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.
In a sentence: An aging pitcher starts a game in Yankee Stadium while struggling with the end of a relationship.
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.
How's the Baseball?
Quite good. Costner famously has always wanted to play baseball, 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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
I can see that. I have seen the movie a handful of times but it’s been quite a while now. Wonder if I would feel the same.
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?
__________________
"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra
You mean exactly the same way Nuke LaLoosh talks to himself on the mound in Bull Durham?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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%.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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 becoming 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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