears and sits right next to it, and then monopolizes the conversation. But the fear is always there, interrupting us between innings.

Dottie and Kit work on a farm. They play amateur baseball. Dottie is the older of the two, and married. Her husband is overseas. Kit is younger. She is single. She is hungry, antsy, dissatisfied. And, eventually, resentful, when a talent scout for the new women's league recruits her sister but not her. Dottie can take it or leave it, but Kit wants it desperately, and gets to come along for the ride. And this act of kindness, like so many acts of kindness, builds resentment rather than thankfulness.

Fans of any subgenre of film come to know its conventions well, and our eyes glaze over when they end up on rails, like with the obligatory romantic subplots, or the standard tribulations, or team infighting, or a hundred other clichés. A League of Their Own never does this. Every scene has something interesting, something funny, some little treat of expression or dialogue. The jokes are alternatingly silly and witty, and the performances are top notch. Absolutely nothing is wasted. In a lesser version of itself, the scout who discovers the girls (Jon Lovitz) would just be some guy, just some mouthpiece barking out the Call to Action to get things moving. Instead, he's oozing with personality.

100126

This comparison might surprise people, but the vibe I get here is similar to Soderbergh's Ocean's 11 remake. There's a feeling of mastery, a feeling that this was easy for the people involved. Everyone feels overqualified. The role of Jimmy Dugan, former player and now manager in this startup league, is a significant one, but you don't need Tom freakin' Hanks to make it work. And when you cast Tom freakin' Hanks anyway, you elevate the character. As good as "there's no crying in baseball!" is, there's no way that becomes the most quoted line in the history of baseball movies without him. Rosie O'Donnell and Madonna in secondary roles? Ann Cusack with, like, three lines? Tea Leoni as a glorified extra?

There was a restaurant near where I live a few years ago that served elevated comfort food. You know the kind: perfect chicken pot pies that cost $20. That's what this felt like. Penny Marshall is a Michelin-level chef crafting the Platonic ideal of a fast food cheeseburger.

How's the Baseball?
Good for what it is. It would be weird and unnatural, given the premise, to make the game action especially fast or violent. And part of the point of all this is that we experience sports relatively: if you're up in the bottom of the 9th, it doesn't matter that you're playing Little League. All sports, all games, are the drawing of arbitrary lines to try to measure something undefinable. Little compartments cordoned off from the rest of the world, trying to capture an ineffable something as purely as we can.

All sports have that in their nature, but baseball doubles down on it. It adds to it the fleeting promise of summer, the jubilation of the solstice and the immediate melancholy of the coming equinox. Please, just one more game. Just one more inning. Just one more at bat before it gets dark. And there was a time where even the highest heights of the game reflected this. Wrigley Field, where the tryouts in this film were shot, was the last Major League park to add lights...in 1988. They played nothing but day games for 74 years. Every game full of grownups racing the setting sun to the last inning, like kids playing in the street.

And that was even more true of this league, something everybody knew couldn't last, just a bridge before things could get back to the way they were. And Jimmy says this to Dottie; after her husband is discharged, she readies to leave, and he tells her something she already knows: this chance isn't going to come again. If you don't take it you'll regret it forever. If you don't play ball in the summer you'll rue it in the fall. The AAGPBL was, within this summer sport, a little summer of its own, an ephemeral league based around an ephemeral game, a day in the sun to distract us from the winter of the war.

Do They Win?
Trick question: Kit is traded midseason and they play each other, so one of them is bound to win. But our entry point is the Peaches; we don't really know the girls on Kit's new team, and "they," meaning the team we've been following, do not win. Kit gets the game-winning hit, bowling over her sister Dottie, who drops the ball. And to the film's credit, there is no contrived ambiguity about whether she meant to, though some people insist she did.

To my mind, she lost fair and square. The way we know this is because Kit finally hits the high pitch, the one she couldn't hit and couldn't lay off. Of course we expect that she'll finally grow up, listen to her sister, stop being so stubborn, and wait for a better pitch. Instead, her stubbornness pays off. It has to, because that's who she is: Dottie is the smart one, the strategic one, the one who can take or leave the game and approach it dispassionately. Kit gets by on sheer determination, and this is reflected in her triumph. It's a validation of their differences, rather than a capitulation or a compromise. It is a very surprising and interesting choice, and one of several indicators of this film's thoughtfulness.

-

There are a few things about this film that I keep thinking about.

The first is struggle between the game and the backdrop of reality. I have a tendency to overthink things, so when I have a strong emotional reaction to anything, I think about why. And one of the reasons I love baseball is that it short circuits this. It takes over my mind. I'll go into a game worried sick about something and, while I'm playing, completely forget it. This is so rare and valuable and lovely to me that it's always a shock when it comes rushing back into my mind. In the way someone might use a substance to forget or distract themselves, baseball is a drug that quiets my mind, a mix of strategy and translation into physical movement that fills both hemispheres to the brim and allows me to live in the moment. But it's only a reprieve. When I was younger I thought the scene where one of the players learns of her husband's death in the war was dissonant, but now that I'm older I appreciate its necessity.

100129

The other is the gulf between the sisters. Dottie's easy talent and grace contrasted with Kit's high-effort frustration. The two types of players: the natural, and the grinder. Preternatural feel against sheer will. The ballerina and the break dancer. And this extends to everything: Dottie is the prettier one, the content one, the one who needs the game less than the game needs her. Kit has nothing else, and needs nothing more.

At the highest heights of baseball, you mostly find people who are both: insane natural talents and winners of a genetic lottery who nonetheless work as if they had no natural advantages at all. That's where you find excellence at the highest level. But below that level, in the minors, or in Little League, or in the AAGPBL, you have a mix of genius and grit. It's a level low enough that not everyone is gifted, and not everyone is going all out, a melting pot that contains the most diverse set of experiences with the game. Where wildly different people can come together in the same place, in that little box of baseball, roped off from the rest of reality.

Why is there no crying in baseball? Because there'll be plenty of that when the game ends.

Thief

07-31-24, 02:11 PM

Eight Men Out was a favorite of mine as a teen. I rewatched it a couple years ago for the first time in probably twenty years and it didn’t exactly hold up for me. I still liked it but was definitely disappointed it didn’t hit as hard as I remembered. Good shout out. Hopefully Yoda will review it.

That's another one I've seen a couple of times. It's been a while but I remember liking it.

Re: 42, I saw it several years ago and I remember not being that big on it. Have it rated at 2/5, but I would have to dig up my exact thoughts on it. Don't remember a lot of specifics.

seanc

07-31-24, 02:19 PM

Another great review of an awesome movie. I’m loving the personal touches you are bringing to these. I rewatched it last year, it had been a minute, and I was concerned about it holding up. It certainly did for me. There’s a handful of movies that when brought up I instantly think of 3 or 4 individual scenes that just bring a smile to my face. LOTO has that kind of nostalgia hit for me.

Your anecdote at the beginning of explaining the game to someone who has never watched it resonated so much. When I was in HS I always worked at camps in the summer. Usually we had some other counselors who were from overseas. One year on a long weekend break a bunch of us went to Yankee Stadium. There were about 5 people from England with us who had absolutely no idea how baseball worked. That night was a revelation on how baffling and difficult baseball is from a point of view that didn’t grow up with. Just explaining when force outs don’t happen is a chore. It’s interesting.

Mr Minio

07-31-24, 02:27 PM

I might be a little idiosyncratic here, but I don't think of ratings as summaries of reviews. I think of them as another measure entirely. Specifically, I try to rate things based on how well they achieve what they're trying to achieve, and only deviate from that in exceptional circumstances. In a vacuum Bull Durham is a much better movie than Jackass 3D, but whether it's a better version of itself is tougher to say. So, if I may ask, you believe that all genres are created equal, and even if not then a musical that possibly couldn't be better is a 10/10 just like a psychological drama that couldn't be better is a 10/10 even though one can be way superior to the other in your view? Also, do you do this "couldn't be better" for just genres or more than that? I imagine more than that. One problem I see with this is thinking a film couldn't possibly be any better but still thinking it was bad for what it was. In such a case you're giving a 10/10 to a film you effectively dislike. Say, "could this brutal movie I think is violence porn could be any better?". No, because if it weren't as brutal, it wouldn't be a Splatter film, but as far as Splatter films go, this is a 10/10, even though I hated it.

Sometimes you appreciate them on a craft level, sometimes on an entertainment level, sometimes on a thematic level. The ones that hit all those sweet spots are the ones we usually give 5’s to. You mean you give a 5 to films that you appreciate on the craft level, entertainment level, and thematic level all at once?

I say that to say every time I give out a 3, it doesn’t mean that I think it’s the same exact movie as every 3 I have given out. I don't think it's the exact same movie as every 3 I have given out, but I think it's a movie with a similar quality as every 3 I have given out. Every 3/5 film for me is inferior to every 3.5/5 film and superior to every 2.5/5 film. Not all 3/5 films are equal, but to discern that I'd have to include more possibilities like 3.55 is better than 3.54, but that's confusing, and I'm not sure I really want this level of detail.

Nobody experiences cinema chronologically. You clearly never heard of PUNQ.

Yoda

07-31-24, 02:36 PM

So, if I may ask, you believe that all genres are created equal, and even if not then a musical that possibly couldn't be better is a 10/10 just like a psychological drama that couldn't be better is a 10/10 even though one can be way superior to the other in your view?
Yes. In short, my ratings are usually for the film itself and not necessarily comparable to any other rating. That said, most films have similar enough aims that I use them to calibrate each other. Jackass 3D is an extreme example because it's really not comparable to much else.

Also, do you do this "couldn't be better" for just genres or more than that? I imagine more than that. One problem I see with this is thinking a film couldn't possibly be any better but still thinking it was bad for what it was.
Aye. I did/do leave myself some wiggle room here in mentioning exceptional circumstances. If something achieves its goal, but its goal is abjectly stupid or ridiculous, or incredibly dull, I'll take that into consideration. But that's pretty rare, most films fall into that big fat middle distribution where their goals are reasonable enough and high end to rate well if they achieve them.

Is this highly subjective? Of course. But I find the idea of rating films at all to be tremendously flawed no matter how we go about it, and the most rigorous examples of how to do it (as a curve based on everything you've ever seen) would require an untenable amount of revisiting and reevaluating. This is just my idea of the least bad way to go about it. It's what I imagine is most useful.

One thing I like about this approach is that it gives me a lot of leeway to give higher ratings to interesting failures.

Yoda

07-31-24, 02:39 PM

Sean has noticed something that I imagine most of you are noticing, too: I have tricked you. I have tricked you all into reading things that are maybe 40% movie reviews and 60% waxing poetic about baseball.

I’m loving the personal touches you are bringing to these.
In some cases I'm specifically choosing films because of those personal connections. Or films that, even if they're not good, even if nobody would ever ask for them, they capture a specific side of baseball that other films haven't. My hope is that, by the end of this, we'll be able to see the whole elephant, as it were.

I rewatched it last year, it had been a minute, and I was concerned about it holding up. It certainly did for me. There’s a handful of movies that when brought up I instantly think of 3 or 4 individual scenes that just bring a smile to my face. LOTO has that kind of nostalgia hit for me.
Yeah, there's really no substitute for those, the ones that hit you at the right age and/or level of experience, with baseball, movies, or both. And baseball has a whole preexisting heritage it brings with it, that, if it happens to connect with you, comes flooding back along with it every time.

Your anecdote at the beginning of explaining the game to someone who has never watched it resonated so much. When I was in HS I always worked at camps in the summer. Usually we had some other counselors who were from overseas. One year on a long weekend break a bunch of us went to Yankee Stadium. There were about 5 people from England with us who had absolutely no idea how baseball worked. That night was a revelation on how baffling and difficult baseball is from a point of view that didn’t grow up with. Just explaining when force outs don’t happen is a chore. It’s interesting.
Definitely. And there's something in those idiosyncrasies, in the way baseball is taught, tutored, inherited, that I'll be writing about before long in something "between" reviews that connects a few of them together.

TONGO

07-31-24, 02:59 PM

Where's the rating for A League of their Own? Please give a rating.

Yoda

07-31-24, 03:15 PM

:laugh:

It'd either be 4 or 4.5.

Wyldesyde19

07-31-24, 03:52 PM

You clearly never heard of PUNQ.

Almost everybody serious about films that has a Letterboxd account knows about PUNQ. That man has almost reached Mark F levels of movie watching.

KeyserCorleone

07-31-24, 04:53 PM

Almost everybody serious about films that has a Letterboxd account knows about PUNQ. That man has almost reached Mark F levels of movie watching.

Now there's a man who can watch three movies at once. Most I've ever successfully done is two.

Mr Minio

07-31-24, 05:50 PM

Now there's a man who can watch three movies at once. Most I've ever successfully done is two. My response to Yoda was a half-joke because PUNQ logs new films, too.

Apparently, the guy has admitted that many of the films he watches are just playing in the background while he does chores/work. Another cheater if true. :(

KeyserCorleone

07-31-24, 05:54 PM

My response to Yoda was a half-joke because PUNQ logs new films, too.

Apparently, the guy has admitted that many of the films he watches are just playing in the background while he does chores/work. Another cheater if true. :(

I sometimes write when I watch a movie, but when I'm doing chores that's album time and not movie time. I mean, I'm watching a war scene in The Norseman (1978) right now, and I'm still putting together some good thoughts on it.

Yoda

07-31-24, 06:12 PM

I've half-watched films or watched them in the background, but a) it's very rare and b) it's pretty much exclusively films I would otherwise never watch.

Mr Minio

07-31-24, 06:13 PM

I sometimes write when I watch a movie, but when I'm doing chores that's album time and not movie time. I mean, I'm watching a war scene in The Norseman (1978) right now, and I'm still putting together some good thoughts on it.

Yeah, that's cheating. But at least you're not pretending you beat the World Record for most films watched in a year as PUNQ does.

I've half-watched films or watched them in the background, but a) it's very rare and b) it's pretty much exclusively films I would otherwise never watch. a) is good b) means you shouldn't watch them at all. Why even do it if you wouldn't anyway?

Yoda

07-31-24, 06:15 PM

a) is good b) means you shouldn't watch them at all. Why even do it if you wouldn't anyway?
The answer to b) is case-by-case, but usually it's because I simply want to know or understand some discrete thing about the film. Kind of like looking something up in a textbook rather than reading it cover to cover.

I would not generally pretend I had really watched it after this. I don't usually, for example, rate or review it or anything like that.

Don't wanna get too far into abstract viewing discussions though, so if anyone wants to continue we should spin this off into another thread.

KeyserCorleone

07-31-24, 06:15 PM

Yeah, that's cheating. But at least you're not pretending you beat the World Record for most films watched in a year as PUNQ does.

I hope Yoda is not cheating. :eek:

It's not cheating if I can absorb the movie while doing other things. My face is still facing the screen at all times. My autism allows me to focus on multiple things at once if I do it right, and if I do miss something I can just rewind. On top of this, I had a lot of practice with it. So no, I don't count it if I don't focus, but if I have two eyes I can use one each for two purposes.

Wooley

07-31-24, 06:35 PM

I think that's a pretty good guess. I "found" it quite late, after having seen lots of other baseball movies. For example, I'd probably seen Major League (which obviously owes it quite a debt) a dozen times before I ever saw Bull Durham, which is one of the reasons I led with the bit about influential films and how we see the things they influenced before we see the source. To me Major League was just as fresh, in the baseball-but-for-grown-ups sense, because I'd never seen a movie like that before. And I find it funnier and more moving. Would I still find it as fresh and delightful, comparatively, if I'd seen the films chronologically? I'll never know.

I saw Bull Durham in the theater, then about 25 times on cable and then god knows how many times on VHS. In my cohort, if we weren't watching Bull Durham, and we didn't feel like specifically doing something else, we could always just watch Bull Durham. I mean, it is a perfect film that makes us laugh and think and laugh a little more and of course, feel some melancholy that we don't quite yet understand but we do understand is in our future and we largely understand that because we watched Bull Durham. To me, and my people, it is a wise film. It is a film that has a lot to teach. Especially to a young man. You can be tough and still dance. You can be great but still have a lot to learn. You can have it all figured out and still be wrong. So much good stuff. But it is also fun. I mean, my love of early Rhythm and Blues music comes from hearing "Sixty-minute Man" in Bull Durham and I decided to go from being a Nuke to being a Crash as a young man because of this movie.
I say all this because another movie that we could always put on was Major League, which I know every word of. For fun alone, I can hardly imagine a movie we wore out more. But we never had any illusions about which of those two films was a "better movie". That was always obvious.

Wooley

07-31-24, 06:38 PM

:laugh:

It'd either be 4 or 4.5.

Hm. I think of ALotO as a 3-3.5 if I ever saw one. Never understood the love for this movie though not that many people loved it when it came out, at least among the people I knew. I liked Gina Davis and Lori Petty a lot and was really pulling for this and felt very disappointed. Not bad at all, some good stuff, but just kinda dull overall with nowhere to go.
And, obviously, nowhere near as good as Bull Durham.

seanc

07-31-24, 06:54 PM

You mean you give a 5 to films that you appreciate on the craft level, entertainment level, and thematic level all at once?

I don't think it's the exact same movie as every 3 I have given out, but I think it's a movie with a similar quality as every 3 I have given out. Every 3/5 film for me is inferior to every 3.5/5 film and superior to every 2.5/5 film. Not all 3/5 films are equal, but to discern that I'd have to include more possibilities like 3.55 is better than 3.54, but that's confusing, and I'm not sure I really want this level of detail.

I want all my 5’s to reflect that. I’m sure sometimes they don’t. I think that’s also kind of the point.

I mean, good for you on the ratings, but I doubt most people have it down that cold.

Wyldesyde19

07-31-24, 07:01 PM

My response to Yoda was a half-joke because PUNQ logs new films, too.

Apparently, the guy has admitted that many of the films he watches are just playing in the background while he does chores/work. Another cheater if true. :(

That’s disappointing that he doesn’t really watch them. I don’t see how he can can get anything out them if he’s not properly paying attention to them.
To each their own, I suppose

KeyserCorleone

07-31-24, 07:03 PM

You mean you give a 5 to films that you appreciate on the craft level, entertainment level, and thematic level all at once?

Well, yeah.

Yoda

07-31-24, 07:04 PM

To me, and my people, it is a wise film. It is a film that has a lot to teach. Especially to a young man. You can be tough and still dance. You can be great but still have a lot to learn. You can have it all figured out and still be wrong. So much good stuff. But it is also fun. I mean, my love of early Rhythm and Blues music comes from hearing "Sixty-minute Man" in Bull Durham and I decided to go from being a Nuke to being a Crash as a young man because of this movie.
First, I just wanna say I love the phrase "and my people" here, as if the lovers of this film are so dedicated to it that they constitute something akin to a race.

Second, all the rest of that makes sense. I think it's related to what seanc and I were just talking about, about how certain films (particularly certain baseball films, for our people i.e. baseball fans) just become emblematic of some formative stage of life, and a lot of it's down to when you see them. When I get to The Sandlot I'm sure a few people will be horrendously confused about why I seem to love it so much, and it's for exactly that sort of reason: it's what I needed to hear, when I needed to hear it.

I say all this because another movie that we could always put on was Major League, which I know every word of. For fun alone, I can hardly imagine a movie we wore out more. But we never had any illusions about which of those two films was a "better movie". That was always obvious.
I'd probably concede that Bull Durham is better made, and it certainly has loftier ambitions. I'm kind of a softie for "modest ambitions done extremely well." And I did see Major League first, so it was my introduction to the idea of baseball as something for grown-ups, baseball as a business, all that.

Yoda

07-31-24, 07:05 PM

Hm. I think of ALotO as a 3-3.5 if I ever saw one.
Surely we don't need to try to reconcile a half-star difference?

Never understood the love for this movie though not that many people loved it when it came out, at least among the people I knew. I liked Gina Davis and Lori Petty a lot and was really pulling for this and felt very disappointed. Not bad at all, some good stuff, but just kinda dull overall with nowhere to go.
And, obviously, nowhere near as good as Bull Durham.
Best explanation I can offer is that the writing's really good, genuinely funny, and it doesn't really waste any time. Barring the few parts that need to be dramatic or serious, every single scene is fun. That's why I love it, at least.

Wooley

07-31-24, 08:20 PM

First, I just wanna say I love the phrase "and my people" here, as if the lovers of this film are so dedicated to it that they constitute something akin to a race.

Second, all the rest of that makes sense. I think it's related to what seanc and I were just talking about, about how certain films (particularly certain baseball films, for our people i.e. baseball fans) just become emblematic of some formative stage of life, and a lot of it's down to when you see them. When I get to The Sandlot I'm sure a few people will be horrendously confused about why I seem to love it so much, and it's for exactly that sort of reason: it's what I needed to hear, when I needed to hear it.

I'd probably concede that Bull Durham is better made, and it certainly has loftier ambitions. I'm kind of a softie for "modest ambitions done extremely well." And I did see Major League first, so it was my introduction to the idea of baseball as something for grown-ups, baseball as a business, all that.

Heh. I meant "my people" as in my IRL friends, not The Bull Durham Fan Club.
To be clear, while I do love the movie and feel strongly that it should be highly regarded, my tone is light. (Sometimes it's hard to tell in print.) It's a fun discussion to have and this is a good thread I'm glad you made.
But I won't lie to you, I f*cking hate The Sandlot.

Wooley

07-31-24, 08:54 PM

I love doing star ratings because they are a nice barometer, but this sentence right here is why I sometimes think I want to do away with them. There are lots of factors that go into rating a movie. Sometimes you appreciate them on a craft level, sometimes on an entertainment level, sometimes on a thematic level. The ones that hit all those sweet spots are the ones we usually give 5’s to.

I say that to say every time I give out a 3, it doesn’t mean that I think it’s the same exact movie as every 3 I have given out. It’s how it hits me at the time I am watching it. I think most people HAVE to approach it this way, even if they don’t realize it. It’s inevitable when you have thousands of movies doing multiple different things, even within the same movie, and we have 10 different ratings in a 5 star system.

Plus, you shouldn’t have brought up 1 star movies as your example as 3s. So there’s that.

Yes, I was really using this to razz Yoda for not liking a beloved movie of mine more. I largely agree on stars and it's the main reason I have done so few "Reviews" here even though I've "written-up" so many films. A movie that is a perfect example of a low-budget slasher is, in its way, a 5-star film. But how do I do that when I only give Goodfellas 4?

seanc

07-31-24, 09:23 PM

Maybe I should watch The Sandlot before it shows up. It’s one of those movies that is so in the zeitgeist that it feels like I have seen it but I actually never have. I was the exact wrong age to care when it came out. I would have been 17. I was way too cool for The Sandlot. ;)

LAMb EELYAK

07-31-24, 10:12 PM

Sean has noticed something that I imagine most of you are noticing, too: I have tricked you. I have tricked you all into reading things that are maybe 40% movie reviews and 60% waxing poetic about baseball.

Which is good, because as much as I might roll my eyes at many attempts at baseball poetry (or baseball movies for that matter), you have a tendency to perfectly express my thoughts, whether they've occurred to me or not. One great line among many:

Its long history, its day-in, day-out nature, it's constant thereness, make it like a friend who talks you down, takes you out somewhere to forget your troubles.

(Until your team gives up ten runs in the first inning; then you're really ticked off.)

Yoda

07-31-24, 11:10 PM

Heh. I meant "my people" as in my IRL friends, not The Bull Durham Fan Club.
I figured, I just love the phrase there. "This film is sacred to my people."

To be clear, while I do love the movie and feel strongly that it should be highly regarded, my tone is light. (Sometimes it's hard to tell in print.) It's a fun discussion to have and this is a good thread I'm glad you made.
This was my guess, but it's nice to know for sure. :up: I appreciate all these responses, too. I like talking about this stuff a lot, so I'm happy for any dialogue about baseball or baseball movies, even if it is jokingly antagonistic or is about how wrong I am.

But I won't lie to you, I f*cking hate The Sandlot.
Well, buckle up. That one's coming before long.

Yoda

07-31-24, 11:15 PM

Which is good, because as much as I might roll my eyes at many attempts at baseball poetry (or baseball movies for that matter), you have a tendency to perfectly express my thoughts, whether they've occurred to me or not.
That's very nice of you, thank you. I think one of the reasons I like baseball is related to the reasons I like weddings and funerals: they're topics on which it is appropriate to be dramatic, to be a little purple, to be unabashedly sentimental. I like just saying what I want to say and not worrying if it'll come off as cloying or over the top.

(Until your team gives up ten runs in the first inning; then you're really ticked off.)
At some point I'll definitely try to pick a film to represent baseball's many frustrations, too.

I was actually going to tell a little story related to this, but honestly, it's so good I should save it for the appropriate time in one of these reviews.

LAMb EELYAK

07-31-24, 11:47 PM

I think one of the reasons I like baseball is related to the reasons I like weddings and funerals: they're topics on which it is appropriate to be dramatic, to be a little purple, to be unabashedly sentimental. I like just saying what I want to say and not worrying if it'll come off as cloying or over the top.

Absolutely, I just think people try to force it sometimes because they feel like they're supposed to look at the game that way. "Roll my eyes" is probably an exaggeration of my reaction to those times, and it might be completely made up on my end.

skizzerflake

08-01-24, 12:04 AM

I don't go to many games, but I always enjoy them when I do. The O's play in a terrific stadium in Baltimore and it's a nice place to have a nearby dinner along with a game. I can ride the train from my house to the stadium. I'm not a big fan, but I do enjoy games on warm summer nights.

Baseball movies often seem best when they appeal to the idea/myth that baseball is a metaphor for aspiring to all that's good and holy in America. It has to seem like centerfield aspirations are all that counts in life and that a home run is a nearly mystical event. They only work without a hint of cynicism.

Takoma11

08-01-24, 12:45 AM

When I was younger I thought the scene where one of the players learns of her husband's death in the war was dissonant, but now that I'm older I appreciate its necessity.

This scene hits so hard, every time. One of my main memories of this film is that no matter how many times I'd watch it or re-watch it with other people, we would always hold our breath at this scene like we didn't know who was going to receive that telegram.

Dottie is the prettier one, the content one, the one who needs the game less than the game needs her. Kit has nothing else, and needs nothing more.

I cannot think of a single other movie about a woman or women playing sports from the 80s or 90s where there was a character who just loved the game. Kit's character arc is all about, as you say, harnessing her stubbornness to push herself to greatness. As a multi-sport athlete in middle and high school, this movie was incredibly popular among my teammates. There's nothing wrong with movies that have romantic subplots, but a movie grounded in a complicated sibling relationship AND sports AND woman-centered was a new species. Also, at the time that this movie came out, the women athletes getting the most attention were petite gymnasts and figure skaters, so Marla Hooch was low-key an icon. Like maybe you could just be really strong and capable and excel at a sport that didn't require wearing eyeshadow.

Sidenote: have we all seen the Capital One commercial where Jennifer Garner inexplicably botches the line "There's no crying in baseball"?, pronouncing the final word baseBALL, as if she's not only not seen A League of Their Own, but maybe never heard nor spoken the word "baseball" before?

Mr Minio

08-01-24, 03:59 AM

It's not cheating if I can absorb the movie while doing other things. My face is still facing the screen at all times. My autism allows me to focus on multiple things at once if I do it right, and if I do miss something I can just rewind. On top of this, I had a lot of practice with it. So no, I don't count it if I don't focus, but if I have two eyes I can use one each for two purposes. Eh, it is cheating. You can 'absorb' it, but you can't experience it the same way you would if you gave it your full, unadulterated attention. The film's atmosphere is taking a huge blow because of this. It's impossible to get engaged and mesmerized at the same level when you half-watch a film. This is tricky because people think that if they can get the gist of it and follow along, there's no difference between watching and half-watching a film, but there's a huge difference.

You could technically say that half-watching is similar to watching films when tired, but I believe these are two different things. I think that intention matters a lot, and somebody who's tired and misses details in a film usually doesn't intend to miss them. They miss them due to their state they're not necessarily responsible for. Of course, if you're tired, it's better to go to sleep, but sometimes you become tired in the middle of the film and you'd rather finish it in this state than finish it the next day. Starting to watch a film with the intent of half-watching it while working or doing chores means you're more responsible and more at fault.

It's like falling asleep behind the wheel because you started feeling lightheaded during a ride versus because you sat behind the wheel drunk.

Yep, you can rewind, but rewinding means you're taking yourself out of the film, breaking something that is supposed to be experienced in an unbreakable manner without any pauses. If you intentionally and directly sully your experience, you're responsible for it, and it's cheating your way into watching a film by experiencing it in a half-assed manner.

That’s disappointing that he doesn’t really watch them. I don’t see how he can can get anything out them if he’s not properly paying attention to them.
To each their own, I suppose Yeah, I'm still giving him the benefit of the doubt since I only saw other people say he said he does that, but I never saw him claim that. That being said, he has a wife and two kids, and yet spends over 10 hours a day watching films. He's unemployed, though, so this is doable, but doing this every day with no breaks for years sounds exhausting. I watch less than him and need to take a day off from time to time!

KeyserCorleone

08-01-24, 10:02 AM

No it is not cheating. Not every movie is going to be mesmerizing because not going to be that good. If it really does deserve that attention then I'll give it. If it doesn't, it doesn't. And you will not tell me I've been cheating for 14 years. I am PROUD that I can focus on two things at once with my autism, and you're not taking that away. For that, I'll be watching two movies at once all week, and I'll be writing reviews on them. Deal with it.

TONGO

08-01-24, 10:19 AM

I'd only seen ALOTO once when it first came out. After Chris's review though I looked it upon Prime, and it's on sale for $7.99 - SOLD! Downloading it now. Amazon should send Yoda a residual.

TONGO

08-01-24, 10:47 AM

Madonna sure was a hottie in her day, and Rosie O'Donnells accent was so campy Smokey The Bear made sure she put her fire out.

Yoda

08-01-24, 10:50 AM

Absolutely, I just think people try to force it sometimes because they feel like they're supposed to look at the game that way. "Roll my eyes" is probably an exaggeration of my reaction to those times, and it might be completely made up on my end.
I get you. I agree. I think it's mostly just that a lot of it's bad. I think it can work if you try to find a new angle, some comparison to life, or even just come up with an unusual turn of phrase. But when people just reference the romantic ideal of baseball without adding anything new to it, there's no point. Yes yes, we all know it's tied up in nostalgia and America's past, both good and bad, et cetera. Tell me something new if you wanna bust out the thesaurus.

Yoda

08-01-24, 10:58 AM

This scene hits so hard, every time. One of my main memories of this film is that no matter how many times I'd watch it or re-watch it with other people, we would always hold our breath at this scene like we didn't know who was going to receive that telegram.
The curse of empathy is immediately, without deciding to, imagining what it would be like to be any one of those women, clenching up in terror as Jimmy approached and then trying not to break down in relief the moment he passed you. It would seem incredibly manipulative, except things like that actually happened, so it's fair game.

One really nice touch is the little scuffle Jimmy has with the man delivering it. It's such a great "show, don't tell" moment in that it perfectly conveys the bond he has with the team now, where he understands he's now in a position (and in fact has an obligation) to make sure the news is delivered by someone they know and care about.

I cannot think of a single other movie about a woman or women playing sports from the 80s or 90s where there was a character who just loved the game. Kit's character arc is all about, as you say, harnessing her stubbornness to push herself to greatness. As a multi-sport athlete in middle and high school, this movie was incredibly popular among my teammates. There's nothing wrong with movies that have romantic subplots, but a movie grounded in a complicated sibling relationship AND sports AND woman-centered was a new species. Also, at the time that this movie came out, the women athletes getting the most attention were petite gymnasts and figure skaters, so Marla Hooch was low-key an icon. Like maybe you could just be really strong and capable and excel at a sport that didn't require wearing eyeshadow.
Oh yeah, Marla's great. My God, the expressions. That owl face she makes when she's revealed from underneath the cap. Gets me every time.

I didn't mention her in part because I'm explicitly trying to avoid the Review Checklist thing, in part to make sure I keep these coming out and in part because I'm determined to have fun with them, so if something isn't folding naturally into what I most want to say, I'm not going too far out of my way to include it. But if this were a review proper, Marla would definitely have come up.

As a lot of you have probably noticed, I like when films address normal, pragmatic human concerns head-on, rather than handwave them away. I like when 42 shows us Rickey and his assistants weighing the pros and cons of the various Negro League players, and I like that A League of Their Own talks openly about the need to sell the league through femininity (and how this explicitly becomes a sort of plot point later with Dottie and her famous split).

And man, the moment with her Dad, where he says it's his fault because her mother wasn't around, always stirs something. In part because of the thing I mentioned before, where everyone's overqualified: even in that tiny role, they get a great little character actor like Eddie Jones, and it makes all the difference.

Sidenote: have we all seen the Capital One commercial where Jennifer Garner inexplicably botches the line "There's no crying in baseball"?, pronouncing the final word baseBALL, as if she's not only not seen A League of Their Own, but maybe never heard nor spoken the word "baseball" before?
Yeah, that makes me cringe so hard my head ends up in my ribcage.

Takoma11

08-01-24, 12:21 PM

I like that A League of Their Own talks openly about the need to sell the league through femininity (and how this explicitly becomes a sort of plot point later with Dottie and her famous split).

And it's frustrating that this is still sort of the case. Like, I had always thought that when women gymnasts were doing their dance moves in their floor routines, it was just sort of a way to take a little breather between tumbling moves and maybe reposition themselves on the floor. Turns out it's a requirement(?!). And just generally, even now, listening to the Olympic commentary there's a lot more remarks directed toward the physical appearance of the women athletes like "She's such a pretty young lady" or "She's got such a nice smile" that I'm just not hearing at the same rate toward the men.

There was the Norwegian team a few years back that was fined for not showing up to play handball in bikini bottoms.

https://www.deseret.com/resizer/v2/RC4ZXLM25MOVVW4T5M7DBNTZSI.jpg?auth=98f8c77636d6c85e23d6160dc6dc4acc837733f95231ff2d80841a4f6c0e3113&focal=540%2C379&width=800&height=560

I do think that there's a lot of body image pressure an all athletes, not just women, but the degree to which it's verbalized to women and girls that being pretty is an important part of the game is just depressing because it's not just about having an athletic body (which is a pressure universally applied), but about needing to dress and style a certain way.

In terms of the film, I think that it's interesting to watch the way that the women themselves (Dottie in particular) realize that they are playing a game of public opinion and marketing, especially at first when people don't know what they are supposed to be enjoying about the game. What starts out being sold as a novelty---a la the puppy superbowl---ends up turning into an athletic endeavor, and you see how they have to play both sides of that equation.

And man, the moment with her Dad, where he says it's his fault because her mother wasn't around, always stirs something. In part because of the thing I mentioned before, where everyone's overqualified: even in that tiny role, they get a great little character actor like Eddie Jones, and it makes all the difference.

I think that what's pretty amazing about the Marla character is that even if she was raised by a mother . . . she might have still been an awkward, not-so-feminine woman. And her father realizes that they live in a society where not-feminine women are not valued. She's a great character because she gets a chance to shine at something she is good at, and also because she finds someone who does treasure her for who she is.

And agreed on the casting: every actor absolutely nails their characters, even the bit parts.

I also think that the film repeatedly walks right up to the line of being saccharine or too much of a tear-jerker, but instead it lands on the right side of being sweet. The final sequence in the museum is amazing. It's another scene where no matter how many times I see it, certain lines still feel like they are taking me by surprise.

Miss Vicky

08-01-24, 12:42 PM

Great review, Yoda.

Now I feel like taking a break from musicals and rewatching this. It's been quite a few years since I last saw it and it's one of those movies that I kind of forget about and ignore for awhile, but then when I come back to it it's always a really great experience.

AKA23

08-01-24, 12:44 PM

This is my official request for a review of Trouble with the Curve ;)

Yoda, I haven't seen very many baseball movies (this is not a sport that I follow. I know, I'm sorry. Glad you love it!), so I'm not following this thread, but I'm also interested in your review of this, so when you get to reviewing this movie, can you tag me in the post, so I will know to come back to the thread? Thank you!

Holden Pike

08-01-24, 01:08 PM

For this cinemaniac and baseball fan, Eastwood's acting foray into the Baseball Scout/Agent subgenre is less successful than both the Disney sports flick Million Dollar Arm (2014) starring Jon Hamm and The Scout (1994) directed by Michael Ritchie (The Bad News Bears, Fletch) and starring Albert Brooks. Though none of the three are anywhere near top-tier movies.

But to each their own.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcwqBH0QqVY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEtNIoPxcq8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kf3uw7_CHsU

Yoda

08-02-24, 12:13 PM

I do think that there's a lot of body image pressure an all athletes, not just women, but the degree to which it's verbalized to women and girls that being pretty is an important part of the game is just depressing because it's not just about having an athletic body (which is a pressure universally applied), but about needing to dress and style a certain way.
For what it's worth, I think this is shifting. Not vanishing; people are always going to be interested in sex and people will always want to look at women, particularly the supernaturally fit ones who play professional sports. But the more specific phenomenon we're talking about, where it's an inevitable part of the marketing, feels like a foot-in-the-door thing rather than a permanent state of affairs. The last few years, from the women's soccer team to the rise of Caitlin Clark, seems to represent a genuine uptick in interest in women's sports qua sports. 10 years ago I knew almost nobody (and no men) who watched these things for their own sake, and now I know a handful. I went to a women's football game last year (I had a friend on the team) and really enjoyed it.

Part of this is just the amassing of an historical record. This is a really underrated part of the appeal of sports in general: hanging around long enough to establish history and precedent so when someone breaks a record, it actually means something, in the way it obviously can't if you're the "top scorer of all time" in a league that's only a few years old. It's also (check out this perfect segue back on topic) a big part of baseball's appeal, because it's been going for over a century and a lot of its numbers are surprisingly comparable across eras. It would not surprise me if things like the WNBA were always going to need a couple of decades to lay that historical foundation before giving off that same sense of import.

In terms of the film, I think that it's interesting to watch the way that the women themselves (Dottie in particular) realize that they are playing a game of public opinion and marketing, especially at first when people don't know what they are supposed to be enjoying about the game. What starts out being sold as a novelty---a la the puppy superbowl---ends up turning into an athletic endeavor, and you see how they have to play both sides of that equation.
Yeah, I like that it plays into what we know about Dottie: her cool, indifferent pragmatism to everything, both the game on a granular level and the game as a whole. She doesn't mind giving them a show because she's sure of who she is and doesn't feel she's compromising anything by playing into it. It's just a calculation, like what pitch to call behind the plate. She's just calling another play. Apart from just being interesting as a plot point, and being true-to-life, it dovetails really nicely with the character.

I think that what's pretty amazing about the Marla character is that even if she was raised by a mother . . . she might have still been an awkward, not-so-feminine woman. And her father realizes that they live in a society where not-feminine women are not valued. She's a great character because she gets a chance to shine at something she is good at, and also because she finds someone who does treasure her for who she is.
I think the film also gives the viewer a little jab in the ribs when you see her just after her wedding. It's a nice little reminder that, outside of the extremes of beauty, a lot of perception about appearance is about superficial presentation, signaling, the amount of effort you put in that day. Stuff that could change in an instant, and therefore don't reflect anything real.

Low key the most interesting thing about her marriage, though, is that there's no handwringing at all about leaving the team. Baseball is just easy for her, a given, the same way it is for Dottie, so just like Dottie she can take it or leave it. "What we obtain too cheaply we esteem too lightly." She's never felt pretty, never felt valued for herself, so when she does it's an easy decision to give herself over to that.

And agreed on the casting: every actor absolutely nails their characters, even the bit parts.

I also think that the film repeatedly walks right up to the line of being saccharine or too much of a tear-jerker, but instead it lands on the right side of being sweet. The final sequence in the museum is amazing. It's another scene where no matter how many times I see it, certain lines still feel like they are taking me by surprise.
Yeah, this is dead-on. And I wonder how much Tom Hanks, specifically, is responsible, since the other film that immediately comes to mind that fits this description is Forrest Gump, which is my go to example film for "this could have spilled over into maudlin dreck SO easily and I don't know why it didn't."

I strongly suspect it's mostly down to Penny Marshall, though. She is, forgive the gendered term, very workmanlike. But I think she has a superpower for casting the right people and extracting the best performances from them. It's not a very noticeable skill, in fact it's a kind of selfless skill because when you do it well the praise goes to the actors and writers. But I think it's ultimately why this movie works.

I also think being really consistently funny helps. Schmaltz lands different when you can follow it with a good joke, as an emotional release valve.

Takoma11

08-02-24, 05:01 PM

For what it's worth, I think this is shifting. Not vanishing; people are always going to be interested in sex and people will always want to look at women, particularly the supernaturally fit ones who play professional sports.

Oh, fully agreed! I think that looking at (and, sure, enjoying in a hubba-hubba way as long as you're talking about adults) the bodies of really fit, accomplished people is one of the appeals of professional sports. One of my favorite things about the Olympics is the incredible range of body types and what it means to be "fit" or "athletic" in different sports. This is also not something that is gendered. And I also don't think that there's any shame in being attracted to fit/strong/whatever people.

But it's been really nice to see some of the uniforms in sports actually shifting to what functionally makes more sense. Many props to people like Serena Williams and those handball players for pushing things forward.

I think the film also gives the viewer a little jab in the ribs when you see her just after her wedding. It's a nice little reminder that, outside of the extremes of beauty, a lot of perception about appearance is about superficial presentation, signaling, the amount of effort you put in that day. Stuff that could change in an instant, and therefore don't reflect anything real.

This is why I think that Kit continuing to play is so key. It's really nice to see Marla get married, but it's also nice to have a character whose happy ending isn't about a relationship. (And having Dottie be someone who is already marries frees her up to have her plot arc center entirely on her relationship with her sister. A much lesser movie would have her getting together with Hanks or, heaven forbid, competing with her sister for the love of some guy).

Low key the most interesting thing about her marriage, though, is that there's no handwringing at all about leaving the team. Baseball is just easy for her, a given, the same way it is for Dottie, so just like Dottie she can take it or leave it. "What we obtain too cheaply we esteem too lightly." She's never felt pretty, never felt valued for herself, so when she does it's an easy decision to give herself over to that.

I mean . . . sort of. For someone like Marla or Dottie, this would be their one and only chance to play sports professionally. And that's not to say it's right or wrong for them to walk away, but it's painful to think that such talented people were given such a brief window to exercise that talent in real competition. Marla is definitely thinking long-term, but it's sad that she has to make that compromise.

I strongly suspect it's mostly down to Penny Marshall, though. She is, forgive the gendered term, very workmanlike. But I think she has a superpower for casting the right people and extracting the best performances from them. It's not a very noticeable skill, in fact it's a kind of selfless skill because when you do it well the praise goes to the actors and writers. But I think it's ultimately why this movie works.

I honestly think that it works so well because it does not center romance, but instead is focused on the complex dynamics between the women, and the relationship they develop with their manager. This film was such a rarity: it was a movie about adults, but appropriate for kids/middle schoolers, and it had the thrills of sports. The casting, like we've discussed, is perfection. I think that it also has a really interesting waterfall effect, where the character development comes in waves instead of them all having a big moment at the end of the film.

Yoda

08-03-24, 11:25 AM

Oh, fully agreed! I think that looking at (and, sure, enjoying in a hubba-hubba way as long as you're talking about adults) the bodies of really fit, accomplished people is one of the appeals of professional sports. One of my favorite things about the Olympics is the incredible range of body types and what it means to be "fit" or "athletic" in different sports. This is also not something that is gendered. And I also don't think that there's any shame in being attracted to fit/strong/whatever people.
I remember when they came out with ESPN's Body Issue, I thought "this is just another lame appeal to sex." Basically ESPN trying to do it's own Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. If people want that, fine, but it's kind of shameless. But to their credit, they seem to have actually stuck to the stated goal, and some of the photos are genuinely beautiful. I'm not surprised that the human body can be a work of art (though I also think people who say that in defense of nudity are usually just there for the nudity, like an inverted fig leaf), but I sure am surprised they've followed through this long.

This is why I think that Kit continuing to play is so key. It's really nice to see Marla get married, but it's also nice to have a character whose happy ending isn't about a relationship. (And having Dottie be someone who is already marries frees her up to have her plot arc center entirely on her relationship with her sister. A much lesser movie would have her getting together with Hanks or, heaven forbid, competing with her sister for the love of some guy).
The idea of her having a romantic subplot with Dugan is hurting my brain. That would be unbearably dumb. It's to the film's credit and intelligence that this hadn't even occurred to me, jokingly or otherwise.

I mean . . . sort of. For someone like Marla or Dottie, this would be their one and only chance to play sports professionally. And that's not to say it's right or wrong for them to walk away, but it's painful to think that such talented people were given such a brief window to exercise that talent in real competition. Marla is definitely thinking long-term, but it's sad that she has to make that compromise.
I'm guessing your reticence here is because you're uncomfortable with the idea that marriage is her ultimate goal, at the expense of some other type of personal fulfillment, since that's a trope of sorts.

I might share your reticence if that's all we got, if all the girls took off the moment someone would have them. But that's not what happens: we get, effectively, one of each. We get players like Kit, where it's all about the game. We get players like Marla who's happy to walk away for love. And we get ambivalence from Dottie, who's already found love but still vasillates between giving immediate priority to her relationship as opposed to baseball. And she has the strongest reason of all to leave: he's back from war, having survived a major injury! And she still choose baseball.

I like that we get it all. And I particularly like that Marla doesn't seem to even think twice. I think it's true to a character that had never been appreciated that way, and speaks to the way we kind of take for granted the things that come more naturally to us, as well.

I honestly think that it works so well because it does not center romance, but instead is focused on the complex dynamics between the women, and the relationship they develop with their manager. This film was such a rarity: it was a movie about adults, but appropriate for kids/middle schoolers, and it had the thrills of sports. The casting, like we've discussed, is perfection. I think that it also has a really interesting waterfall effect, where the character development comes in waves instead of them all having a big moment at the end of the film.
It's always hard to tell why something charming charms us, but I think what you're saying about it not centering romance is a pretty big factor, at least for me. It's just so, so hard for those kinds of subplots to do anything new or interesting. Hell, to avoid being so utterly predictable that I feel the impulse to check my phone while they're doing all the obligatory things they have to do with it. That's probably where my feeling that every scene matters, and has something fun for us, comes from. It never goes on autopilot, never does anything I can completely predict and find myself waiting for the end of. It doesn't, as they say, take any plays off.

Takoma11

08-03-24, 12:41 PM

I remember when they came out with ESPN's Body Issue, I thought "this is just another lame appeal to sex." Basically ESPN trying to do it's own Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. If people want that, fine, but it's kind of shameless. But to their credit, they seem to have actually stuck to the stated goal, and some of the photos are genuinely beautiful. I'm not surprised that the human body can be a work of art (though I also think people who say that in defense of nudity are usually just there for the nudity, like an inverted fig leaf), but I sure am surprised they've followed through this long.

I picked up a Body Issue one time at, like, an orthopedist's office I think. I actually thought it was really cool. It featured male and female athletes, and the range of body types on display was super neat. And I really appreciated that each image was captioned with an explanation of why this person's body reflected the sport they played in. Everything from noticing torso length on a swimmer, to talking about the strong glutes you need to be a professional catcher in baseball. We're also often fed "athletic" bodies that look the same, so I really liked seeing shot-putters or football players who distinctly were not thin and did not have six-packs. I briefly had a Sports Illustrated subscription, but I cancelled it after getting their swimsuit content. It was just all unabashed male gaze and I thought it was gross. It had literally nothing to do with sports at all.

The idea of her having a romantic subplot with Dugan is hurting my brain. That would be unbearably dumb. It's to the film's credit and intelligence that this hadn't even occurred to me, jokingly or otherwise.

Their relationship is classic "enemies to lovers" setup, and instead they are two adults of different genders who grow into a deep friendship. Imagine!

I'm guessing your reticence here is because you're uncomfortable with the idea that marriage is her ultimate goal, at the expense of some other type of personal fulfillment, since that's a trope of sorts.

It's not about her wanting to be married. I think that wanting to be married is a fine goal for someone to have (sort of, it's a little dependent, but whatever). It's more that she's walking away from a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and no one---including the person who is supposed to love and support her the most--seems to be taking a moment to reflect on that. Now, I recognize that she's a supporting character, and the film can't take 10 minutes to unpack her decision. It's a happy ending to her character arc and I am happy for her. It's also true that she wouldn't have met him if she hadn't traveled with the team, so it's neat that her talents got her out into the world where she could find love.

Yoda

08-03-24, 01:27 PM

And I really appreciated that each image was captioned with an explanation of why this person's body reflected the sport they played in. Everything from noticing torso length on a swimmer, to talking about the strong glutes you need to be a professional catcher in baseball.
Yeah, exactly this. The idea that physical perfection is relative to goal is extremely interesting.

The Pittsburgh Steelers had a defensive lineman years ago named Casey Hampton. Hampton was 6'1" and 325 lbs. The local color commentator famously said, in a line I will never forget, "he has arms like legs, and legs like people."

Their relationship is classic "enemies to lovers" setup, and instead they are two adults of different genders who grow into a deep friendship. Imagine!
The more I think about this the more I realize most of my favorite films basically eschew romance entirely unless it's completely integral to the plot or drives a major narrative decision. Probably not a coincidence.

It almost feels like the old poster trope of "I laughed, I cried" convinced people at some point that every movie had to have a little bit of everything.

It's not about her wanting to be married. I think that wanting to be married is a fine goal for someone to have (sort of, it's a little dependent, but whatever). It's more that she's walking away from a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and no one---including the person who is supposed to love and support her the most--seems to be taking a moment to reflect on that. Now, I recognize that she's a supporting character, and the film can't take 10 minutes to unpack her decision. It's a happy ending to her character arc and I am happy for her. It's also true that she wouldn't have met him if she hadn't traveled with the team, so it's neat that her talents got her out into the world where she could find love.
I think that's basically it, she's a secondary character and this is all we know about her. Since they can't possibly delve into that stuff, they do the next best thing, and show the spectrum of outcomes among several different characters. Pretty smart.

Takoma11

08-03-24, 02:07 PM

The Pittsburgh Steelers had a defensive lineman years ago named Casey Hampton. Hampton was 6'1" and 325 lbs. The local color commentator famously said, in a line I will never forget, "he has arms like legs, and legs like people."

LOL.

I think that's basically it, she's a secondary character and this is all we know about her. Since they can't possibly delve into that stuff, they do the next best thing, and show the spectrum of outcomes among several different characters. Pretty smart.

Agreed. I think that, watching it now, what mostly stands out to me is that it's missing a few more characters who could exist outside of the traditional marriage structure (because even Kit comes to that reunion with a huge family) and/or some queer representation. But given the time that the film portrays (the 40s), and the time in which it was made (family film in the 90s), I get the omission. (We can just supplement with a viewing of A Secret Love, lol).

Wooley

08-03-24, 05:38 PM

You two are making me feel like I need to go back and re-evaluate A League Of Their Own.

Takoma11

08-03-24, 10:48 PM

You two are making me feel like I need to go back and re-evaluate A League Of Their Own.

Your feelings are correct.

Wooley

08-04-24, 12:30 PM

To be clear, I liked the movie, it just felt very safe and on the rails and Hollywood to me at the time.

Takoma11

08-04-24, 01:40 PM

To be clear, I liked the movie, it just felt very safe and on the rails and Hollywood to me at the time.

There are many ways in which it is safe and on the rails and Hollywood.

And then there's the part where myself and dozens and dozens of girls I knew finally got to see a movie about women athletes and sibling dynamics in a way that I can literally not name another movie like it. (You might nod at Bend It Like Beckham, but that movie falls at the "falling for your sexy coach" hurdle).

Yoda

08-04-24, 03:34 PM

I'm glad you got that out of it, but I think when people hear that they think "oh, so it's not good so much as it's valuable." People can decide for themselves how much they care about that, though it's a completely separate mode of evaluation from film criticism proper.

I'm not a girl, and am not giving it points for any perceived social good...and I like it a lot. It's just a good movie.

I concede it looks boilerplate, and maybe occasionally it is. That's actually one of the reasons I likened it to Ocean's Eleven. There's nothing really groundbreaking about that film, is there? But it's just done so well that it elevates the entire experience. A League of Their Own is like that. It's smart, efficient, funny, and dense, but all inside a movie that looks like it's going to be none of those things, and probably didn't even need to be. Sometimes talented people "play down" to the material, and sometimes they lift it up above their heads and twirl it around like a roadside sign spinner.

Mr Minio

08-04-24, 03:48 PM

I'm not a girl, and am not giving it points for any perceived social good...and I like it a lot. It's just a good movie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er693MQcz6k

Takoma11

08-04-24, 03:54 PM

I'm glad you got that out of it, but I think when people hear that they think "oh, so it's not good so much as it's valuable." People can decide for themselves how much they care about that, though it's a completely separate mode of evaluation from film criticism proper.

Fair. Yes, it is a really well acted, well written, very funny movie whose merits are not at all confined to centering on women athletes. At the same time, however, these protagonists are interesting partly because they were not characters we'd seen before, and because the exploration of sibling rivalry in the context of athletics was different and unique. This is both a strength of the film as a film AND something that made it particularly noteworthy (valuable) for me and my friends at the time it came out.

People should watch it because it's a solid comedy/drama, but the impression it made on a generation of young women is worthy of note. It is, by far, the most frequently discussed movie in my circle of lady-friends.

Mr Minio

08-04-24, 04:06 PM

I'm glad you got that out of it, but I think when people hear that they think "oh, so it's not good so much as it's valuable." I don't get it. If a film is valuable, it means it's good. If it's personal to you, it's good. All personal and valuable films are amazing to me. If a movie is seemingly personal or relatable to me but is a bad film, it ends up not being valuable or personal in my eyes because it doesn't present the essence o that value/relatibility well enough, if that makes any sense.

Yoda

08-04-24, 05:42 PM

I don't get it. If a film is valuable, it means it's good.
"Good" meaning "high in quality" rather than "good" meaning "morally praiseworthy." Craft as distinct from message.

And yes, preemptively, I am not saying they are always or necessarily distinct. One could make a really expansive argument about how excellence is inherently moral, based on something about how all virtues converge at their highest point. Might be worth talking about somewhere or some time, but a little outside of the scope of my silly little baseball movie journey.

Yoda

08-05-24, 12:13 PM

Little Big League (1994)
In a sentence: A preteen inherits the Minnesota Twins and names himself the manager.

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"Baseball was made for kids, and grown-ups only screw it up." -- Bob Lemon

There is a not-so-grand tradition of films that cater to one demographic or another. The one that gets talked about the most is blaxsploitation (and hats off to you if you somehow had that word on your bingo card for a review of this film), but there are all sorts of examples. Formulaic romcoms, cheap slashers, everything Jason Statham does, et cetera.

Little Big League is boysploitation. It's part of a tradition of movies for boys, let's say 9-15, where they get to briefly escape an existence of constantly being told what not to do, of constantly struggling with their fidgeting and antsiness and hormones, and get to imagine having some kind of control over their lives. This usually manifests in money, power, or access. But above all, it's respect. People listening to them, and taking them seriously.

-

You know you're in good hands early on, as the film finds lots of little ways to signal to you that the script was written (or punched up) by someone who knows the game. Billy (the kid) gets to clarify a rule in his Little League game, and then spars with his grandfather over some genuinely good baseball trivia. A lesser film would've had him do that thing where he floods the zone with babble that doesn't make sense to a real fan but registers to everyone else as "is knowledgable about the thing," like a network procedural with a hacker who spews nonsensical technospeak. But no, Billy really does know the game, and a viewer who knows the game will recognize he does.

Billy's played by Luke Edwards, and he's perfect. He can't be too much like a normal kid because a normal kid would never get to do this, and he can't be too performative or he'll sound like those child actors who try to project their way through everything (SNL's Vanessa Bayer had a character that had this type down cold (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QSFNw1lrnto)). Instead, he comes off exactly the way he has to: as a hyper-precocious (but mostly real) kid, the kind that can occasionally surprise the adults around him.

They don't really pull too many punches initially, either. You already know the players are going to hate this and he's going to win them over, but by God, they really make him work for it. They come at him from all angles: we look stupid, we have to live this down after you leave, you're going to hurt my ability to get a new contract. And he finds unique ways to motivate and win over each according to their distinct personalities. He's also forced to make tough choices that remind him that baseball isn't just a game, it's a business, and that being a manager means you can't just be a fan.

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The film really puts in the work on the premise, rather than just expecting us to go along with it for the fun. It takes an insane idea and then works overtime to try to make it as plausible-seeming as possible, rather than just coasting on an assumed suspension of disbelief.

How's the Baseball?
Extremely good, for several reasons.

First and foremost: the actors move like real ballplayers. In some cases, it's because they were real ballplayers. Brad Lesley played a few seasons in the bigs before moving on to a similar stint as an actor, and Timothy Busfield (!) played semipro ball when he was younger. But it's not just them: it's everyone. I'd be extremely surprised if Jonathan Silverman had a similar career, but his mechanics look pretty good, too.

There are unbroken shots of one actor throwing to another, throwing to another, and everything looks great. Fast, fluid, effortless. Given the year the film was made, I doubt effects played a role. They seemingly just scoured the land for actors who knew how to play and worked with the ones that hadn't. It looks like real baseball; I can't find any seams in the shot other than the ones on the ball. Bravo.

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There's also a ton of cameos that baseball fans will notice and appreciate. And none of the lines are forced or stilted. They're all delivered well. And they're folded naturally into the action, too. They don't lampshade them. They don't have some player come up, hit his mark and smile awkwardly before a real actor says "wow, it's 14-time All Star Iván Rodriguez! You're one of the best catchers in the game!" Sometimes they linger on the players for an extra beat to give you a chance to notice, but that's it. It's refreshingly restrained.

Oh, and the montages! Okay, sure, the structure and music are banal, but the action is lovely. It's not just some guy catching a ball in a close up you can clearly tell was tossed casually from just off screen. They pull back and let you see the flow, see the human gears shift and click into place as the play unfolds. It's genuinely beautiful. Balletic. They show the prettiest thing in all of baseball: the double play turn at second. The people who shot and edited these understood something real about the beautiful mechanics of baseball. It's a joy to behold, and the kind of thing even a non-fan will appreciate. Look at this, from 1:18:

https://youtu.be/ZShTLOpQlTg?si=_nTH80XCqv16x2AH&t=78

Wait wait, there's more! There's a cool trick play at one point in a key moment that's genuinely creative and, honestly, even kinda believable. It's not only fun, and interesting, but it's exactly the kind of thing you'd expect a kid, unshackled by convention or social considerations, to try. Because: why not?

Oh, and bonus points for the casting of Billy's mom, not just because she's great, but because eight years after this film was released, she gave birth to Pete Crow-Armstrong, currently patrolling the outfield for the Chicago Cubs.

Do They Win?
Nope. They go from last-to-first, but they lose the big game. The final out made by the most likable player. As a general rule, I give a little extra respect to any sports film that has the good guys lose, in part because it's always interesting to see how it manages to frame the literal loss as a moral victory. And here, it's a win because they weren't even supposed to be here. And, of course, because Lou (Busfield) hits it hard enough to win the game, but is robbed by a leaping Ken Griffey Jr. who pulls it back from just beyond the wall. The ultimately tough luck loss.

-

It's obviously trite to have a sports movie where the moral is "it's important to still have fun," but it's true, and it's extremely well illustrated here. To whatever degree that message seems vapid, is because it's misunderstood.

When you say it's important to have fun, that doesn't mean you don't need to try and it doesn't mean you can't get frustrated. It doesn't mean you can't expect more from your teammates, and tell them so. You can still struggle, sweat, and swear...but you have to find the struggle itself enjoyable. You have to enjoy the experience for itself, independent of the result. Not every single time, but most of the time.

As of the time of this writing, I'm on eight softball teams (and kinda half-on another), and I run two (and kinda half-run another). And all of them wear out the same refrains: hit a ball hard but it's caught anyway? Don't change anything, few inches to the side and it's a hit. Nice swing, good cut, they'll start fallin'.

There are 162 games in a baseball season. That's twice as many games as they play in basketball and hockey, and 10 times as many as they play in football. And they need to play that many because individual games are highly random, and need a long statistical tail to even out. To play baseball is to learn to love process over result. And that process, that grind, that series of iterations and tweaks and riding out streaks and slumps alike, is the essence of the sport. And that process is what has to be fun, has to be gratifying in its own right, for its own sake.

A well-struck ball is a well-struck ball, whether it hits the grass or finds a glove. Or maybe, every now and then, makes its way all the way out to a cheering fan beyond a wall.

Takoma11

08-05-24, 12:20 PM

I really enjoyed Little Big League as a kid, and also in the same sub-genre, the film Rookie of the Year (which I ASSUME is the next movie you're reviewing, right? Right?).

ynwtf

08-05-24, 12:30 PM

BRING BACK THE POPCORN SCORES!!!!!1!1!11!
(we need more controversial bits to argue!)

Channeling my best Chypster.
<3

seanc

08-05-24, 12:52 PM

It's obviously trite to have a sports movie where the moral is "it's important to still have fun," but it's true, and it's extremely well illustrated here. To whatever degree that message seems vapid, is because it's misunderstood.

When you say it's important to have fun, that doesn't mean you don't need to try and it doesn't mean you can't get frustrated. It doesn't mean you can't expect more from your teammates, and tell them so. You can still struggle, sweat, and swear...but you have to find the struggle itself enjoyable. You have to enjoy the experience for itself, independent of the result. Not every single time, but most of the time.

As of the time of this writing, I'm on eight softball teams (and kinda half-on another), and I run two (and kinda half-run another). And all of them wear out the same refrains: hit a ball hard but it's caught anyway? Don't change anything, few inches to the side and it's a hit. Nice swing, good cut, they'll start fallin'.

There are 162 games in a baseball season. That's twice as many games as they play in basketball and hockey, and 10 times as many as they play in football. And they need to play that many because individual games are highly random, and need a long statistical tail to even out. To play baseball is to learn to love process over result. And that process, that grind, that series of iterations and tweaks and riding out streaks and slumps alike, is the essence of the sport. And that process is what has to be fun, has to be gratifying in its own right, for its own sake.

As usual something you wrote struck a chord with me. I coached most of my boys sports teams up till they hit HS age. The amount of fathers who came up to me and told me they weren’t “everyone gets a trophy dads” is astounding. I never said it out loud, but my inner voice answer was always something along the lines of “duh, you aren’t unique, none of us who played sports are everyone gets a trophy guys.” That definitely comes with a huge caveat for me though. Obviously a totally different demographic than you are talking about in this movie, but kids playing ball aren’t going pro with an absolutely minuscule amount of exceptions. Hell, most of them aren’t even going to play HS ball. Play as hard as you possibly can, learn the game, and for God’s sake enjoy it. If you aren’t find another hobby. I loved spirts as a kid, and was on some absolutely horrendous teams. Winning is always better, but I never didn’t have a good time. That’s my soapbox.

Probably won’t have seen a lot of these young kids movies. Most I was the wrong age for. This, Angels In The Outfield, Sandlot, Rookie Of The Year are the ones that come to mind.

Yoda

08-05-24, 12:52 PM

I really enjoyed Little Big League as a kid, and also in the same sub-genre, the film Rookie of the Year (which I ASSUME is the next movie you're reviewing, right? Right?).
I had a reference to this very film (as an example of the normal type of "boysploitation") in the review initially. Can't remember why I removed it, but yes, that's definitely on the list.

Wooley

08-05-24, 01:43 PM

There are many ways in which it is safe and on the rails and Hollywood.

And then there's the part where myself and dozens and dozens of girls I knew finally got to see a movie about women athletes and sibling dynamics in a way that I can literally not name another movie like it. (You might nod at Bend It Like Beckham, but that movie falls at the "falling for your sexy coach" hurdle).

I totally get that and I respect it for that. I'm glad it happened I'm glad it exists and I even understood that when it came out.
But that doesn't mean there's much in the movie for me to sink my teeth into. All I can do is sympathize with the characters as they go through this very Hollywood representation. I mean, both Madonna and Rosie O'Donnell were Hollywood stunt-casting and neither are very good and the whole thing just has that 90s Hollywood/post-Spielberg sheen all over it.
I like Dottie and Kit and their journey and some of the other characters but I even felt like Tom Hanks was really there to hedge their bets over having a movie where the main characters are all women.

TONGO

08-05-24, 02:47 PM

BRING BACK THE POPCORN SCORES!!!!!1!1!11!
(we need more controversial bits to argue!)

Channeling my best Chypster.
<3

I agree. Please rate the movies. It's not a stamp on what the rating is for everyone, but for the reviewer. If someone starts bringing up past reviews and comparing the absolutely different type of films, expecting a perfect popcorn math to solve all doubts of life and scoring...just tell them to get a job.

LAMb EELYAK

08-05-24, 10:44 PM

Finally, a win for the St. Helens Spruces!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzMuzLflEzc

This is one of my favorite movies, and by far my favorite baseball movie. Admittedly, I'm overrating the humor, as familiarity/nostalgia make every line ten times funnier to me than it should be, but I think just about every other element is better than it's generally been given credit for. I'm glad people are starting to notice.

But no, Billy really does know the game, and a viewer who knows the game will recognize he does.

The "make up a situation" scene where he shows this is so good. They not only had to show the complexity of the game and give Billy a convincing argument for how to approach it, they had to make it believable that a Major League coach wouldn't have thought of it first.

First and foremost: the actors move like real ballplayers. In some cases, it's because they were real ballplayers. Brad Lesley played a few seasons in the bigs before moving on to a similar stint as an actor, and Timothy Busfield (!) played semipro ball when he was younger.

Kevin Elster was an active major leaguer! He was rehabbing his throwing arm during the shoot, which is probably why you see him not using it on that slick double play. :laugh:

Scott Patterson, who's still acting today, was a first round draft pick and pitched in the minors.

Busfield is a righty, but decided to bat left-handed in the film because he thought his swing looked better that way. There is hitch at the end of it, but I haven't seen his natural swing, so I'll take his word for it. And you can't take that shot of him artfully dodging some (unintentional) Randy Johnson chin music away from him.[/quote]

They seemingly just scoured the land for actors who knew how to play and worked with the ones that hadn't.

They held tryouts before they held auditions. Tony Todd (second baseman in the double play clip) just happened to be walking by a field where they were happening.

Everything was baseball first on this movie. They forewent the use of an Avid for editing to maximize the baseball budget.

Sometimes they linger on the players for an extra beat to give you a chance to notice, but that's it. It's refreshingly restrained.

My favorite example of this is the "TH" patches on the sleeves to honor Billy's grandfather. There's not a shot in the movie that focuses on them, but it's such a thoughtful, realistic detail. I also appreciate the weight they give to the necessarily downbeat situation this story springs from, without letting it overwhelm the joy it's supposed to bring.

And, of course, because Lou (Busfield) hits it hard enough to win the game, but is robbed by a leaping Ken Griffey Jr. who pulls it back from just beyond the wall.

Win-win for me as a Mariners fan. This also foreshadowed the the M's' first playoff appearance the following year, also clinched in a one-game tiebreaker. Their first playoff series, as many baseball fans know, ended on a dramatic play involving Ken Griffey, Jr. and featured "a rare relief appearance" by Johnson.

Incidentally, my second-favorite baseball movie is The Rookie, and if you say either title, people think of you're talking about Rookie of the Year.

jiraffejustin

08-05-24, 11:11 PM

boysploitation.

Eww gross.

Sedai

08-06-24, 11:09 AM

Got a little time to watch Bull Durham last night. Next up will be Little Big League for "Films in Yoda's baseball thread that I haven't seen yet."

seanc

08-06-24, 11:10 AM

Got a little time to watch Bull Durham last night. Next up will be Little Big League for "Films in Yoda's baseball thread that I haven't seen yet."

What did you think?

Mr Minio

08-06-24, 11:13 AM

Boysploitation? Shota?

Yoda

08-06-24, 11:51 AM

This is one of my favorite movies, and by far my favorite baseball movie. Admittedly, I'm overrating the humor, as familiarity/nostalgia make every line ten times funnier to me than it should be, but I think just about every other element is better than it's generally been given credit for. I'm glad people are starting to notice.
Yeah, It's always been kind of hidden away. I think the only reason it gets seen is because there are few enough baseball movies that it necessarily ends up on any list of them.

The "make up a situation" scene where he shows this is so good. They not only had to show the complexity of the game and give Billy a convincing argument for how to approach it, they had to make it believable that a Major League coach wouldn't have thought of it first.
Absolutely. Specifically the next-level thing about how they'd bring in a specialist after the Twins pinch hit. I'm a little more meh on his "take the bat out of our hands" logic, but also, it's the kind of logic a lot of baseball lifers would respond to, so I'm down with it.

Interesting to think about what would happen if they made this film now. They'd definitely make Billy the sabermetrician clashing with the old school guys, right?

Kevin Elster was an active major leaguer! He was rehabbing his throwing arm during the shoot, which is probably why you see him not using it on that slick double play. :laugh:
I almost mentioned him! And I might be one of just a few people my age to remember Kevin Elster at all, because the Pirates signed him for one year and he was perfectly pointless: a 0.0 WAR.

Scott Patterson, who's still acting today, was a first round draft pick and pitched in the minors.

Busfield is a righty, but decided to bat left-handed in the film because he thought his swing looked better that way. There is hitch at the end of it, but I haven't seen his natural swing, so I'll take his word for it. And you can't take that shot of him artfully dodging some (unintentional) Randy Johnson chin music away from him.

...

They held tryouts before they held auditions. Tony Todd (second baseman in the double play clip) just happened to be walking by a field where they were happening.

Everything was baseball first on this movie. They forewent the use of an Avid for editing to maximize the baseball budget.
Tremendous, great trivia, thank you. This makes perfect sense. I still think they must've done a lot of work, if only because, again, Jonathan Silverman (who I've always liked). But it's really gratifying to have all this confirmed. I remember thinking the baseball scenes were good when I first saw the film, but now that I'm watching or rewatching a lot of baseball films all at once, they really stand out. Nothing else is even close. I doubt I'll see another movie during this entire experience that tops the verisimilitude here.

My favorite example of this is the "TH" patches on the sleeves to honor Billy's grandfather. There's not a shot in the movie that focuses on them, but it's such a thoughtful, realistic detail. I also appreciate the weight they give to the necessarily downbeat situation this story springs from, without letting it overwhelm the joy it's supposed to bring.
My dude, I had not even noticed that. That's fantastic. And yeah, definitely walking a tightrope there keeping the film mostly fun given the downbeat of the inciting incident. But it's perfect. Baseball is very tied up in the concept of legacy. I've already mostly written a little interlude about that that should go up sometime this month. What? No, it's a total coincidence that I felt compelled to write about this right around the time of my 40th birthday, don't be ridiculous.

Win-win for me as a Mariners fan. This also foreshadowed the the M's' first playoff appearance the following year, also clinched in a one-game tiebreaker. Their first playoff series, as many baseball fans know, ended on a dramatic play involving Ken Griffey, Jr. and featured "a rare relief appearance" by Johnson.
One of my most vivid memories of the game. I freaked my wife out a little bit once when, in reference to Junior (or something like that), I just immediately reeled off the entire situation and play that ended the 1995 ALDS. I don't even need to look any of it up: M's go down 2-0, win the next two. Game 5 in Seattle, Cora (the tying run) is on third, Griffey (the winning run) is on first. Edgar Martinez up, line drive down the left field line gets all the way into the corner, shot of Griffey huffing and puffing like crazy around third, beats the throw home, M's pile on top of him and in the chaos we get a very brief shot of his face at the bottom of the pile, looking as happy as a person could possibly look. The Kid looking like a kid.

She already knew I loved baseball, but I sometimes think that was one of the first times she saw how deep the love, and obsession, can go.

Sedai

08-06-24, 12:03 PM

What did you think?

It was good! I would probably mark it around 3_5 on first watch, a I have no nostalgia attached to it. A really good baseball flick, but didn't come across as an instant classic.

Yoda

08-06-24, 12:07 PM

Ready yourself for the Wrath of Wooley.

Wooley

08-06-24, 12:23 PM

*pulls Louisville Slugger out of backseat*

Miss Vicky

08-06-24, 12:27 PM

Ready yourself for the Wrath of Wooley.

Wooley, Mr. "I f*cking hate The Sandlot." :rolleyes:

Yoda

08-06-24, 12:31 PM

Wooley, Mr. "I f*cking hate The Sandlot." :rolleyes:
Needs more four minute sex scenes.

LAMb EELYAK

08-06-24, 04:54 PM

Yeah, It's always been kind of hidden away. I think the only reason it gets seen is because there are few enough baseball movies that it necessarily ends up on any list of them.

There's actually a theater showing it three times within driving distance of me. I bought ($2) tickets to all three shows in the hope I'll be able to get to one of them with my schedule doing all kinds of weird shifting this week. Never thought I'd have a chance to see this in a theater before fellow June 1994 release Speed.

Absolutely. Specifically the next-level thing about how they'd bring in a specialist after the Twins pinch hit. I'm a little more meh on his "take the bat out of our hands" logic, but also, it's the kind of logic a lot of baseball lifers would respond to, so I'm down with it.

It definitely has the ring of pivoting to win an argument, but it adds to the pile of things that make Mac's strategy less appealing.

Interesting to think about what would happen if they made this film now. They'd definitely make Billy the sabermetrician clashing with the old school guys, right?

That's another thing I like about this scene. Mac is going by the book (though some managers would have been willing to ignore the book with their best hitter up), and Billy's strategy is in line with the revised edition of the book everyone uses today, so the scene "holds up".

Jonathan Silverman (who I've always liked). But it's really gratifying to have all this confirmed. I remember thinking the baseball scenes were good when I first saw the film, but now that I'm watching or rewatching a lot of baseball films all at once, they really stand out. Nothing else is even close. I doubt I'll see another movie during this entire experience that tops the verisimilitude here.

This and 12:01 are more than enough to justify his career to me (not that anyone needs to).

I like the point you made earlier about the way it's shot and edited. I don't know of another baseball movie that lets the game speak for itself to this degree.

My dude, I had not even noticed that. That's fantastic. And yeah, definitely walking a tightrope there keeping the film mostly fun given the downbeat of the inciting incident. But it's perfect. Baseball is very tied up in the concept legacy. I've already mostly written a little interlude about that that should go up sometime this month. What? No, it's a total coincidence that I felt compelled to write about this right around the time of my 40th birthday, don't be ridiculous.

Looking forward to it.

I didn't see the patches until watching as an adult. Another thing I missed until even more recently, because I am an only child and woefully ignorant of human behavior: Lowell is Chuck's brother. Subtlety or bad storytelling? Everyone must decide for themselves.

She already knew I loved baseball, but I sometimes think that was one of the first times she saw how deep the love, and obsession, can go.

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRFo-aSCA9Pk0e4EL4UxpATeYkewnXZSZJywQ&s

Yoda

08-08-24, 10:24 AM

For Love of the Game (1999)

In a sentence: An aging pitcher starts a game in Yankee Stadium while struggling with the end of a relationship.

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A few years ago I was playing in a softball game, and we were getting killed. I don't even know the score, but it was bad. We might've given up 30 runs by the time it was over. But that's not what I remember most about it.

Right there in that blowout, in the middle of one of the worst drubbings I've ever been a part of...we turned a triple play. Not one of those stupid triple plays where all the runners get really confused or give up, either. I think about that play all the time. I use it to stay motivated. I tell the story to teammates when we're down. Because I know at any moment, without warning, no matter the score or the stakes or the circumstances...you might make the greatest play of your life.

-

I played softball recently with someone very new to the game. I'm not sure if she ever even played in Little League, but she had a lot of enthusiasm. I showed up early before games to play catch with her, throw her batting practice, try to help her get more comfortable with the game. And we started to see little improvements. Instead of a strikeout, a foul ball. Instead of a foul ball, a ground ball. And then a ground ball that led to an error, so she actually reached base.

And then, the final accomplishment: a clean base hit. Hard, well struck, right up the middle. Nobody bobbled it, nobody was out of position, nobody overthrew anyone else. It was a real hit. And she was hooked. Even vicariously, it was intoxicating. And she chased that high for another year.

This speaks to something about baseball that keeps people coming back to it: imprecision. The difference between a popup and a homerun is sometimes a matter of mere inches, hitting the ball with the exact same force at a slightly different launch angle. This brings to mind golf, another sport people become weirdly obsessed with, and I think for the same reason: because every now and then you strike the ball perfectly, just often enough to keep you coming back, trying to recreate the magic feeling you get when your kinetic mechanism whirs exactly the way it should. When you somehow do everything right all at once.

-

For Love of the Game is not a particularly good movie, nor a particularly good baseball movie. It has a terrible title that's connected to the story in a throwaway moment, and its Obligatory Romantic Subplot devours so much of its runtime that it's almost a Supplot, as we watch Costner and Preston go through all their Meet Cute motions. But it does capture a feeling that most other baseball movies don't: the idea that anything can happen.

Billy Chapel (Kevin Costner) is a pitcher past his prime, on a team that isn't winning anymore. The owner's about to sell. It's the end of several different eras.

Pitchers go through a particularly humbling degradation of skills. There's an adage that you should learn to "pitch, and not just throw." Meaning you should think about location and timing and not just try to use pure stuff (as baseball folk call it) to blow the ball by someone. Because you won't have that forever; Father Time is undefeated. Your arm will slow just as sure as the sun sets, just as sure as beauty fades. Someday your fastball's going to start showing wrinkles, so make sure your curveball has a good personality.

The pitchers who stick around are the ones that can reinvent themselves, and that's the stage Chapel is at. They're out of the race but they're facing a team that isn't, and there's pride at stake in denying them their celebration, even if only for a day. Playing well must be its own reward. Plus it's the Yankees, everyone's favorite team to root against. And as the game goes on, something funny starts to happen: he keeps getting people out. One after another.

All of this is set against the backdrop of an out-of-sequence relationship. We're coming in at the end of his career, and seemingly the end of their relationship, and we flash back over and over to other points in both. This is probably the only really good thing in the movie, because it does a good job of filling in the blanks, of showing how they got to this point. By the end, you feel the accumulated weight of all their misunderstandings. You feel tired on their behalf. But it just goes on too long, takes up too much of the film. The relationship is the point of the film, and the baseball is a sideshow to it. The premise is good, the pieces are all there, but the balance is off.

100284

How's the Baseball?
Quite good. Costner famously has always wanted to play baseball (https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/kevin-costners-field-dreams-bull-durham-movies-followed-actors-real-life-baseball-aspirations), and he goes the extra mile, mechanically. He can really throw, looks good fielding off the mound, and really does carry himself like a ballplayer.

The psychology is particularly well-depicted. Most sports are about making dramatic moments feel just like all the others, particularly in baseball, the most steeped in repetition and routine. Chapel has a mantra: "clear the mechanism." And we get to see what this looks like from his perspective: the audio fades out, and everything other than the batter's box goes fuzzy. It's a cool effect, and a great depiction of athletic focus at the highest level.

The movie is also serious enough about baseball that it bows to the inevitable role luck plays; many times Chapel "deserves" to lose his perfect game, but is bailed out by a great play, or a ball slicing foul.

-

There's a little something special here that deserves it's own section: the in-movie broadcast booth is manned by the legendary Vin Scully, voice of the Dodgers for 66 years. He passed away just two years and six days ago.

Scully gets to employ all his usual florid wordplay, and he was good enough at it that I genuinely have no idea whether his words came from a professional screenwriter or the man himself.

Scully is part of the inspiration for this series of reviews. Lots of little kids want to be baseball players, but I wanted to be a baseball announcer. In some ways this is a larger flight of fancy; there's way more ballplayers than professional baseball broadcasters. Making that your dream is kind of like saying you want to be an astronaut: it ain't happenin'. But I did stumble backwards into a version of it, doing professional esports casting. I'll never forget the day someone offered to fly me out to San Diego to broadcast live at TwitchCon in 2022. A dream come true, or as close as can reasonably be expected.

As I did more casting and got more attention for it, I started to think about its nature. I started mentoring people new to it and wrote guidelines to help all of us along, the verbal version of showing up early to play catch and take batting practice. And I became romantic about casting (esports or otherwise) the same way I was about baseball. I thought about some of my favorite moments and how the announcer's words or enthusiasm were an inextricable part of them. The film Miracle is called that specifically because of Al Michaels' call.

It's not just an honor, but a responsibility, to occupy that space in people's memories when you have the good fortune to call an amazing moment. It's your job to speak for all the people watching, to express the thing they wish they could express when they're yelling and cheering and jumping up and down in front of their screens. To do justice to the moment. A stenographer to the immortal.

I could go on about this forever, but instead I'll end with my favorite Vin Scully quote (though picking just one feels like a crime). Scully was chosen for this role not just because he's the greatest there ever was, but presumably because he had the privilege of calling three perfect games. One of them was Sandy Koufax's perfect game in 1965. And as he so often did, he found a way to encapsulate the moment, the collective anxiety of the fans for whom he speaks, with poetry:

"The Dodgers defensively in this spine-tingling moment: Sandy Koufax and Jeff Torborg. The boys who will try and stop anything hit their way: Wes Parker, Dick Tracewski, Maury Wills and John Kennedy; the outfield of Lou Johnson, Willie Davis and Ron Fairly. And there's 29,000 people in the ballpark and a million butterflies."
Could there be a better symbol for baseball than the butterfly? Beautiful, short-lived, thriving in the warmth and the sun. Impossible to predict. And setting up camp in our guts at all the best and the worst times.

I still get those butterflies every time I get ready to broadcast, or play the game. The physical manifestation of pure possibility. It's awful, and I hope it never goes away.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WINiz0Bfb-0

Do They Win?
They do. Chapel finishes the perfect game. As a player he won awards, won the World Series, became a living legend. This perfect game is not the foundation of his legacy, it's the capstone. But it's also the one thing that finally frees him. He chases perfection for decades, and finally achieves it. Then, and only then, can he leave the game content and start the next phase of his life.

This is the magic of all competition: shrinking the world down just enough that we might be faultless within its boundaries. Stepping outside of our messy reality, full of mistakes and painful lessons, full of imperfections and evils. Full of what-ifs and could-have-beens, of second and third guesses. Heartbreakingly full of things we could have done better. But in this place, at this time, in this game built on failure, we can leave all that behind. For one glorious night we can forget our brokenness and experience something otherwise unavailable to us in this world:

We get to be perfect.

seanc

08-08-24, 11:21 AM

I like For Love Of The Game more than you, not because I don’t understand why people don’t, but because Costner just did it for me back in his prime. Much in the way a good ball player does. You touched on his genuine love for baseball. You totally feel it in his sports movies. He “gets” every bit of it, he’s never pretending. The way he talks to himself on the mound in this movie, spectacular for me. Not because the writing is all that great, but because he is talking like a real pitcher. These moments would come off corny as hell in the hands of someone who doesn’t know the game. They never do here, not for me at least.

Yoda

08-08-24, 11:30 AM

Totally agree. The angry (and sometimes complimentary) little muttering under his breath, the way he talks himself through the game.

It's a very good conceit and Raimi nails it, I just wish there'd been more of it relative to the romance. And I say that as someone who finds Kelly Preston incredibly charming.

seanc

08-08-24, 11:35 AM

Holden Pike

08-08-24, 12:14 PM

Totally agree. The angry (and sometimes complimentary) little muttering under his breath, the way he talks himself through the game.

It's a very good conceit and Raimi nails it.
You mean exactly the same way Nuke LaLoosh talks to himself on the mound in Bull Durham?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85RZMIAL7vM

Yoda

08-08-24, 12:25 PM

You mean exactly the same way Nuke LaLoosh talks to himself on the mound in Bull Durham?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85RZMIAL7vM
In the binary sense of "talks on the mound," I guess, but Costner's got entire monologues with depth and nuance going, and it's almost entirely about the actual game, the pitch-by-pitch battle that's exactly how actual ballplayers approach those things. "I'm the guy drivin' the Porchse" is funny, but it's not what I'm talking about.

You people are not gonna browbeat me into loving Bull Durham, but you're all welcome to keep trying.

Wooley

08-08-24, 12:47 PM

Well, I pretty much couldn't agree more with your entire post on FtLotG.
I don't just generally agree with your assessment I agree with all the whys. It's a movie I really wanted to be good and really wanted to like that I saw in the theater and was able to get my wife to come because of the promise of a major female character and the exploration of a romantic relationship... and yet the film did not deliver enough for either of us despite having some things going for it. Including sparking a robust discussion between us as to which character was more in the right and which more in the wrong. Because the relationship is like a real adult relationship where the answer to that question is actually just "yes".
And having been a Rangers fan during Nolan Ryan's final run, the aging pitcher was a character I had great affection for.

I would like to also address some of your thoughts or one idea in particular that you spent some time on and that is the idea of playing the game well being the actual reward of the game.
This is a concept I had to learn to embrace back in my 20s when I realized that my strange relationship with athletics my whole life came down to the complete absence of a competitive spirit within me despite being born with a body gifted for physical competition. I was almost immediately good at every sport I ever tried. Swimming, running, tae kwon do, baseball, football, tennis, golf, boxing, racquetball, I have taken to them all like a fish to water. Which, of course, can really frustrate, parents, coaches, even friends when I don't give one continental f*ck about winning.
For a long time, I didn't even keep score in golf. Like, I couldn't even tell you how many strokes I used just three or four holes back. I enjoyed striking the ball cleanly, seeing it lift off purely and come down more or less where I had imagined because of the particular way I had chosen to hold the club and to power and shape my swing. I actually loved it when I would end up in the rough or even the trees because it presented an opportunity to attempt a more difficult and interesting shot, which of course, comes with an even greater internal reward if one pulls it off.
I drove my tennis coach nuts because I became good and had so many shots in my bag and could cover the entire court easily but I never played matches because, to me, worrying about winning the point compromised how elegantly one might play. If there is a beautiful shot to be made but one could have "won" by just getting it in, isn't one robbed of the opportunity to make a beautiful shot by the need to win? I had a friend who was a very good tennis player, far, far better than me. And he was always unhappy. Because he was driven by competitiveness and "losing" made him far more miserable than any of his talent any of the impressive things he could do with a racquet and a ball could bring him happiness. He quit tennis and has told me that he hates the game and will never play again.
Sport, to me, provides so many opportunities for a sort of poetic physical beauty and a deep internal sense of satisfaction of being a part of that beauty and in turn being alive. Your genuine pleasure in the turn of a triple play despite losing by thirty runs, your friend's joy at getting a legitimate base hit, my sense of a beautiful connection to the physics that governs our universe when my six iron from 163 yards out arcs its way to settle four feet from the pin... this is the beauty of athletics, the beauty of sport.

Miss Vicky

08-08-24, 12:49 PM

I don't think I've seen For the Love of the Game. Costner was my actor obsession when I was younger but I don't think I ever got to this one for whatever reason. I'm still pretty fond of him so I might check it out some time.

Wooley

08-08-24, 12:50 PM

You mean exactly the same way Nuke LaLoosh talks to himself on the mound in Bull Durham?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85RZMIAL7vM

Guy gets a free steak.

God I love that movie so much.

Yoda

08-08-24, 12:52 PM

I like the bull thing a lot. That's the kind of thing I had in my head when I wrote that thing about capturing the essence of minor league baseball. It's not what it was, there are fewer teams and they're a lot cleaner, better, more like the big league product in lots of ways. If that spirit lives on it lives on in things like the Frontier League. But for the most part it's just gone.

Yoda

08-08-24, 12:56 PM

One of the girls on my softball team has the nickname "Bull" so the odds that I'm going to superimpose her head on that sign for our highlight reel are at like 98%.

Yoda

08-09-24, 12:28 PM

Sorry, I somehow missed this when it first went up.

It's a movie I really wanted to be good and really wanted to like that I saw in the theater and was able to get my wife to come because of the promise of a major female character and the exploration of a romantic relationship... and yet the film did not deliver enough for either of us despite having some things going for it. Including sparking a robust discussion between us as to which character was more in the right and which more in the wrong. Because the relationship is like a real adult relationship where the answer to that question is actually just "yes".
I agree, and I love this because my wife and I do the exact same thing. I actually think it's an incredibly good thing for people in serious relationships to do, because it allows them to talk about all sorts of expectations and angles in a relatively low-stakes environment. If you don't do that, then the first time you discuss certain things (what counts as flirting, what kinds of things should you immediately tell your partner) is when they've already happened, any damage is already done, and emotions are already high.

Some of our favorite shows and movies have complicated, nuanced relationship problems, sometimes in otherwise very silly shows. The show Dave on FX has a really good episode set at a wedding with what we like to call a "great fight." A really good couples' argument where you can completely see how they reached that point without either of them doing anything particularly awful or unreasonable. These things, in fiction, are so potentially useful and instructive if you talk about them with someone.

I would like to also address some of your thoughts or one idea in particular that you spent some time on and that is the idea of playing the game well being the actual reward of the game.
This is a concept I had to learn to embrace back in my 20s when I realized that my strange relationship with athletics my whole life came down to the complete absence of a competitive spirit within me despite being born with a body gifted for physical competition. I was almost immediately good at every sport I ever tried. Swimming, running, tae kwon do, baseball, football, tennis, golf, boxing, racquetball, I have taken to them all like a fish to water. Which, of course, can really frustrate, parents, coaches, even friends when I don't give one continental f*ck about winning.
I'm sure this has occurred to you already, but it's maybe not so surprising or ironic that a physically gifted person would not care about winning, because we always devalue things that come naturally to us, on some level. The guys who have few physical gifts and just have to grind away and work at it, those are usually the scrappiest, most competitive guys.

I actually loved it when I would end up in the rough or even the trees because it presented an opportunity to attempt a more difficult and interesting shot, which of course, comes with an even greater internal reward if one pulls it off.
That makes perfect sense to me. A part of me loves falling behind in games, too, for the same reason: here's your chance to do something remarkable.

This is a very silly comparison, but there's actually a video game called Nerts, a digital version of a famous old card game which is, essentially, competitive solitaire. For real. That may sound inexplicable, or even dumb, but it's incredible, and very fast paced. And I'm incredibly good at it. To the point where I really enjoy joining games that have already started, seeing someone very close to winning already, and having the chance to stage an insane comeback. Kind of more than just starting on even footing.

I know there's that nerdy Simpsons joke about Principal Skinner keeping himself sane while pinned under newspapers by "bouncing a ball as many times as [he] could in an hour...and then trying to break that record!" But there's some real wisdom there, about getting to the point, mentally, where your competition is always your former self, and you can take joy in challenge and improvement for its own sake.

I drove my tennis coach nuts because I became good and had so many shots in my bag and could cover the entire court easily but I never played matches because, to me, worrying about winning the point compromised how elegantly one might play. If there is a beautiful shot to be made but one could have "won" by just getting it in, isn't one robbed of the opportunity to make a beautiful shot by the need to win?
I'm of both minds about this one. On one hand, everything you're saying here makes perfect sense. But a focus on winning is different when you're on a team, I think. Tennis, I can see being more about intrinsic beauty, but the sense of camaraderie, of picking up and being picked up, that you get in team sports is a special thing, and the winning is sort of tied up in that. But in a healthy way.

Regarding the "beautiful shot" thing, we do still do a lot of that in softball. We actually record our games (they're all on YouTube), so people get a lot of pleasure out of making a play for its own sake because they know it'll be preserved.

Sport, to me, provides so many opportunities for a sort of poetic physical beauty and a deep internal sense of satisfaction of being a part of that beauty and in turn being alive. Your genuine pleasure in the turn of a triple play despite losing by thirty runs, your friend's joy at getting a legitimate base hit, my sense of a beautiful connection to the physics that governs our universe when my six iron from 163 yards out arcs its way to settle four feet from the pin... this is the beauty of athletics, the beauty of sport.
Agreed, and well said. :up:

One of my teammates charmed me once while he was talking about playing the outfield. We were practicing in the offseason, or something, and he just talked about how much he liked the simple act of seeing the ball fly near him, tracking its trajectory, and going there. Just a simple thing, over and over, slightly different each time. He just loved it.

Wooley

08-11-24, 07:45 PM

I agree, and I love this because my wife and I do the exact same thing. I actually think it's an incredibly good thing for people in serious relationships to do, because it allows them to talk about all sorts of expectations and angles in a relatively low-stakes environment. If you don't do that, then the first time you discuss certain things (what counts as flirting, what kinds of things should you immediately tell your partner) is when they've already happened, any damage is already done, and emotions are already high.

Some of our favorite shows and movies have complicated, nuanced relationship problems, sometimes in otherwise very silly shows. The show Dave on FX has a really good episode set at a wedding with what we like to call a "great fight." A really good couples' argument where you can completely see how they reached that point without either of them doing anything particularly awful or unreasonable. These things, in fiction, are so potentially useful and instructive if you talk about them with someone.

I'm sure this has occurred to you already, but it's maybe not so surprising or ironic that a physically gifted person would not care about winning, because we always devalue things that come naturally to us, on some level. The guys who have few physical gifts and just have to grind away and work at it, those are usually the scrappiest, most competitive guys.

That makes perfect sense to me. A part of me loves falling behind in games, too, for the same reason: here's your chance to do something remarkable.

This is a very silly comparison, but there's actually a video game called Nerts, a digital version of a famous old card game which is, essentially, competitive solitaire. For real. That may sound inexplicable, or even dumb, but it's incredible, and very fast paced. And I'm incredibly good at it. To the point where I really enjoy joining games that have already started, seeing someone very close to winning already, and having the chance to stage an insane comeback. Kind of more than just starting on even footing.

I know there's that nerdy Simpsons joke about Principal Skinner keeping himself sane while pinned under newspapers by "bouncing a ball as many times as [he] could in an hour...and then trying to break that record!" But there's some real wisdom there, about getting to the point, mentally, where your competition is always your former self, and you can take joy in challenge and improvement for its own sake.

I'm of both minds about this one. On one hand, everything you're saying here makes perfect sense. But a focus on winning is different when you're on a team, I think. Tennis, I can see being more about intrinsic beauty, but the sense of camaraderie, of picking up and being picked up, that you get in team sports is a special thing, and the winning is sort of tied up in that. But in a healthy way.

Regarding the "beautiful shot" thing, we do still do a lot of that in softball. We actually record our games (they're all on YouTube), so people get a lot of pleasure out of making a play for its own sake because they know it'll be preserved.

Agreed, and well said. :up:

One of my teammates charmed me once while he was talking about playing the outfield. We were practicing in the offseason, or something, and he just talked about how much he liked the simple act of seeing the ball fly near him, tracking its trajectory, and going there. Just a simple thing, over and over, slightly different each time. He just loved it.

Yeah, I think movies really do provide a great opportunity for discussion and learning between couples. And frequently movies that don't seem to be about a romance have some of the best relationships in them, the best ones to talk about. My wife and I actually got a lot out of the marriage between Willis and Penn in Unbreakable. Still one of my favorite on-screen romantic relationships.

I definitely feel differently in a team arena, but it may be why I've gravitated toward singles' sports much of my life. Even doubles tennis was hard for me because, again, the sport to me was entirely about the racquet, the ball, the net, and the court and the other players were just there to provide an additional hurdle to me trying to achieve beauty, and not about the distraction of what the score was or who was winning or what I had to do for us to win instead of play well. Like, I lost us a tournament one time playing against inferior opponents because I got totally in my head about how my second serve wasn't working the way I wanted it to and instead of just making sure I got it in I went down a hole obsessing about making it perfect.
I got over this, to a degree, by changing my focus from the beauty of what I was trying to do to the beauty of a well-functioning system (team). Which is something I love about watching team sports, seeing the downfield block the wide-receiver threw that no one mentioned but unquestionably sprung the running-back on that screen pass, where instead of collecting all the glory in the end zone, he would have been tackled after about 15 yards had it not been for a gorgeous block by someone who is primarily paid to catch. I can switch my mind to that and that helps. Like I started playing pickleball and realized that the beauty of my not caring about winning is that I feel no need to put any pressure on my partner. I don't care if we win, I don't even care if we win the point, so if you screw up I don't care and I'm not gonna bust your balls and I'm gonna remain positive because I'm just happy to be there and getting a chance to do what I do when the ball is coming to me.
I think baseball is particularly strong in the area of both individual and system beauty. There is ample opportunity both for an individual athlete to do something beautiful but also for the system to function beautifully (as in your triple-play).

Yoda

08-14-24, 11:27 AM

Yeah, I think movies really do provide a great opportunity for discussion and learning between couples. And frequently movies that don't seem to be about a romance have some of the best relationships in them, the best ones to talk about. My wife and I actually got a lot out of the marriage between Willis and Penn in Unbreakable. Still one of my favorite on-screen romantic relationships.
Great stuff, you're basically just pulling thoughts out of my brain now. I feel the same way and regard Unbreakable as Shyamalan's best, and criminally underrated.

I got over this, to a degree, by changing my focus from the beauty of what I was trying to do to the beauty of a well-functioning system (team). Which is something I love about watching team sports, seeing the downfield block the wide-receiver threw that no one mentioned but unquestionably sprung the running-back on that screen pass, where instead of collecting all the glory in the end zone, he would have been tackled after about 15 yards had it not been for a gorgeous block by someone who is primarily paid to catch. I can switch my mind to that and that helps.
That makes sense. And yeah, the poetry of people willing to become temporary gears in a larger machine is extremely cool. It's exactly what I was geeking out about with the slow-motion montages in the Little Big League review, it's genuinely beautiful.

One really nice thing about all the softball I've played is that I get to play with a lot of the same people over and over, often in the same positions (I try to move people around as little as possible so they can get really comfortable somewhere). And it was an absolute joy to realize that, after a few years, so many things were being communicated wordlessly. Knowing where an outfielder's going to be without looking. Or, my favorite, a first basemen who would yell where I should throw when taking a cutoff, who I played with so long that I could roughly tell how much time I had or how sure they were of the decision based on the volume and intonation with which they yelled it. In those moments you feel like part of a larger whole in a way that, to my mind, transcends even the highest levels of individual excellence.

I think baseball is particularly strong in the area of both individual and system beauty. There is ample opportunity both for an individual athlete to do something beautiful but also for the system to function beautifully (as in your triple-play).
I think this is absolutely right, and I'll be keeping an eye out for a baseball movie that provides a natural avenue to talk about how weird the team/individual split is in baseball, mostly unique among the most popular sports.

LAMb EELYAK

08-14-24, 05:25 PM

There's actually a theater showing it three times within driving distance of me. I bought ($2) tickets to all three shows in the hope I'll be able to get to one of them with my schedule doing all kinds of weird shifting this week. Never thought I'd have a chance to see this in a theater before fellow June 1994 release Speed.

Was on my way to the last showing when my car broke down.

https://img.bleacherreport.net/img/slides/photos/003/707/259/1cca55afa677073016e2ee0b8d99b06e_crop_exact.jpg?w=2975&h=2048&q=85

LAMb EELYAK

08-14-24, 05:28 PM

I'll be keeping an eye out for a baseball movie that provides a natural avenue to talk about how weird the team/individual split is in baseball, mostly unique among the most popular sports.

Mr. 3000?

Yoda

08-14-24, 06:17 PM

Mr. 3000?
Based on the synopsis (I haven't seen it yet), definitely a decent potential fit. It's on the list for consideration.

I don't know exactly how many I'll be doing but there aren't as many mainstream baseball-centric films as I'd thought, so it's plausible I can do nearly all of them, particularly the ones from the last few decades.

Wooley

08-17-24, 11:35 PM

I think this is absolutely right, and I'll be keeping an eye out for a baseball movie that provides a natural avenue to talk about how weird the team/individual split is in baseball, mostly unique among the most popular sports.

This seems like an obvious moment for it but am I gonna spoil something in your thread if I post the Individual Achievement/Part. Of. A. Team. speech here?

Yoda

08-18-24, 12:45 AM

This seems like an obvious moment for it but am I gonna spoil something in your thread if I post the Individual Achievement/Part. Of. A. Team. speech here?
Go for it.

Mr Minio

08-18-24, 09:11 AM

I just watched a Japanese baseball film called Poetry of Baseball Enthusiasts. It's based on a manga with everything it could possibly entail. It's about a cute girl who takes up baseball, and I'm not spoiling anything else.

You should watch it if only to make this thread more varied country-wise. Baseball is (or was back then at least) more popular in Japan than in the States, so one shouldn't ignore their contribution to this film genre.

Yoda

08-18-24, 09:22 AM

I'll consider it, though the fact that baseball is popular in Japan isn't, itself, relevant to the project. What's relevant to me is that it be about baseball in some meaningful way (and not just as a backdrop). I'll also likely be reviewing Mr. Baseball, which is about baseball in Japan.

Wooley

08-18-24, 04:18 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHH9EYZHoVU

Galactic Traveler

08-26-24, 07:43 AM

Looking forward to Yoda's 'Major League' review!

Galactic Traveler

08-26-24, 07:46 AM

This is probably a stupid question for Yoda but curious to see if you've watched the miniseries 'Baseball' by Ken Burns.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball_(TV_series)

Yoda

08-26-24, 10:22 AM

This is probably a stupid question for Yoda but curious to see if you've watched the miniseries 'Baseball' by Ken Burns.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball_(TV_series)
Bits and pieces, but I'm thinking of doing it properly, if not for this than just in general.

New review hopefully coming this week, have several half-done, just got a bit distracted by work and (appropriately, I think) a softball tournament.

seanc

08-26-24, 10:39 AM

You really would love it I think Chris. I know the time commitment is daunting, but the amount of footage and how it’s edited. There isn’t anything like it. Especially through the first three quarters.

Yoda

08-26-24, 06:04 PM

Million Dollar Arm (2014)

In a sentence: A desperate sports agent goes to India to try to find major league caliber pitchers.

100631

"Two players run to first. They both have the same time, but one has perfect form. The other, lousy form. Which one do you pick?"
"The one with lousy form."
"'Cause teach him the right form..."
"...and he beats the other guy."

-

The softball team I run was originally run by a chemistry student, and about half the team was from the chemistry department. Over time a lot of them graduated, moved away, had to go wherever the work was. It was always somewhere else. One of those students was a young man named Jean-Marc. As the name may imply, he wasn't from the area: he was from Trinidad, and he had literally never played baseball in any form. But he had tremendous physical gifts. It was amazing watching him swing without moving his legs, just flicking his wrists, and still hitting the ball harder than most of us using all the momentum our stride could give us. Watching him spring down the first base line at top speed, only to awkwardly try to come to a stop at the base rather than run through it.

He was, essentially, a project. The sky was the limit, if we could marry his natural athleticism to mechanics and muscle memory. He got better: by the end, he was catching most of the fly balls he was used to, and hitting more and more line drives. He started to get the bug, the itch. And then, like all the others, he graduated and moved away.

-

This movie is based on a true story, which it tells us upfront. But I didn't need to be told. I'm a Pirates fan, and remember hearing about the event this is based on when it happened a decade ago. It was presented as an example of the Pirates forward-lookingness, an example of a smart small market team scouring places the bigger teams can't be bothered to, and finding rubies in the rough. And like the events of this movie, it's fair to ask whether any of it would have happened without the added public relations aspect.

When I watch formulaic movies, I don't really watch them the same way I'd watch something better or more ambitious. I start evaluating them based on rote things like sheer execution, or whether they throw the occasional curveball (sorry) to mix it up a little for savvier viewers. I do a similar thing with films "Based on a True Story": I try to figure out which things were the invention of the screenwriters, which things were changed or exaggerated to help reality fit that formula.

This might be one of those stories, though, that really did fit that formula. That has element after element which you would've sworn were tweaked, amplified, or outright fabricated...and yet they weren't (https://www.reviewjournal.com/entertainment/movies/million-dollar-figure-resides-in-las-vegas/).

100630

I should disclose that I am physiologically incapable of disliking anything Lake Bell is involved with, but the whole cast is impressive and charming. Jon Hamm is overpowered for the role, and Dinesh and Rinku are pitch perfect. And they have to be. This doesn't work if they veer too far in any one direction. They have to seem like adolescents: not fully grown men, and not just wide-eyed boys. It's a real balancing act that mirrors the surreal experience, as a baseball fan, of watching 20 year old kids thrust in front of millions of fans on a regular basis. Almost as surreal as the very first time you realize you're older than one of the players you're watching. I think a lot of you probably remember the first time that happened, or maybe the cinematic equivalent of watching someone younger than you win an Oscar.

-

Baseball has more international appeal than the other major North American sports, and I'm not sure it's even close. Obviously soccer is the sport worldwide, presumably in part because of its elegance and simplicity, so it's kind of strange that something as convoluted and arbitrary as baseball would find so much purchase on other shores. It's massive in Japan and it's practically a way of life in the Dominican Republic and Cuba, where it has the same quality as football in American inner cities: sometimes, for kids in poverty, it's the only way out.

Cuban baseball has its own culture entirely, specifically that its hitters are more free-swinging (and get better at hitting "bad" pitches as a result) than most other places. Or, as it is sometimes put: "You can't walk off the island."

It seems inexplicable that baseball travels as well as it does, given its convoluted nature. Everyone recognizes that there is beauty in simplicity, but it seems to me there is an inverse beauty in the delicate balance, the house of cards, the set of rules tweaked and shaped over a literal century to compliment and counterweight each other. In creating a game that only exists with constant human management and assessment. A game that operates like a machine, with every cog linking to the next. Something fragile and precious that nobody else would ever create. A pocketwatch in place of a sundial.

Yes, we love the simple and the universal. But we fall in love with the quirky and the unique. You love soccer the way you love the sun or the moon. But you love baseball the way you love another person.

100632

How's the Baseball?
It's fine. There's very little of it to speak of. The mechanics of the throwing are good, there's no silly H(B?)ollywoodification where they just pick up a ball and hurl it 95 out of nowhere and everyone's jaws drop. It's a slow, arduous process and they ultimately find people who are merely promising; good runners with bad form.

Do They Win?
Yes. But obviously there's no game. One of the tensest scenes in the film, in fact, takes place in the parking lot of a strip mall, which is where Dinesh and Rinku have their first MLB tryout. That, alone, sets this film apart from every other baseball film I've ever seen.

The tryout goes terribly, but they manage to secure another (with fewer attendees) at the location they actually trained out, and of course at this point everyone's given them the requisite emotional support they need to succeed. And they do: the Pirates offer them professional contracts.

-

Jean-Marc kept playing softball after he moved, and has occasionally kept me updated on it. And he showed up at one of our year-end parties after moving, a personal surprise I found out about only when he arrived. It was a good thing, too, because he had a hilarious star turn in the highlight reel: he was superimposed on Rene Russo's face.

I don't know if he'll keep playing or not. Maybe he'll make good on all that potential, and some team in his new home will enjoy the benefits. I hope so. But I already got all I could want out of him: I got to share the game I love with someone who knew nothing about it, watch him take to it, get better at it, and start to see why it was so special to so many of us.

-

Neither Dinesh nor Rinku ever pitched in the major leagues. This particular barrier remains unbroken. But so it goes: the person who has to knock down the wall usually isn't going to pick themselves up and keep running with the baton after. That's not their job. Often, their job is to be a human wrecking ball of possibility, knocking down one of a hundred barriers to entry so that some day, a poor Indian boy will pick up a baseball and change his life.

seanc

08-28-24, 09:04 AM

Yoda

08-28-24, 10:35 AM

I remember being pretty excited about Million Dollar Arm. It was a baseball flick and had Don Draper. I was disappointed but your review makes me want to give it another shot despite learning real quick not to be excited about a movie with Don Draper.
I think your first reaction was pretty reasonable. It's formulaic...it's just good for a formulaic film. And it gets credit for the story being so naturally dramatic that they didn't have to tweak it much to make it feel like a movie, which is kinda wild.

I was mostly interested in it because I remember this when it was in the news, because the cast was great, and because it's a great excuse to talk about baseball's international scene a bit more (though I'll certainly be doing that again later, with an emphasis on Japan).

Sedai

09-11-24, 01:08 PM

Was the wife and my 8th anniversary yesterday, so I made her a nice steak dinner and after Stelly went to bed, we plopped down and watched A League of Their Own (her choice). We had both seen it before, but of course ended up enjoying it just as much as ever.

This film often reminds me of my grandmother, as she was from the same generation as these ball players. The actress that plays the older version of Dottie nails the sort of wistful look as she is facing the camera thinking back to the old days of the league, just before we are plunged backward in history to the era most of the film takes place in. I recall seeing that look on my grandmother's face when I was a boy, but of course, I didn't understand what it meant at the time or what she was thinking about. My grandmother was very much a Dottie, and while she was a journalist during the war - a far cry from a ballplayer - she dressed similarly and had the same laid back ease about her. As I watched the film last night, my mind wandered, thinking about what it must have been like to live back then, when the entire country was rallied around the same cause - a cause that affected everyone both at home and abroad. All those people were truly in a league of their own, and not just the ballplayers.

Anyway. Great stuff, and the baseball is pretty fun, too.

Yoda

09-16-24, 10:31 AM

More coming! Have not forgotten, and I've got pieces of a couple other reviews done already. Fittingly, real-life baseball stuff (fall playoffs and our big year-end party) have delayed them a bit, but plenty more are on the way.

Takoma11

09-16-24, 10:37 AM

Happy Anniversary!

she was a journalist during the war

That's really cool.

Sedai

09-16-24, 12:37 PM

Happy Anniversary!

That's really cool.

What's really cool is that, although I didn't end up with much from my grandmother when she passed, I did end up with a CD of an interview she did with Noble Oil Co. when she passed, which was in relation to her coverage of and involvement with the CanOl project during WW II. Pretty cool stuff to listen to. I also received a color copy reproduction of her journal, which was found in an old filing cabinet in the 1990s.

Miss Vicky

11-14-24, 12:29 PM

What happened to this?

John W Constantine

11-14-24, 12:29 PM

I fell behind watching these.

Yoda

11-14-24, 12:46 PM

What happened to this?
My local softball leagues added a Late Fall season because we had so few rainouts, so that my season actually only ended a week ago! And then I immediately had a trip out of town.

I've got a few more reviews already half-written, will have another up soon. :up:

Yoda

11-28-24, 01:55 PM

Field of Dreams (1989)

In a sentence: A farmer begins hearing mysterious voices that implore him to build a baseball field.

103017

About eight or nine years ago, my softball team and I were getting ready for our first practice of the year. We all go a little stir crazy in the offseason, so we pounce on the first opportunity. We watch the forecast like hawks, and more often than not we get a day in February (!) that gets up into the 50s, which is more than enough to practice in if you're desperate.

As we started practicing a young man walked across the field and asked if he could play with us. We said yes (we always say yes)...and he was incredible. Fast, smart, and genuinely one of the kindest people I've ever had the pleasure of playing with. He said his name was Nate, and we promptly invited him to join the team. He told us later that, when he saw how warm it was going to be he threw a bunch of different equipment in his car—gloves, soccer cleats, a football—so that he'd be able to play with whoever he found in the park that day, no matter what they were playing.

He was so fast and impressive in the field that people would often ask me: "where did you find that guy?" And I always said the same thing:

"He just walked out of the corn one day."

103018

When you actually describe this movie, it sounds really weird. And not just weird in the sense of being unconventional, but in the sense of being unpredictable, even random. There's a farmer, and he's obsessed with Shoeless Joe Jackson, and he helps a novelist, and the two of them help an old man who never got to bat in the majors. Oh and there's a PTA meeting subplot about banning books that seems like it's only there to justify the novelist stuff.

They don't really link together in any logical way. You can't A-to-B your way from one thing to the next. Everything is A, to Q, to %, and then back to A except this time it's lowercase and for some reason it makes you think about your grandpa's house. If this film's plot were a series of directions, you couldn't say "turn left." You'd have to say stuff like: walk until you start to think about your childhood, and then follow the feeling of eating a corn dog. If you start thinking of your Senior Year home room it means you've gone too far.

Can it be made to make sense? Is trying to do that missing the point? There might be some connections there, so thin and ephemeral you'd need an EMF meter to detect them. Maybe Terrance Mann is just a cautionary tale about what happens if you're the kind of person who doesn't listen to the voices. Maybe he's there so they have an excuse to talk about banning books, which has some kind of connection with being banned from baseball. Maybe the focus is Shoeless Joe because losing the game he loved is like losing your father. I don't know. It all requires the same leap of faith the characters have to make.

-

Of course, everyone knows that Field of Dreams is about faith. It's also about marriage. But I repeat myself.

Ray's wife is the real hero of this film. All Ray does is hear a voice and do what it tells him. It takes faith on his part, and bravery for sure, even though approaching this movie as if it were reality would lead any sensible person to scream at Ray that he's an irresponsible idiot, possibly with an undiagnosed brain tumor. Like marriage, it only works if you decide to buy into it, immediately and completely.

...but he, at least, hears the voices. Annie doesn't. Ray has to trust that the mysterious voices are right, but Annie has to trust Ray in trusting that the mysterious voices are right. It's a much harder job. But they're married. They're a team. She's along for the ride. That doesn't mean unwavering support in any context. Sometimes it means the opposite: sometimes it means they're the one person in the world who can shake off the sign, who can tell you the difficult thing you need to hear. And that's the paradox of marriage, right there: simultaneously being the most supportive and the most critical person in someone else's life, and accepting the same in return.

-

Unfortunately, this leads to one of my biggest criticisms of the film: Annie's dream.

Annie is rightfully skeptical of Ray's plans. She doesn't give him an ultimatum (which demonstrates her ultimate faith) but she expresses her reticence...until she has a dream about Ray going to Fenway Park with Terrance Mann. It's a mystical coincidence she can't ignore. It's unlikely enough that it's almost as if she's hearing the voices, too. And it dilutes her faith, her sacrifice, and her contribution to both the marriage and the story.

I sort of get it. I'll argue against myself and say that there's a sweet sort of "marriage is a shared delusion" angle here. It's nice that they truly team up, that she's completely on board instead of just allowing it or just believing him. But there's a cost there, in that her belief is more impressive when she doesn't get to experience what Ray's experiencing.

Instead, the role of Real Person is played by Timothy Busfield, who gets the thankless job of being the only person in the fairy tale who cares about basic finance. He's the person we'd all be (I hope) if we saw this actually happening. He is a necessary foil, though I think there's a better version of this film where he's less aggressive, more sympathetic, and doesn't accidentally almost kill Ray's daughter, a clumsy addition seemingly only there to make it perfectly clear whose side we're supposed to be on.

The character brings to mind Frank Grimes, the famous Simpsons character cursed with real-world awareness about the absurdity of Homer's cartoonish nature, the way he Mr. Magoo's his way through everything. The only person who can see his plot armor.

How's the Baseball?
Fine, but there's not much of it. But Ray Liotta bats right-handed, and Shoeless Joe Jackson was famously left-handed. It's a small, but nearly unforgivable oversight, particularly given how theoretically easy it would've been to fake it a little and/or mirror a shot, or something. If this film were made a few decades later, there's no way they allow this.

Do They Win?
There's no game to win, but Ray and Annie are rewarded for their faith in the end, in a memorable aerial shot showing a line of cars stretching out of frame. These are "the people" who "will come." It seems happy, it seems sweet, until you remember Terrance's speech: "For it is money they have and peace they lack." Every car in the shot representing a peaceless person, searching for something. Nostalgic for a time they didn't live through which only kind of existed. An endless line of lost souls who would do anything for one more minute with someone they've lost, and basking in memories is the closest thing to it that they can find. Hoping that maybe if they sit down and watch the game, a ghost will come and sit next to them.

103019

In the same way The Natural lives on because its ending more than anything which came before it, I think it's fair to say Field of Dreams owes the bulk of its staying power to James Earl Jones' famous monologue.

Jones' monologue is exactly the sort of flowery stuff I've been filling these reviews with. And it's good, but kind of clumsy to include in the middle of a film. He might as well be looking right into the camera (and at one point he almost literally is). Here are the parts I want to highlight:

They'll come to Iowa for reasons they can't even fathom. They'll turn up your driveway, not knowing for sure why they're doing it. They'll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past.

"Of course, we won't mind if you look around," you'll say. "It's only twenty dollars per person." They'll pass over the money without even thinking about it. For it is money they have and peace they lack ...

... The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball.

America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time.

This field, this game -- it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again.

This idea of baseball as a metronome, a thing that is always there, is one of its best qualities. There are so, so many games. 162 per team in the regular season alone. For about six months each team has roughly a 90% chance of playing a game on a given day. In its heyday, people listened to it on the radio. While this is less engaging than watching it on TV, I think this played to its advantage: it made it the background of their lives. A constant presence underlying everything else they were doing. Folding laundry, eating, living. It weaved its way around people's day-to-day activities. It just kept going. It was always there, greeting you every morning and bidding you good night every evening. And you kept listening even when it frustrated you, because there was still a magic there.

Remind you of anything?

It's not for nothing that, when a team wins the World Series, all the players get rings. It's a partner you stick with through streaks and slumps, and it gives you a little symbolic promise that your faith will be rewarded. And the reminder of that promise is staring you in the face in every game you've ever seen: right in the middle of the field, a diamond.

-

Nate (which means "He gives") played with us for several seasons before moving to Arizona. When we got new jerseys made a couple of years ago, he ordered one, even though his days playing with us were over. I still miss him, and I still keep one eye out in every practice for someone looking for a place to play, looking for a team. Because some day, someone else will walk out of the corn.

103020

seanc

11-28-24, 02:42 PM

Good review Chris. You capture the ethereal quality of the movie very well. The hotdog murder scene does stick out in an otherwise fairytale quality story too, good point. I rewatched this for the first time in a lot of years last year, and was reminded of why I loved it. Can certainly see why the movie you describe wouldn’t work for everyone though.

iluv2viddyfilms

11-28-24, 11:54 PM

Great review of Field of Dreams Yoda! I have something of a connection to that film.

Field of Dreams came out in 1989 when I was seven, so yes being in Iowa it was all the rage. In fact in the early to mid 1990s I was living in a little town call Marion over by Cedar Rapids, Iowa and it's an hour's drive up to Dyersville. I actually played on a traveling Little League team when I was 11 and 12 years old, so we went to Dyersville and played against them and they smacked us. The joke was that the kids were perhaps just a little bit older than the 12 3/4 years of age cutoff or whatever it was.

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/630a76d9a964ca5d8d0e4ff6/5066e167-0713-4f2f-8ed6-4b08dd11a32a/DJI_0366.JPG

We didn't play on the Field of Dreams field, as that was a tourist attraction, BUT it was open to the public to play catch, etc and at least two or three times I went there and played catch with my dad when I was a kid. I don't live in that part of Iowa anymore, and it's probably pushing 30 years since I've been to Dyersville, so I have no clue what the field is like now, although I think I remember reading and hearing stuff about how they play at least one Major League Baseball game there per year.

By the time I was in high school I didn't live in that area and sports were not a thing for me anymore as by that point I was really starting to get into film and also video games, school, hanging out with friends, and also working two jobs. So even though Field of Dreams was a small part of my childhood, it's just a film that I honestly never thought was that great even the first time I saw it when I was around eight or nine and we checked a VHS copy out at the local library. Yeah at the time it was cool that it was filmed in Iowa, but as far as the movie went, it didn't do a lot for me. Even at the tender age of nine I think I understood how silly the premise was and how sappy it all might have been. Certainly I had no ability or sense of how to explain it, I just knew it was. At that point a handful of my favorite films were (and honestly still are) The Princess Bride, The Empire Strikes Back, The Goonies, Gremlins, Beauty and the Beast, The Land Before Time, Joe Versus the Volcano and soon to be White Men Can't Jump, City Slickers, and Terminator 2. I still love each of those to death even re-watching them as an adult, so my temperament and personality, even as a child, never lent itself to the type of sentimental material, mystical/supernatural light, heavy on symbolism and nostalgia type of material that Field of Dreams clearly is right at home within. Yeah, it's not really about baseball it's about making connections and time spent and missed between a father and son that once it's gone you can never get it back.

https://www.travelandleisure.com/thmb/LQmaRaViTUOfK1120pzaRgMDDfU=/1500x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/field-of-dreams-home-iowa-STAYFOD0318-60b5f91823974fa9828a6e8c2a0a8e39.jpg

It's just something about that material always felt heavy handed. Yoda is spot on with his assessment of the plot going everywhere and taking us on a road trip from Iowa to Baltimore and back, so it is a film that the viewer has to have buy-in right away otherwise, it just won't work; it's far too big of a pill to swallow. If you're the type of person who loves a Frank Capra film, some Steven Spielberg films, or even a film like A Guy Named Joe, I'm certain that A Field of Dreams won't seem like too much of a stretch. But yeah the premise of a man hearing voices, plowing down his cornfield, the dreams, the wife having the same dream (I agree Yoda with your criticism there), ghosts from the White Sox coming out to play baseball, and then people driving from around the country to see all this play out... wrapped in a blanket of sentimental musical score and some scenes of the sunsetting and monologues about having a game of catch with ghost dad... again I completely get how this stuff would have appeal and Field of Dreams DOES have appeal apparently as it's one of the most beloved films of the late 1980s, but it's more than I can really handle.

Spot on too about the wife being the person in the film who takes the real leap of faith in going along with the husband saying he heard voices to plow down their livelihood. This sort of thing would likely end up in divorce court either immediately or after the financial ruin and bankruptcy... assuming they don't have the land paid off and can't liquidate or sell it AND it's highly unlikely that while their P&C or farm insurance will pay for wind and hail damage to crops, I don't think it provides coverages for loss of crop due to crazy farmer mowing his field down.

Also of note too, right now a quick 15 second google search revealed that farm prices around Dyersville are on average $13,000/acre (which is fairly low end of average for Iowa standards). In addition to the tax write offs and farm subsidies farmers are receiving today, it's safe to say that in 2024, even if we could get behind the premise of voices talking to a farmer, the real sell and bridge too far would be to think a farmer in Iowa has any chance at financial ruin. The richest people in this state are the farmers and landowners and Iowa has the least amount of forest and public land as a percentage to land area than any state in the entire nation AND in many of these rural communities like Dyersville of under 10,000 people the wealth disparity is some of the highest in the country. We have many farmers and small business owners who are in the agricultural industry who, and I shit you not, are worth millions of dollars and more often tens of millions of dollars with a sizeable number of Iowa farmers who are worth well into the hundreds of millions of dollars. These are people who are living next to their neighbors working at the local Casey's convenience store and Walmart for $14 or $15 an hour, renting the roof over their head, with a net worth of under $10,000 and $5,000 of that is wrapped up in their rapidly depreciating 20 year old 2003 Buick Lesabre, which is now more rust than car.

So while the Kinsella's during the tail end of the farm crisis in the the 1980s might have been struggling a bit financially and that plot point being an easy sell... now, if transposed into 2024, all those scenes would play as a huge gigantic joke.

If I were to grade Field of Dreams, it's probably the quintessential "C" average film for me. If it's on, sure I can watch it and enjoy it, but it doesn't really do anything for me. Just a well crafted, but far-fetched story and I know why people love it and I'm perfectly OK with that.

https://content.fortune.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Field-of-Dreams-MLB-Iowa.jpg?w=1440&q=75

iluv2viddyfilms

11-29-24, 12:08 AM

Oh and while I'm thinking of it, Field of Dreams might be the most famous story about a voice from beyond and ghost dad (forget the Cosby thing) since Hamlet... although in Shakespeare's play he wanted more from his son than just to build a baseball field and play catch.

Hrmm... there's an idea... an Iowa version of Hamlet... your Uncle, my brother, had a thing for your mom, so he killed me, married her and stole the farm! I really, really want the Iowa corn field, combine/tractor/Ford F-150 driving, level B-road muddin', levi's jeans and Bass Pro Shop trucker cap wearin', can of chaw in the back pocket, and an old rusty pair of pliers on the belt Iowa version of Hamlet. Please God make this happen!

Yoda

11-29-24, 12:14 PM

Good stuff, appreciate you sharing. :up:

Yeah, I read a review that basically pilloried the film, and the central tack was that it was piggybacking on people's nostalgia/unresolved father issues/stuff like that, and that in many cases the sheer potency of those feelings was making the film feel more meaningful than it really was. That's a pretty dense thicket to untangle, since you might say doing some version of that is a totally legitimate thing for a story to try to do. But I think most people would agree that it can be clumsy or it can be deft, and I think it would be hard to argue, in good faith, that Field of Dreams is deft about it. I say this as someone who still got caught up in it, pun absolutely not intended.

But I try to meet a film where it is, and for these reviews I'm doing the extra-layer-thing of evaluating movies based on how well they express something about baseball, and I have to admit it at least sorta-kinda does that. To the degree to which it is cloying or manipulative, it can partially thank the way baseball is culturally tied up in those potent topics to begin with (more on that soon).

matt72582

11-29-24, 02:41 PM

is "Eight Men Out" a good movie?

Yoda

11-30-24, 01:08 PM

is "Eight Men Out" a good movie?
Stay tuned, that's one of the very next reviews coming. Possibly (probably?) the next, actually.

Yoda

11-30-24, 01:10 PM

I think I remember reading and hearing stuff about how they play at least one Major League Baseball game there per year.
Yeah, they do something like this. I forget exactly where, I just remember it's not at the actual field from the film. And while they work hard to make it seem folksy, the overhead shots show a fair bit of construction so they can get thousands (rather than dozens) of fans in to see it.

And naturally they have players walk out of the cornfields, and they have Kevin Costner there, and the players wear throwback uniforms, and so on. It's kind of cynical...but it still got me a bit. It probably got a lot of people. Even though there were all sorts of things to remind you of how contrived it was, like a bunch of TV cameras, or seeing players in those uniforms who weren't even allowed to play in the Majors when they were first worn, or seeing the modern day Shoeless Joe equivalent with a neck tattoo.

Nevermind all that! Look, they're coming out of the corn! Feel like a kid, damn it!

TONGO

11-30-24, 01:41 PM

I was too young when I saw Field of Dreams, and that was the only time seeing it. Didnt appreciate it. Im gonna give it another try now though. Good writeup Chris.

Wooley

12-01-24, 04:15 AM

iluv2viddyfilms

12-01-24, 04:37 AM

Man, Yoda, I gotta tell ya, I couldn't agree less on Annie's Dream.
Maybe that's not quite right, if you think the movie is all about Faith, then maybe I can see your point? But mostly, no, Annie's involvement in the experience was great for me it made her a better character and that/it made the movie stronger for me. I love that Annie is on board, fully, for all of it from fairly early on.

Interesting debate, I side with Yoda on this because, as you point out, I do see the movie about Annie's faith in her husband and also not only that he husband actually heard something, but also that the thing he heard is not his insanity, but a real voice or sign from beyond. It's that whole leap of faith thing and the side characters and townsfolk saying he's crazy corroborate that message that it's about faith. Also the bit with James Earl Jones' character and the doctor played by Burt Lancaster too.

If Annie also has the same dream, it's more than coincidence AND no longer is she "blind trusting" her husband.

There's a wonderful episode of "The Andy Griffith Show" titled "Mr. McBeevee in which Opie tells Andy about this strange person he sees in the woods. The description is far-fetched, like something out of a fairy tale and no one believes Opie. When Andy presses him to tell the truth Opie swears he is telling the truth. He is then punished for lying, but eventually much to the dismay of Aunt Bee and Barney Fife, Andy relents and un-grounds Opie. When asked why... Barnie is bewildered at Andy and says something to the effect of, "You don't mean to say you believe all that nonsense from Opie!!!??" Andy says, "No, no I don't not all, but I do believe in Opie." As it turns out Opie was trying to describe a repair lineman in the woods, which all makes sense, but six or seven year old Opie was unable to know or understand what he saw so he did his best to piece it together which ended up sounding fantastical.

The point is Andy decided to stick with his son because he knows his son wouldn't press a lie that far. By having Annie going along with Kevin Costner's character only so far... until she has the same dream, kind of undermines that a bit. Now if she would have gone along, but with reservations, but go along still the same until the White Sox started coming out of the baseball field... it would have been better for the themes and world the film was trying to create. But then again "The Andy Griffith Show" had much better writers than Field of Dreams.

Yoda

12-01-24, 09:36 AM

Gideon58

12-01-24, 11:14 AM

Hardball (2001)
Sorry Yoda just discovered this thread. Never seen this movie

Gideon58

12-01-24, 11:18 AM

The Natural (1984)
It is a myth. That’s the whole point of the movie I think

Yoda

12-01-24, 11:25 AM

It is a myth. That’s the whole point of the movie I think
Aye, but I'm confused, since I say exactly this in the review...?

Yoda

12-01-24, 11:25 AM

Sorry Yoda just discovered this thread. Never seen this movie
Well, it's not very good. Not sure if you read the review but it ends like this:

This isn't a good movie, or a good baseball movie, but there's an awful lot to be learned from it. It's the kind of genre exercise that should never be watched, only studied.

Wooley

12-01-24, 01:13 PM

It's a reasonable position. I tried to give credit to the contrary view:

Here's my thought: I think people like Annie's dream because they're supposed to. She's the most natural impediment to the "progress" of all the crazy stuff, so when she's on board, the audience gets excited. It's a natural thing, I think it's just a misstep not so much that they do it, but that the filmmakers put themselves in that either-or situation.

So yeah, I think it comes down to what you think the most important ideas in the film are. Is it about dreams, which is served well by one character after another being won over by someone else's passion? Or is it about faith, in which case it's better served by characters doubting and going along with it anyway?

Well, there's three things that I thought were important about Annie's Dream:
1. It makes sure that she's not the dead-weight or the person trying to stop the dream and engages her more in the story. She would have been a throwaway "downer-wife" character otherwise.
2. The movie is very much about family and Annie is the wife of John's son and mother of his grandchild that he never got to meet and in the end of the movie, John reuniting with his family is what the entire film is about. So her being included in this early on makes sense to me, more sense than her being excluded.
3. A lot of the third act would have to be different if she didn't know and their relationship would be rather strained, she would have to be looking for ways to protect her family from this, possibly going behind his back, her relationship with her brother would be totally different, and the whole tone of the movie would be darker... and of course, when it was revealed to her she would basically be reduced to, "Oh, my man was right all along, I should have listened to my man!", which would have just been dreadful.
Anyway, that's my take, obviously mileage varies. It just happens that Annie is one of my favorite characters of that period of movies so this aggression will not stand!

Gideon58

12-01-24, 01:25 PM

Well, it's not very good. Not sure if you read the review but it ends like this:

I guess I just liked it more than you did. Pretty sure I rated it 3 and a half

Yoda

12-01-24, 01:33 PM

I guess I just liked it more than you did. Pretty sure I rated it 3 and a half
That's fine, this thread is full of people questioning my ratings. I'm just confused by the part where you say it being a myth is the "whole point of the movie" because I said the same thing in the review. Which I take to mean you didn't read it. Which is also fine, but is obviously going to lead to some awkwardness and confusion if you happen to respond by saying the same thing the review says. Particularly when framed as some kind of counter/disagreement.

Yoda

12-01-24, 01:34 PM

I guess I just liked it more than you did. Pretty sure I rated it 3 and a half
Also, I assume you replied to the wrong post here. The one you replied to was about Hardball, which you said you'd never seen. Unless you watched it between that post and this one.

Yoda

12-01-24, 02:00 PM

Well, there's three things that I thought were important about Annie's Dream:
1. It makes sure that she's not the dead-weight or the person trying to stop the dream and engages her more in the story. She would have been a throwaway "downer-wife" character otherwise.
This was what I was getting at in the previous post, yeah: obviously it excites the audience because now Roy can just go, just follow the crazy dream logic. It's one of those things audiences like even though it'd be bad/enabling in real life, like the (in)famous example of Skyler in Breaking Bad.

That said, I think the film already kinda solved this by having her just trust him. She threw up a few small impediments at first (which I'd argue is necessary, since we need to feel how crazy the whole endeavor is for it to feel valuable and magical to pursue in the first place), but mostly came around. She can enable it by trusting him rather than knowing he's right.

2. The movie is very much about family and Annie is the wife of John's son and mother of his grandchild that he never got to meet and in the end of the movie, John reuniting with his family is what the entire film is about. So her being included in this early on makes sense to me, more sense than her being excluded.
Hm. I feel like this is one of those things that could go either way.

3. A lot of the third act would have to be different if she didn't know and their relationship would be rather strained, she would have to be looking for ways to protect her family from this, possibly going behind his back, her relationship with her brother would be totally different, and the whole tone of the movie would be darker... and of course, when it was revealed to her she would basically be reduced to, "Oh, my man was right all along, I should have listened to my man!", which would have just been dreadful.
Yeah, I'll take what we got over the opposite extreme, where she's just a roadblock who gets won over in the end. But I like the middle the most, where she has a natural, understandable reticence, but simply trusts him.

Either way, I do like the tension between blood relation and marital there, how she has to side with one idea of family over another. That's always a rich dramatic vein.

Anyway, that's my take, obviously mileage varies. It just happens that Annie is one of my favorite characters of that period of movies so this aggression will not stand!
She's pretty damn memorable even as-is, yeah. Certainly more memorable than Costner's character and about on par with Jones'. Partially it's the writing but I'm inclined to mostly chalk it up to Amy Madigan.

Wooley

12-02-24, 11:33 AM

She's pretty damn memorable even as-is, yeah. Certainly more memorable than Costner's character and about on par with Jones'. Partially it's the writing but I'm inclined to mostly chalk it up to Amy Madigan.

Yeah, I really liked Amy Madigan back in the day. Even in Streets Of Fire, I felt like she understood the assignment of playing a cartoonish version of her character. Paxton actually did that pretty well too, now that I think about it.
But anyway, I understand what you're saying, I just think I very much would prefer the way that's in the film versus another version, if it existed, where she's just "trusting her man" the whole time. Especially because the movie has a pattern to it. All the major characters have their moment when the truth is revealed to them. Ray, Annie, Terry, and Mark each have a moment, in succession, when it is revealed, and it gives a sort of rhythm to the film. And each person is given that reveal when it is necessary for them to know to bring the final even together. They could have revealed themselves to Mark at any time, it would seem, but they waited until the 11th hour to let him see it. And if Mark doesn't see it, they lose their home... and everything ends. Likewise, if Annie doesn't have the dream, Ray doesn't leave the farm to go find Terry. It's like a passing of the baton from one character to the next to get everyone there at the end.
Now an interesting question is when did Karin find out? And why?

Holden Pike

12-02-24, 11:46 AM

is "Eight Men Out" a good movie?
No. Eight Men Out is a great movie.

Austruck

12-03-24, 08:09 PM

She's pretty damn memorable even as-is, yeah. Certainly more memorable than Costner's character and about on par with Jones'. Partially it's the writing but I'm inclined to mostly chalk it up to Amy Madigan.

Agreed that it's Madigan. I mean, I don't even agree with some of her over-the-top self-righteous feminism in some spots, but she's so fabulous that I get all caught up in her rants and end up smiling and loving it. She's got way more energy here than Costner does in the whole movie.

Yoda

12-15-24, 09:35 AM

More soon! I actually just got back from Pirates Fantasy Camp in Florida. An amazing experience that, between softball and all these reviews, probably makes this one of the more baseball-heavy years of my life. Still got some classic titles to get to, and should be able to have some more up soon with things relaxing over the holidays a bit.

Yoda

02-12-25, 01:06 PM

Note: I wrote some of this back when the film was released. I've edited some portions and added several others so that the tone fits the rest of reviews in this series.

Moneyball (2011)

In a sentence: The true story of Oakland Athletics GM Billy Beane trying to field a contender with a meager payroll.

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I have a friend named Mike. Mike is one of the sweetest people I know. I met him in a Sunday league a few years ago and liked him immediately. He was a team player in every sense: positive, encouraging, and he made a full effort on every play. And if you just walked by him you wouldn't necessarily guess he was any good, he just looked like a random middle-aged guy, struggling with his weight like so many others. But he was better than he looked. He could hit, he was faster than you expected, and he had a wonderful penchant for making diving stops and other really tough plays.

And that, I think, is one of the things I liked best about him: I liked that he was a secret. I liked that thoughtless people would look right past him, generalizing as people necessarily do. There are few things I like better on the teams I manage (2-3, at the moment) than finding hidden gems, people who are underappreciated for some facile reason or another. When I think about that, when I think about finding diamonds-for-the-diamond-in-the-rough, I think about Mike first.

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My grandfather was a baseball scout. When I tell people this, they're tempted to assume this neatly explains my love for the game, but the truth is we weren't close, and aren't related by blood. I didn't even particularly like him. But it still seems fitting, somehow.

Nobody else in my family, other than my grandmother (his widow) loves baseball. None of them are even really sports fans at all. This is incredibly weird, especially in a big sports town like Pittsburgh. But it's probably contributed to my love of the game; not so much that I love it, but how. Because instead of sports (baseball in particular) being a thing I share with my loved ones, it's become a way for me to find new people to love. My only outlet for my love of the game is to form new friendships with other people who love it. I think I'd do this a lot less, and baseball/softball would be a much smaller part of my social life, if those kinds of connections preexisted within my family. But they don't. Baseball is where I found my chosen family, as the Millennials call it. The group you decide to love, as opposed to the ones that come preinstalled with your existence. In other words: your teammates.

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Nothing changes until it does. And up until that point, it often seems like the universe itself has conspired to stop it from changing. But "there is nothing as powerful"—an old Victor Hugo quote goes—"as an idea whose time has come." Moneyball is about one of those ideas.

This is one of those films that is "based on a true story." And while "based on" is usually handwaving away tons of creative liberties, in this case the major beats are pretty accurate. Technically, it's based on a book of the same name which is about the true story of Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane (played here by Brad Pitt, whose physical metamorphosis into Robert Redford is nearly complete). In his youth Beane was a can't miss prospect who missed anyway, a fact which dovetails so well with his general managerial ethos that you'd swear it was one of the story's creative liberties, but it isn't.

Beane decided that the way baseball players were evaluated was fundamentally flawed. He believed that too much emphasis was placed on trivial things like how a player looked, or the amount of confidence they exhibited. That traditional baseball scouts were always looking at potential rather than reality, and thus gravitated towards archetypal players: handsome and statuesque, with a broad cross-section of skills that could each develop, rather than players who simply produced. And he was right.

Beane also decided that, even if you could get your personnel past such superficial things, the statistics used to evaluate a player's worth to the team were also flawed. He was right about this, too. The case study for this in both the book and the film is On Base Percentage, which is now widely understood to be a much better measure of a player's offensive contribution than the far more historically emphasized Batting Average. And if any of this sounds confusing, worry not: Assistant GM Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) will be your sabermetric sherpa throughout the film.

Oakland's necessity is the mother of Beane's inventions, because as the film opens a season-ending disappointment has been compounded by the departure of three high-profile free agents. Oakland is a small fish adrift in the ocean of baseball finances, so Beane is forced to find ways to do more with less. Beane exploits underutilized statistics like On Base Percentage and other strategic principles to attempt to replace these players for pennies on the dollar. He does this with discarded players plucked from baseball's scrap heap that he concludes are valuable, but not properly valued, leading to the superficially familiar tale of a rag-tag roster that shocks the experts and finds a way to win.

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And win they do. This is a movie about sports, so I will not have spoiled your ability to enjoy it by informing you that the team ultimately exhibits some level of success, though to what extent I won't here divulge. The important thing is not their ultimate failure or success, but the struggle necessary to even attempt such a thing. New ideas do not merely have the burden of being better than the old ones: they must also be stronger than the accumulated psychic inertia of the old idea. New ideas may possess the truth, but the old ideas possess a formidable rolodex, and a perennial presence in the minds of an industry that buys them a lot of goodwill. Old ideas have entrenchments and bunkers and garrisons that must be sieged before the new idea can even come face to face with the old. The new idea must be arduously pushed to the top of the hill, but once there it rolls rapidly down the other side.

The film exhibits a deep authenticity; Pitt carries himself in precisely the way baseball people do. And being the grandson of a baseball scout, I can confirm that all the scouts herein are pretty much exactly like him: they have short hair, tanned skin, strawberry noses, and deep existential misgivings about computers.

Moneyball was adapted for the screen by Aaron Sorkin, who between this effort and The Social Network seems to be writing screenplays based on dares. Here again he's taken an ostensibly boring topic and made it entertaining. Largely stripped from the film is his famed reliance on characters walking and talking ("pedeconferencing," as it's come to be known), but we get a fun variation of it in a scene set during Major League Baseball's trading deadline, where Pitt's character makes a series of interconnected phone calls that resembles nothing so much as a waltz.

Regardless of what happened on the field, the ideas depicted in this film have won out so overwhelmingly that Beane and his ilk have had to move on to new methods of evaluating talent because the ones depicted here have already become the new conventional wisdom. Moneyball is not about baseball, or even about money. It's about the difficulty of change and the often damaged people that are the only ones willing to lead the charge through the brick wall. It's about the perceived impossibility of reform right up until the moment that it suddenly becomes inevitable. People struggle and fight and kick and scream and gnash and nothing happens. Nothing changes.

Until it does.

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Mike expressed a lot of excitement and gratitude when I asked him to play for us. And he's kept expressing it since. Over and over each year he'd tell me all over again how happy he was to play for us, how grateful he was for the opportunity, how appreciative he was to feel like he belonged somewhere.

At first I just chalked this up to him being a positive, happy guy, and that's part of it. But just this past fall, after years of playing together, he explained: he spent his childhood bouncing around from one foster home to another. He never felt like he belonged anywhere. That's why it means so much to him. That's why he plays the way he does.

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