Baseball movies, damn it, BASEBALL MOVIES!

My feeling is that it's pretty hard to beat all the same movies that everyone always talks about, but that the only one that conveys what baseball is really all about for pro players is "Bang the Drum Slowly." Forget DeNiro's risible baseball skills and the main plot: all the card games, all the boredom and anxiety!

And then there is the real world.

And I will take Bull Durham.

Jonathan Quayle Higgins is probably right, though, in re: BNB.

Ugh. The book was so much better. The complexity of the various plots/subplots as well as the large number of characters involved are far better suited for a book. I didn't feel as though I learned anything from the movie.

Oh, wait: I guess I learned a lot about Kathleen Turner's nipples from Body Heat!

Also, I thought Crash's thing was that he GOT his cup of coffee, and spilled it all over himself.

i don't think i used the phrase 'coming of age' as it's intended and i'm really not sure about 'seminal' but oh well.

i will type for you the classic lines, when i recall them.

Field of Dreams is great, 'about baseball' or not.

The best scene in Bull Durham, without question, is the "DO YOU WANT ME TO CALL YOU A COCKSUCKER" scene.

The Bad News Bears is the best. Apart from the Kelly / Amanda deus ex machinas, which never would have happened in MY little league, it was about as true to life as any baseball movie I've ever seen. And funny and awesome and memorable too.

I've never read the book, but Eight Men Out was awesome.

"The Scout"
"The Fan"
"The Slugger's Wife"

"The Fan" deserves a very special place in cinema hell for this quadruple crown --- horrible performances by DeNiro, Snipes, Del Torro and SMASH YOU OVER THE SKULL direction from hackmeister Tony Scott.

"The Scout" almost gets a half star because Albert Brooks went on Letterman the day of release and claimed he promised a dying boy the film would be number 1 at the box office that weekend.

I guess the kid died.

you're right, i had a crush on her when i was 10, too.

was there REALLY a need to remake the king of comedy as a baseball movie?

you've got to hand it to jerry lewis, though...

Chickenshit Reagan-zeitgeist trashing of a good book.

There's a great sequence in Gregg Araki's new "Mysterious Skin" of teen hustler Joseph Gordon Levitt getting 'service' under the table while he does PA at the local smalltown Kansas beer league games. (And then there's the Little League pedophilia.)

A critic wants to destroy his play
his marriage is ending
and tonight...
His Team is One Game Away.

-> GAME 6

Starring Michael Keaton, Griffin Dunne, Ari Graynor,
Shalom Harlow, Bebe Neuwirth, Catherine O'Hara,
and Robert Downey, Jr.

Directed by Michael Hoffman

Written by Don DeLillo

Produced by Amy Robinson, Griffin Dunne,
Leslie Urdang, Christina Weiss Lurie.
Executive Producers: Michael Nozik,
David Skinner, Bryn Iler

http://moma.org/exhibitions/film_media/2006/Baseball.html

I HAVE seen Headin' Home with Ruth, albeit a crappy print.

http://www.thebasesareloaded.com

Oliver Platt as Steinbrenner
John Turturro (in latex ears) as Billy Martin
Daniel Sunjata (from Broadway's Take Me Out, and way too gorgeous for this role) as Reggie.

I won't paste the whole Times story, but Graig Nettles says Turturro as Martin is "scary."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/26/sports/baseball/26bronx.html

HARRISON FORD AS THURMAN MUNSON, I DEMAND IT

oh hell no -- Liz Smith via CSTB:

The life story of Dodgers’ manager Tommy Lasorda is reported on the “fast track for development” at Miramax. Al Pacino has “expressed interest” in playing the famously irascible Lasorda with Michelle Pfeiffer a “possibility” as his wife. Translation–don’t dress for the premiere. There’s many a slip twixt the “fast track” and the first day of shooting. Still and all, for the life of me I can’t imagine Al Pacino on a baseball field. But, that’s why they call it acting!

A Ballplayer Seeks a Hit, a Hit Film

By JOHN ANDERSON

WHEN Anna Boden stepped up to introduce her new movie, “Sugar,” to the opening-night crowd of the Dominican Republic Global Film Festival in November, she felt like a rookie reliever staring down at an All-Star lineup. “It was totally nerve racking,” she said. “I was introducing the film and looking out at these huge stars. Sammy Sosa. Pedro Martinez. Big Papi.”

“And the president of the country,” added Ryan Fleck, her co-writer and director.

But even the country’s president, Leonel Fernández, would defer to the star power of his island nation’s leading export: big-time baseball players. Since Ozzie Virgil joined the New York Giants in 1956, the Dominican Republic has provided the American major leagues with talent like the Hall of Famer Juan Marichal, the Alou brothers, Rico Carty, Manny Mota and present-day stars like the aforementioned David Ortiz (Big Papi) of the Boston Red Sox, Manny Ramirez of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Robinson Canó of the New York Yankees and José Reyes of the New York Mets. Like the N.B.A. in urban centers across America, beisbol for Dominicans is seen as the quickest, most glamorous route out of poverty, which in the Dominican Republic is as hard to ignore as the Caribbean Sea.

A talented player, a genuine prospect, is burdened not just with his own future but also that of his entire family. That desperate desire to escape, against almost impossible odds, exposes him to cultural discombobulation and the seamier aspects of the business of baseball. The psychic dislocation that results for the vast majority of those strivers, those that don’t make it, is the focus of “Sugar.”

The choice of “Sugar,” which opens April 3, seems an odd one for Mr. Fleck and Ms. Boden. Their previous film together, “Half Nelson,” which earned an Academy Award nomination for its star, Ryan Gosling, was about a drug-addicted New York City teacher. And Ms. Boden was only vaguely interested in baseball. (“My parents were basketball people,” she said.)

Though Mr. Fleck, who grew up in Oakland, Calif., remains an Athletics fan (and still watch games online), it wasn’t the sport that hooked them. It was discovering, after reading an article that referenced the Mets’ Dominican camp, that every major league team save the Milwaukee Brewers runs an academy in the country.

“We thought: ‘There are so many guys who go through this process every year. What happens to the guys who go through the process, and don’t make it?’ ” he said.

The stories informing “Sugar” initially came from places like Roberto Clemente Park in the Bronx, where players who have fallen short of the Dream still play a high level of amateur ball. Many of them, according to Mr. Fleck and Ms. Boden, were very open about their “failures.” Others were not.

“A lot of young guys we talked to hadn’t really come to terms with it at all,” Mr. Fleck said. “They tell us, ‘I’m going to go for a tryout with the Yankees,’ you know, some kind of open tryout in Staten Island. They were still optimistic they were going to make it.”

All signs in “Sugar” say the hero is going to make it too. Played by the newcomer (and nonactor) Algenis Perez Soto, the talented Miguel Santos, nicknamed Sugar, survives the player mill of a Dominican baseball academy and is drafted by a professional team. As a result he’s sent to a minor-league team in Iowa, where the non-English-speaking Sugar is given a crash course in Middle American: the members of his host family are older, conservative baseball nuts; the granddaughter is born-again and tries to orchestrate Sugar’s religious conversion. The combination of a new world and a new level of competition disorients the once-grounded player.

Casting an unknown as Sugar “was pretty much a requirement of the role,” Mr. Fleck said. “How many 20-year-old Dominican baseball player-actors could we find?”

But they were out there, on the field.

“My brother told me about some auditions,” Mr. Perez Soto said during a visit to New York from Boston, where he now lives. “But I didn’t go to the casting, because there was a baseball game at the same time.” It was only after the casting call was over, and Mr. Fleck and Ms. Boden came to the nearby field where Mr. Perez Soto was playing, that the young man was invited to audition.

“They asked me if I wanted to be an actor,” he said, “and I said yes, but only because I thought that’s what they wanted to hear. ‘Yeah, I want to be an actor.’ But no, not really.”

He has since changed his mind.

“Of course everyone in the Dominican Republic has a plan to come here, even if it’s just to see New York,” Mr. Perez Soto said. “I had a plan to come here, but it was supposed to be because of the baseball, you know? I thought I’d be signed by a team and come here to play, and become a star like the others, but it didn’t happen to me.”

By making the movie he did get to meet some of his idols, as well as the former pitcher José Rijo, who was a consultant on the film. And that connection brought the filmmakers a little closer to the problems bedeviling Dominican baseball than they would have liked.

Last month Mr. Rijo was fired from his job as a special assistant to Jim Bowden, the general manager of the Washington Nationals, amid a continuing federal investigation into whether scouts and executives took kickbacks from signing bonuses promised to Dominican players. Mr. Bowden resigned soon afterward, denying what he called false allegations by the press.

But the high-profile departures have spotlighted the unsavory practices of local talent brokers known as buscones, who sign players as young as 10. (Dominican players are not subject to the major league draft and can be signed by any team when they turn 16.) The brokers have been accused of feeding players steroids, altering players’ birth certificates to make them appear younger (and thus more attractive to teams) and grabbing an exorbitant share of signing bonuses.

In an early scene in “Sugar” one of Miguel’s teammates talks about his own deal, and with a sigh says his manager will be taking 40 percent.

“Thirty to 40 percent is pretty standard,” Mr. Fleck said. “Any industry where there’s a lot of money to be made and there are poor people involved, there’s going to be some exploitation on some level. But we really didn’t want to focus on that.”

Nor did they want to focus on drugs, principally steroids, the use of which is commonplace in the Dominican Republic. What the filmmakers were after was a new way of telling an age-old story, of hopes, dreams and what happens when life throws you a change-up. “I’ve been improving my English,” said Mr. Perez Soto. “I’ve been practicing and improving every day, because I want to be ready when this movie comes out. I want to be ready in case something else is coming.”

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

no one else seen Sugar?

Seeing it tonight.

what'd u think?

It was sold out! I'm seeing it Saturday night now!

Okay I saw it. It was great.

loved his awkward deal w/ the blond Iowa girl

Yeah that was great. Actually the whole family interaction was pretty awesome. Also liked the direction the last 45 minutes goes a lot.

Do you know what minor league ballpark they were playing in (with the bridge in the background)?

Davenport IA, the franchise is Quad Cities (Cardinals affiliate).

http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20090330&content_id=546891&vkey=news_milb&fext=.jsp

Super pretty.

I do wonder if it's really true that a Single A team with a strong Dominican pipeline wouldn't have a real translator for the players.

just saw a pretty good doc feature on Luis Tiant that ESPN will air this summer.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51E9KJQSS0L._SS500_.jpg

Liked the Tiant doc on ESPN after the game, as noted above

saw this the other night:

http://jewsandbaseball.com/

Follows the Ken Burns style, and Hank Greenberg has his own doc, but told me some things I didn't know (Rod Carew did NOT convert; Elliott Maddox did), and the coup is that Koufax sat for an interview. Marvin Miller says he looked around at the plaintiff table at the Curt Flood case and realized everybody was black or Jewish.

morbs i bet you love billy crystal joint "61*"

Thomas Jane kills it as Mantle in 61! Ol' tommy jane, yessir~

Sugar is really, really good. Also Mr. Baseball is kinda cool

61 was really corny but i was like "wow how did they get roger maris to come back from dead, become young again and play himself tbh"

at least that cornpone phony-baloney The Pride of the Yankees had the real Ruth, albeit not whoring or winning a trophy in a farting contest.

Hah, I forgot Ruth was in PotY. I loved that movie when I was a kid! The speech at the end ;_;

so Alex Gibney has made a documentary about Steve Bartman and other sports scapegoats:

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=13428741

Don DeLillo wrote a baseball movie?? The things one learns on ILX.

I'd like to see Rhubarb, with Ray Milland.

http://www.movieposter.com/posters/archive/main/111/MPW-55717

How the heck did he make that movie AFTER The Lost Weekend?

http://www.emovieposter.com/images/books/sports/53.jpg

It is apparent that we need to arrange a Ray Milland baseball movie night.

"Field of Erroneous Scorekeeping, more like."

http://flipflopflyball.tumblr.com/post/8740392528/field-of-dreams-opened-in-cinemas-on-april-21

Cint Eastwood to play a scout SLOWLY GOING BLIND!

http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Matthew-Lillard-Joining-Clint-Eastwood-Trouble-With-Curve-28893.html

the BP staff gives some dubious recognition to baseball films like Bad Lieutenant and The Fan (SPOILER!):

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=15939

next year's Robinson pic 42... look who's playing Branch Rickey

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0453562/combined

I guess that means Spike Lee's long-rumored Jackie film has been abandoned?

afaik it was when Denzel got too old

Doesn't really look like an actual baseball movie:

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

Laughed at all the non-joke content.

"We need to appeal to white men over the age of 80 and Justin Timberlake fans."

"You don't know anything about the game--a computer can't tell if a kid's got instincts."

Somebody didn't like Moneyball.

someone actually wrote the line 'it's feng schmay, dont u know anything'

Really liked Knuckleball. (The directors were supposed to be there but cancelled.) Minor quibbles: maybe a little more history on the pitch, Wilhelm especially, and the music's lousy. Larger quibble: I don't think it gets as deep into the psychology of throwing the pitch as Bouton did in Ball Four. Where it's great: "the fraternity." It's another one of those documentaries where I think, "What an obvious film to make--how did it take this long?" There's like seven living knuckleballers of any stature, and they interview them all. And most of them are friends--more than friends. The scene where Wakefield, Dickey, Hough, and Niekro all go golfing is pretty much the best thing I've seen this year. Dickey is such a likeable guy--I feel silly for having ignored his story till the big streak earlier this season, but I'll be rooting for him to win the Cy. Wakefield is much quieter, and it's genuinely moving when he gets his 200th.

Salon review of Knuckleball:

http://www.salon.com/2012/09/14/pick_of_the_week_baseballs_secret_zen_fraternity/

Again: excellent.

my review:

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/knuckleball/6522

I'd seen it in June, so I was remembering bits this time just before they played out, like the Texas contract withdrawal with Dickey. You can't write stuff like that.

That Eastwood/Timberlake movie looks dire.

belongs to Amy Adams, apparently

"looks dire" and "belongs to Amy Adams" are one and the same to me

Nice review, Morbius. I think we basically saw the same thing, I just loved the secret-society angle more than you, and wasn't especially bothered by the first half-hour. Agree that the music was awful. I can't think of another baseball film that's much like it.

"the secret-society angle" is about 15 mins of the film tho. And they keep going back to that one awful Boston sports guy.

I didn't time it or anything, but it sure felt like more than 15 minutes--in any event, it sent me home inexplicably happy, and pushed aside everything else about the movie. Niekro's story about has dad was priceless.

Huh, if Eastwood had directed Curve, it would've been worse, but it would've been better, y'know?

It's a "baseball movie," of course it's crap.

"looks dire" and "belongs to Amy Adams" are one and the same to me

― Ham Lushbaugh (Eric H.), Tuesday, September 18, 2012 2:02 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

what the christ

She's given a good movie performance precisely once: The Fighter. Presumably David O. castigated it out of her.

LOLed pretty hard when Amy Adams was on ESPN promoing. Had seen the trailer twice and a number of ads and had thought it was Pam from The Office finally getting her first star turn. Had no idea.

what I hate about this thread resurfacing

She's great in Catch Me If You Can!

xp unbookmarked

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hww-Xxbud0

Ford looks too old to play Rickey

of the two baseball flicks out now i think i'll stick to the docu

The Worst Baseball on Film

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=18426

haha that is great

Haven't watched it yet, but you can see Donald Brittain's 1974 documentary on Fergie Jenkins at the NFB site:

http://www.nfb.ca/film/king_of_the_hill

Another one from the NFB site: Sleeping Tigers: The Asahi Baseball Story, about a Vancouver PCL team that won championships before being sent to internment camps after Pearl Harbor.

http://www.nfb.ca/film/sleeping_tigers_the_asahi_baseball_story

sounds cool

I had no intention of seeing Trouble with the Curve, but this makes it sound so monumentally bad, I just might catch it on second-run now:

http://joeposnanski.blogspot.ca/2013/01/trouble-curve.html#more

Batting average as an avatar of the new!

From Neyer:

"If you're reading this and you're a film buff, you probably know that Gary Cooper, who played Lou Gehrig in Pride of the Yankees (entire movie here, free) had a real tough time learning to bat and throw left-handed. The filmmakers' solution? Outfit Cooper in a "backwards" Yankees jersey, have him run to third base after hitting the ball ... and then simply flip the images for the finished movie."

Someone (Tom Sheiber) went through the film shot by shot to figure out if this was really true. I'm with Neyer, this is an incredible piece of research:

http://baseballresearcher.blogspot.co.il/2013/02/the-pride-of-yankees-seeknay.html

The Pitch that Killed reportedly in pre-production.

http://www.stwnewspress.com/local/x986706511/Oklahoma-State-professors-Pitched-That-Killed-gets-the-Hollywood-treatment

hiphop on the TV ads will propel 42 to b.o. glory.

potentially amusing: John McGinley as Red Barber (deep South accent?), Chris Meloni as Leo Durocher (way too large).

im feelin 42. looks p good to me

From Neyer:

"If you're reading this and you're a film buff, you probably know that Gary Cooper, who played Lou Gehrig in Pride of the Yankees (entire movie here, free) had a real tough time learning to bat and throw left-handed. The filmmakers' solution? Outfit Cooper in a "backwards" Yankees jersey, have him run to third base after hitting the ball ... and then simply flip the images for the finished movie."

Someone (Tom Sheiber) went through the film shot by shot to figure out if this was really true. I'm with Neyer, this is an incredible piece of research:

http://baseballresearcher.blogspot.co.il/2013/02/the-pride-of-yankees-seeknay.html

― NoTimeBeforeTime, Tuesday, February 5, 2013 4:08 AM (1 month ago) Bookmark

damn

i saw trouble with the curve btw. it was awful. amy adams was the only good thing about it, she was almost too good for this movie

Neyer on #42 and Hollywood, incl a YT link to The Jackie Robinson Story starring JR, which I remember seeing on TV the week he died.

http://www.baseballnation.com/2013/4/8/4176250/jackie-robinson-movies-history-42

42 was bleh, but the baseball scenes are sick. alan tudyk plays ben chapman and i had to struggle not to laugh during his exuberantly racist comedy routine from the dugout

http://meadowparty.com/blog/2013/04/10/42/

keith law's take

alan tudyk plays ben chapman and i had to struggle not to laugh during his exuberantly racist comedy routine from the dugout
it took me a bit to remember where i recognized the actor from. also, i started cracking up at the routine after a bit too.

I'm not surprised that Law didn't like it, he slammed Moneyball too. He basically hates anything that's the least bit Hollywood-ized.

Posnanski wrote about it on his blog:

http://joeposnanski.blogspot.ca/2013/04/42.html

I'm pretty wary of this film--and disappointed that Spike Lee didn't get to do it--but I'll see it.

I'm not surprised that Law didn't like it, he slammed Moneyball too. He basically hates anything that's the least bit Hollywood-ized.

― NoTimeBeforeTime, Monday, April 15, 2013 5:15 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

he's pretty much right about both of them though. 42 could've been so much better if it was even as good as Walk The Line (which is no masterpiece but at least its characters have arcs and get to display a range of emotions and experiences)

im not opposed to hollywoodized stuff, though this version was probably the least interesting take on JR you could've told. wesley morris' grantland review does a good job of explaining why helgeland's approach was antithetical to good drama

i did like things about the movie, dont get me wrong. its not terrible.

the pos's take is actually otm too, he just happened to like the movie

The NYT review was the one, I think, that suggested it's aimed at 4th-graders who know nothing about Robinson.

I haven't seen "42" yet, but I can appreciate that there's a need for the glossy, Hollywood version of the story. I wouldn't have wanted to see a completely realistic, 100% true to real events version of "Moneyball" either.

The NYT review was the one, I think, that suggested it's aimed at 4th-graders who know nothing about Robinson.

― Pope Rusty I (Dr Morbius), Monday, April 15, 2013 8:29 AM (1 hour ago)

this essentially was law's point too. haven't seen it but i'm in no rush to, given what i've read

hey, all the players at Fenway are wearing 42, what is this product placement?

I would prefer no basball movies at all btw

Neyer asks around for ideas for a great baseball movie:

http://www.baseballnation.com/2013/4/22/4232580/baseball-movie-ideas-unmade

Best choices: Bill James/Cap Anson, Allen Barra/Bill Veeck, everyone who brought up Clemente
Worst choices: Bob Costas/Barry Bonds (ugh)

I think Finley and the early-/70s A's would be a great subject...except the movie would invariably pale next to the real thing.

Looked over the other choices. Durocher, fantastic--that might be my first choice, even before the A's. I actually think Morgan Freeman as Buck O'Neill is a bad idea. Freeman was a great actor early on, but he's gradually been made into this saintly figure; you'd have him playing another saint, and that's just too much goodness in one movie.

I don't think a Durocher movie would work -- it's not "Hollywood" enough. Same is probably true for Cap Anson, but as a period piece from a bygone era, it might fly. A 70's A's or Bill Veeck movie would be funny as hell and you wouldn't have to like baseball to laugh with it.

Durocher seems majorly Hollywood to me. You've got a readymade tagline in "Nice guys finish last," a great nickname, and Durocher himself had numerous Hollywood connections--movie-star friends, affair with Laraine Day, lots of gangster ambience. Where I think it'd really work is, as the guy points out in the article, how much baseball history Durocher's life encompassed (like Stengel's). You'd have three stories that are worth movies themselves: the Gashouse Gang, the '51 Giants, and the '69 Cubs. The one problem I could see is that there's too much ground to cover. You'd either need a three-hour film, or some way to organize the material sensibly.

I was thinking The Glenallen Hill Story too, but I think that one's been done.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/84/Arachnophobia.jpg/220px-Arachnophobia.jpg

Durocher would be great, assuming they followed the facts instead of Leo's highly fictionalized memoirs.

But that'll never happen. It'd have to be a hard R rating, and baseball movies now have to be kid-friendly, which is why you'll never see faithful adaptations of Ball Four or The Boys of Summer, and Durocher is too obscure to today's general public for a studio to greenlight a period picture that goes from the '20s to the '60s.

Studio meeting over proposed Ball Four script:

"This guy that says 'shitfuck' and 'fuckshit' all the time, can that be changed?"
"To what?"
"I don't know...How about we have him say 'LOL!' instead?"

Best choices: Bill James/Cap Anson, Allen Barra/Bill Veeck, everyone who brought up Clemente
Worst choices: Bob Costas/Barry Bonds (ugh)

― NoTimeBeforeTime, Tuesday, April 23, 2013 9:42 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark

a barry movie could be amazing if they did it right and avoided the obvious pitfalls. costas is right about the nuances there!

Bill Murray woulda been a great Bill Veeck, too old now. (Michael Shannon?)

Bonds is too contemporary a subject for a biopic -- there isn't enough perspective on his career yet, especially since nobody really knows what he's like in private. It would also be a hatchet job (there's no movie-worthy story in "guy becomes greatest player of his era, never talks to anyone) so I don't really see the point.

too contemporary doesnt scan for me... was moneyball too contemporary? pride of the yankees came out a year after gehrig died. jackie robinson starred in a biopic about himself while he was an active player! and the timeframe makes it more interesting, we've seen a billion those were the days baseball movies already

it'd have to be done there will be blood style obv, with bonds as daniel plainview

The Robinson and Gehrig movies were from a totally different era, when baseball was by far the #1 sport among other things. I don't see the demand right now for a biopic on a contemporary player (in any sport). Moneyball wasn't that old but there were already a million things written about it before the movie came out so I think there was enough perspective there, plus the whole underdog saga is ready made for a movie adaptation.

Not totally related, but even though Moneyball doesn't seem like it happened all that long ago, in terms of baseball economics, the big market vs small market and contraction debates are practically ancient history, so in some sense it does feel like a completely different era.

Bonds as Daniel Plainview sounds promising though, although I think I'd do it more along the lines of Rosencrantz and Gildenstern. I'm thinking the backdrop to a Rich Aurilia/Jeff Kent buddy flick or a view from the perspective of Darren Baker.

was moneyball too contemporary?

For the studio and filmmakers it was, cuz what was on the screen had pretty much nothing to do with reality.

Pride of the Yankees is also nearly total fiction. The movie Robinson starred in is interesting, but look at even 5 minutes of it (I posted it upthread) -- it was SUPER low-budget.

I can't see a studio doing a nonfic baseball movie without MLB's cooperation either.

Contemporary films are tricky, but I can think of at least two that work: All the President's Men was fantastic, The Social Network very good.

Bonds would be tricky too, but I think a great film could be made. I wouldn't want a hatchet job, no, nor an apologia--I guess I'd want a director/screewriter who's conflicted on the subject. I actually see some parallels between Bonds and Nixon. (Be forewarned: I see Nixon parallels everywhere.) No, I'm not saying Bonds bombed countries into oblivion or trashed the constitution. More that both of them seemed impossible to know, both had very public downfalls after having everything in their grasp (again, a major difference: when Nixon's big moment comes, reelection + China, he's already had a lifetime of unseemly stuff behind him), and both had bete noires that seemed to contribute to their destruction--JFK for Nixon, McGwire/Sosa for Bonds.

For what it's worth, I think Oliver Stone's Nixon film is excellent. Most people do not agree.

Bonds was hated before PEDs were even an issue. Remember him being left off the "All-Time Team"?

the movie should just be a ~90 min static shot of a bonds mid-afternoon nap in his special clubhouse recliner

otm

the big market vs small market and contraction debates are practically ancient history

are they? didnt the new cba stack the deck against small market teams even more?

http://blogs.thescore.com/mlb/2013/07/10/an-oral-history-of-the-1989-cleveland-indians

Posnanski wrote about The Bad News Bears yesterday:

http://joeposnanski.blogspot.ca/2013/07/walking-bears.html

I think the comments get at what the movie's really about (I've only seen it once a few years ago and really liked it): the awful behavior of some adults at kids' sporting events.

which is brought to a head by the revenge of Vic Morrow's kid.

http://assets.adamriff.com/images/frank_underwood-baseball.gif

no

tsk, always the gay actors who can't throw (Perkins as Piersall)

from House of Cards?

Saw 42 last night and thought it was surprisingly solid. Yes, full of those hollywood biopic moments but good in spite of them. Thought Chadwick Boseman really nailed it. And yeah, the baseball scenes were good as fuck, made me fall in love with baseball again. The base-stealing made my hair stand up.

Harrison Ford was decent overall but had a little to much of that "I'm An Old-Timey Businessman With A Heart Underneath" english on his performance.

tbf some of that was the writing.

Haven't seen it yet, but the "I want someone with guts NOT to fight back" scene is p much verbatim from The Jackie Robinson Story (1950)

the lies at the heart of Field of Dreams

http://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2014/4/23/5640792/field-of-dreams-worst-baseball-film-of-all-time-25th-anniversary

Three-hour Taiwanese historical epic:

http://www.filmlinc.com/films/on-sale/kano

Heard at our staff meeting tonight that the grade 8s are showing Moneyball as part of their probability unit in math. That one stumps me a bit.

(Notwithstanding that I didn't mind Moneyball, I guess the obvious connection is the high probability that any narrative baseball movie's going to be mediocre or worse.)

Didn't realize there's a Dock Ellis documentary out there.

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

Anyone seen Kobayashi's I Will Buy You?

Yeah, a few months ago. It's ok, not great.

http://m.mlb.com/cutfour/2015/03/25/114786332/principal-richard-vernon-from-the-breakfast-club-was-once-a-minor-league-baseball-player

free video: Baseball's Been Very, Very Good to Me: Minnie Minoso Story

http://video.wttw.com/video/2365436462/

NFB of Canada's Baseball Girls (I think it's free for anyone)

I think it's fantastic

https://www.nfb.ca/film/baseball_girls?hpen=feature_8&feature_type=film

Paul Rudd as Moe Berg? Too goyishe.

http://deadline.com/2016/04/paul-rudd-the-catcher-was-a-spy-moe-berg-wwii-movie-palmstar-ben-lewin-1201746089/

obv a dead ringer too:

http://a.abcnews.com/images/Politics/gty_Moe_Berg_nt_120207_wb.jpg

apparently The Phenom has hardly any baseball in it, which is generally fine with me. Much more wary about the presence of Ethan Hawke.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_phenom_2016/

I don't remember Fastball ever getting a screening here, but I was able to catch up with it on a cousin's Netflix account. Very much a companion piece to Knuckleball, with the Greek chorus here comprised of Kaline, Morgan, Bench, Brett, and Gwynn. Some good science: explanations of how Walter Johnson, Feller, and Ryan were measured for speed in their day, and a precise illustration of how much easier it is to hit a 92 m.p.h. fastball than one thrown 100 m.p.h. (If you're Andrew McCutcheon--I'd find both somewhat challenging.) It comes down to a difference of 50 milliseconds' worth of synapse reactions...The
Steve Dalkowski section is sad. Most everyone you'd want in here is there, although there should have been a bit more on Randy Johnson. One major omission--Clemens--and Kerry Wood isn't mentioned either.

Not sure when (or if) I'll get to see this--or if I want to--but I hope it's better than The Bronx Is Burning.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt9045932/

Ah, it's a documentary--thank goodness.

The Yankees and White Sox will play in Iowa near the “Field of Dreams” on August 13, 2020.

Unlike the film, not all the players will be white.

https://www.mlb.com/news/yankees-white-sox-game-at-field-of-dream-site

Knuckleball! is on HBOMax, will try to watch it this weekend.

^is this the Tim Wakefield story?

It's My Turn--Claudia Weill's big mainstream film from 1981; not particularly good--has a 10-minute segment at a Yankees' Old-Timers game, where Jill Clayburgh goes to see recently retired Michael Douglas. Um, putting that aside, a few famous players get some screen time: Mantle, Maris, Elston Howard, Whitey Ford, and Bob Feller. (Do non-Yankees get Old-Timer invites?) Plus a few others the camera just glides by--felt like I should have recognized some of them, but I didn't.

Christgau answering reader e-mail today:

Would you tell us about your opinion of baseball movies? Are they realistic? Writing as an outsider and not knowing but realising that any movie made about soccer is usually pretty s*** makes me wonder do you have the same feeling about your national sport — Hugh, West of Ireland

“Realistic”? Having spent approximately 15 minutes of my life in a major league dugout (profile of underrated Mets shortstop Rafael Santana, 1987 or ’88 I think), I have no way of judging. But I can call to mind many convincing, insightful , and/or entertaining baseball movies. I guess my favorite is the hilarious but also incisive and exciting Moneyball, about assembling a winning Oakland A’s team on a zero budget, based on a book by Michael Lewis, whose The Big Short inspired an even better movie about the 2008 mortgage scam crisis. And just recently Carola and I streamed and enjoyed an impertinent documentary called Battered Bastards of Baseball, about a nutty yet winning minor-league team constructed from scraps when I forget which major league team pulled its franchise from Portland, Oregon. But there are many others: A League of Their Own about a women’s baseball league; The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings, about a team of touring ex-Negro League players; Bang the Drum Slowly, starring my once-great Dartmouth downstairs neighbor Michael Moriarty and a young Robert de Niro and based on a Mark Harris novel; the only slightly watered-down Jackie Robinson biopic 42; the much older b&w Fear Strikes Out, about the great bipolar Red Sox centerfielder Jimmy Piersall; the kiddie comedy The Bad News Bears. For some reason I’ve never seen the renowned Field of Dreams, which I suspected and indeed still suspect of pretentious sentimentality, though I’d probably watch it were it to stream free somewhere. I’ve never seen the Lou Gehrig biopic The Pride of the Yankees either. Is there a Babe Ruth one I’m forgetting?

Didn't know about Facing Nolan until today, when something turned up on my FB wall--it's on Netflix. I thought it was far from great. The best thing was seeing actual game footage of a story I probably thought was apocryphal: Norm Cash coming to the plate with a sawed-off table leg. He was the last out of one of the early no-hitters (Ron Luciano was behind the plate). As a title card dramatically announces later in the film, "Robin Ventura declined to be interviewed for this film."

Early in the film, Rod Carew says something about "I knew I'd go 0-4" whenever he faced Ryan. For his career (73 AB), Carew hit .301 vs. Ryan. (and slugged .562).

If your lifetime average is .328, maybe .301 feels like 0-4.

I haven't watched this, and probably won't--it's over an hour long--but it does look interesting: baseball movies ranked #1-40 according to how convincingly the actors play baseball.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xeamHyi9u8

https://images.wsj.net/im-738201/?width=600&size=1

so the director of tár basically invented big league chew

Had no idea that Reggie's been sitting there on Prime since March.

About as good as the Yogi doc, although being my era, more personally significant to me. Interviewees: Aaron, Fingers and Rudi, Stewart and Blue, Julius Erving, Jeter (also in the Yogi film--in line to be the next go-to Dave Grohl or Dick Cavett). I think most of the famous moments are there, including the play that forced him to miss the '72 WS, although two from the '78 WS are missing: his non-interference on the basepaths, and his showdown with Bob Welch. His relationship with Munson is glossed over a bit--Reggie says it was Munson who came up with Mr. October; Bill James disputes that, says it was Reggie himself--and he doesn't mention Munson's death. The footage of him getting pulled by Martin on national TV is as jarring as ever--I know players still occasionally get into it in the dugout (I remember Machado and Tatis), but having to get a cop in there to hold back the manager belongs to another world. Very focused on race, both during Jackson's career and later, his disappointment at being shut out from the inner circles of management and being denied two ownership bids.

It's so strange for me to see him as what he is now: a soft-spoken old guy. Has there ever been a signing in sports like his with the Yankees in '77? Probably lots of them in other sports I don't follow, and if Ohtani goes to L.A., that'll be huge. But it was such an incredible intersection of time and place and personalities (Reggie, Steinbrenner, Martin), juiced a little more by the newness of free agency.

His HR in the '71 ASG:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfc9xnZsvZo

Just thought of an odd omission, which you think--thinking about the game today--Reggie would turn into a badge of honour: he still holds the career records for strikeouts. Surprised--and unless Stanton gets a few fulltime seasons in, there's no one on the horizon for at least a decade.

I may have mentioned this upthred but the nolan ryan one is dogshit

I didn't dislike it that much, but I said it was "far from great" upthread. Too worshipful is my general recollection.

i can't imagine it's a classic, but i am definitely intrigued by this one

https://i.imgur.com/oIHaVsz.jpg

omg

joe mantegna??

yup!!

Turned up on one of those YouTube sidebars for me--this is the Reggie that Reggie missed (or, more accurately, stayed clear of).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIUe7XzpiTQ

A two-part Zoomcast I did with Steven Rubio on baseball movies: The Bad News Bears, Bingo Long, Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, A League of Their Own, Reggie.

part one: www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBKIUt6bbbo&t

part two: www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-TnrBFcfTA

Moneyball, too.

Finally caught up with the Dock Ellis documentary (on Prime right now). I can't believe it's been 15 years since he died--I wasn't even thinking that he was dead as I watched. The rare film where I didn't squirm through a little bit of crying; especially great is this letter Ellis reads from Jackie Robinson. The film doesn't shy away from the way he treated his one ex-wife. There's some disbelief from a few ex-teammates about how bad the trade was that sent him to the Yankees in 1976; they're right, but that had a lot more to do with Willie Randolph than with Ellis (who had one good season and moved on). Dock Ellis for Doc Medich--perfect.

skipped around the baseball movie countdown video, he correctly gives props to A League Of Their Own... it's too bad the Amazon series didn't take a cue from the movie, so much painful CGI baseball in that one.

Sitting there at two in the morning last night and got caught up in a couple of episodes of Ken Burns' opus. PBS has evidently been re-running it. I saw it when it debuted and once more a few years later. I know its sentimentality and stylistic tics get mocked a lot, and yes, it's too New-York-centric, but I still think of it as a true epic.

I was right about Brooks Robinson and "Theme from Shaft" (which gives way to some swampy instrumental). Lots of great music in the last two episodes: Santana for Clemente, the Youngbloods for Earl Weaver (my favourite--inspired), Otis Redding for Frank Robinson. The color footage of Jackie Robinson's funeral is amazing (Bill Russell and Don Newcombe among the pallbearers, Campanella in his wheelchair). Sandy Koufax's retirement press conference. Bowie Kuhn with a frozen, fake smile as Robinson calls for a black manager on national TV. Everyone talking about Bob Gibson in an awestruck tone. George Will summarized football with a rehearsed line that made me cringe a little. Dragged myself away around when they got to 1973, but I'm going to watch this again within the next few months. (Gyac, I don't know if you have access, but I'm pretty sure on the whole you would love it.)

(And the kind of thing I love: "Mao Tse Tung, Satchel Paige, and Casey Stengel died.")

As for those stylistic tics:

i can't look at buck o'neil without slowing zooming and panning
― Karl Malone, Wednesday, January 27, 2021 12:25 AM (two years ago)

I don't think I've ever seen even a part of the Burns doc - When It Was A Game was my go-to for old timey footage

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VPG-yxB6_E

The one with all the color footage from the '40s and '50s, right? I watched the first one--I believe there was a second.

Three total, I think the last may have come out way later.

Aside from baseball, I was hooked by the look of that home movie Kodachrome once they got into the color era.

Not a movie, but just watched the MLB Network's George Brett documentary/profile. As I've said before, one of the most memorable players I was able to see for the duration of his career, from his playoff heroics against the Yankees in the '70s to the Pine Tar Game to killing the Jays in the '85 ALCS. (Because I was a little bit off baseball from '79 to '82, I followed his pursuit of .400 through the paper but wasn't as caught up in it as I normally would have been.) Had a toxic relationship with his father, who sounded like a true nightmare.

Turned up in a sidebar, first time I've ever seen this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvaZlsi5rLs

Meantime, Vinegar Syndrome just announced this:

https://vinegarsyndrome.com/collections/frontpage/products/bang-the-drum-slowly

Hearing about this for the first time today. Cast includes Bill Lee and Frederick Wiseman; that is truly bizarre.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eephus

https://i.imgur.com/3y4dbss.jpeg

Two episodes into The Clubhouse: A Year with the Red Sox. Still amazed that the Red Sox got two Netflix series within a year or so.

I'm enjoying it, although not as much as gyac (why I'm posting here)--I just don't have any special interest in the Red Sox. And that’s been on my mind as I watch, the question of "why this team?" If I could pick any team from 2024 for this kind of series, I'd probably look to the extremes: 1) the hated Dodgers, whose season encompassed the Ohtani signing, the gambling scandal, the 50/50 season, and then winning the World Series; or 2) the White Sox or Athletics, who had all sorts of negative drama.

Anyway, addressing the series that is...The trials of Casas and Duran and Bello have been documented closely thus far, and I’m learning stuff. I always picture starters sitting stoically on the bench between innings, whether they’re pitching well or not; Bello disappears into a special room that seems to be meant for cursing and throwing stuff. The sequence where Cora had to send down a bunch of guys just before the season began was funny: first words out of his mouth every time was “We’re making moves.” Some of the first episode, the segment on Red Sox lore, overlapped with The Comeback. When Casas is doing yoga or philosophizing poetically, he reminded me of Steve Hovely from Ball Four.

So we’ll see where it goes. I did check BRef for a reminder of how the season finished: 81-81.

lol. Context for choice of team was that MLB offered it to numerous teams, Red Sox said yes some years back, blah blah blah legal stuff, it was lined up for 2024. Of course the actual baseball for this season was secondary - though there are some great baseball moments, and not just Sox, and the filming of certain events is really great looking - it’s about the people who play the game and I think that’s more apparent as the show winds on. I found myself thinking at a couple of times “I’d love to know more about what was going on here.” A point to note is that the featured players are largely those comfortable with it - older players or those with families mainly didn’t want to be involved to the same degree.

Great baseball moments in this series:

- every time Aaron Judge hits a home run or steps up to the plate, it’s cinematic. His body, the expression on his face, the sound of the bat. He’s the “villain” in a couple of episodes and if you don’t know baseball you get a good sense of him as this actual monster who’ll turn a game on a swing, like in real life.

- pitcher meltdowns. Bello has an episode about his awful May/June struggles, but there’s also more shown of the faces and expressions of opposing pitchers than you get on broadcast. Tyler O’Neill hits a home run on Opening Day off Luis Castillo in Seattle and as O’Neill rounds the bases you see Castillo dejected on the mound; Abreu pinch hits and drives in a go ahead run off Nestor Cortes who very visibly screams FUUUUUUCK and Yoshida takes Clay Holmes deep in dramatic fashion on the last swing of the game and before the camera sweeps away to follow him around the bases you see Holmes raise his glove to his face and begin screaming into it.

- most of the home runs in this series, whether Sox or not, are gorgeously filmed. And why not?

- The little chats players have on base with each other, like in the opening episode where an unseen Mariner is asking Duran what the deal with the on base celebration is.

Also, Tanner Houck on giving up a home run to Ohtani in the All Star Game

Houck: I thought that was a good pitch! He’s really good huh?
Duran: Yeah
Houck: I kept the sinker down and I thought that was a pop up and it just kept going

Like zero rancour, just straight up admiration that Ohtani really is that guy - and he’s right, it wasn’t a bad pitch at all.

I'm actually going to avoid your posts above on the spoiler principle, but look forward to reading them after the fact. If the offer was put out to lots of teams and it was the Red Sox who accepted, then that explains that--they're entitled to this.

Highlight of E3 for me was definitely the story of 32-year-old rookie Cam Booser--genuinely moving. I see he's with the White Sox now and pitching sort of okay...There's a funny moment when they give Casea the in-game mic, and when he starts in on a long story about his dad, the guy in the booth flashes a bemused look to everyone else as if to say "Is this going to last the full inning?"

One thing...don't hate me here, gyac...is that baseball players tend to speak in cliches, and there's a lot of that here. In Ball Four--my frame of reference, can't help it--Bouton is always there to comment on the cliches. The difference between a book and TV show, I know, but you don't have that here, just the cliches.

Would love to have seen Stroman's reaction when the Red Sox were stealing bases left and right, often without a throw from Trevino.

Casas, sorry--typing and watching TV.

definitely the story of 32-year-old rookie Cam Booser--genuinely moving.

Post by Roman Anthony gets on his horse (gyac) from things I learned about in baseball this week/how i learned to stop worrying and love baseball on ILX - things I learned about in baseball this week/how i learned to stop worrying and love baseball Cam Booser game.

The funniest part of that episode is when they’re trying to tell him he’s called up and his brain actually can’t believe it, he doesn’t hear what they’re saying and they have to repeat themselves.

Would have been great to have been there...I will periodically keep tabs on how he's doing.

E4: The Jarren Duran episode. (Perfect timing--I looked at mlb.com a few minutes after finishing, and Duran was the front page photo.) So great that I got to see the Jays melt down and blow a 6-2 lead; I can't even hide on Netflix. (Managed to erase that game from my memory, I guess--no recollection.) I wonder if they softened Duran's relationship with his father a bit. They make it clear how hard he was on him, but it just felt like they held back somehow. Just idle speculation.

Surprised that "Holy fuckballs" has never caught on as a popular expression--it's so euphonious.

They definitely held back - Duran said this (to mlb.com!) and I’m definitely bringing my own stuff about authoritative father figures to it but…as Tyler Glasnow astutely pointed out in an interview a year or two back, baseball is full of these characters.

I thought it was an incredible episode. I couldn’t believe how candid he was.

https://www.mlb.com/amp/news/red-sox-prospect-jarren-duran-could-make-an-impact-in-2021.html

Sorry, this quote:

As a 5-foot-6 student at Cypress High School, Duran said he was “the small guy who had to work twice as hard as everybody else.” A growth spurt helped. The guidance of his parents, Octavio and Dena, mattered even more.

“I owe so much to my dad,” Duran said of his father, who has advanced from field work to a management position at PepsiCo. “My dad was my discipliner and my mom was my caretaker. My dad would be tough on me and then my mom would (say), ‘Oh, it’s OK.’ Then, sometimes I’d have both of them critiquing me and I’m like, ‘Hey, Mom! You’re supposed to love me when Dad gets on me.’”

Surprised that "Holy fuckballs" has never caught on as a popular expression--it's so euphonious.

It's awful! I was doing my Addison DeWitt impression there...Going to try to watch E5 tonight (juggling The Handmaid's Tale and Better Call Saul, too).

I liked hearing the Pixies, yeah.

E5: Mostly Brayan Bello, plus the AS game.

I'd be interested in some large-scale study on whether there's a link between success as a pitcher and how well you're able to control your emotions. Give pitchers a number from 1-10 on how visibly they show their emotions--anger, frustration, joy--based on personal and anecdotal observation. Maybe impossible to eliminate subjectivity there...Pitchers I think of as cool: Maddux, Rivera, Jimmy Key. Emotive: Eckersley, Stieb, Stroman. Maybe you'd find nothing. All of those guys are good to great--different things work for different people. And players change over time.

Watching Bello--the club seems to agree--you get the impression that his biggest obstacle is letting his emotions get ahead of him. But maybe he in fact needs that, like Al Pacino in Heat, who tells his wife he has to be Al Pacino to be a good detective. I have no idea, but it's an interesting subject to me.

You'd have to eliminate knuckleballers from the study, because they're not really human.

A lot of guys who performed at a high level as well and pitch hot do it well - Buehler, Scherzer, Skubal is very emotive during a lot of his starts. Should be pointed out that Bello is only 24 and dealing with some huge issues per the episode. Pitching with/through emotion seems to be as individual as the person and quite often they can channel anger as energy in a productive way. With Bello it’s very difficult to say because his pitches have changed a lot over time too; his changeup used to be his best and now it’s terrible. The best Bello starts to my eye are when he’s looking loose and relaxed and having fun out there. Just like the person he appears to be off the field.

Sale obviously a hot blooded guy on the mound as well.

Famously set fire to his uniform, getting him a ticket out of Chicago...The episode makes it clear that his family's absence was weighing on Bello.

Excuse me, he cut that uniform up with a KNIFE, please respect the crazy Sale lore. Yes it does. I was really surprised that the team doesn’t help players with that stuff.

Been a while...I think I'm sticking with my embellished arsonist story.

Or I could go with the time he cut a teammate up with a knife.

Frank Kogan used to say that every song title ever automatically became better when you tacked on "with a Butcher Knife" at the end. Probably true of baseball lore, too.

Got sidetracked by a Better Call Saul rewatch, but picked this up again with E6 (two more to go). A lot of Craig Breslow, who strikes me as a real Jimmy Olsen/Boy Scout type and not all that interesting. There's also a fair amount of time devoted to the dynamics of the trade deadline--buy vs. sell, today vs. tomorrow, etc.--that I would assume most people who watch this are already familiar with.

Some good minor league stuff early in the episode, including a great juxtaposition of the team's owner hyping their dedication to the fan experience and a profanity-laced, umpire-baiting rant from the manager. I also, for some reason, found the support group for guys on the IL funny.

Yeah they all looked incredibly bored the whole time so it must be compulsory

Exactly what I thought. I'm sure it really is a mental strain being on the IL for months at a time, but my impression was that the players preferred method of dealing with that was informal banter with their teammates.

E7, primarily focused on two things: 1) the Jarren Duran suspension, and 2) the season starting to slip away, culminating in a nightmarish loss to the Rangers (up 4-3, tied, go ahead 7-4 in the bottom of the 8th, botch a double-play in the 9th, 7-7, lose in extras). Very good use of Three Dog Night's "Shambala" and Jonathan Richman's "That Summer Feeling"; funny throwaway dugout chatter, I think from Jason Varitek: "It's National Give-Your-Fucking-All Day."

E8: E7 already documented their slide, so they were left with not a whole lot for the last episode. Joe Castiglione's retirement--nice scene of him reciting A. Bartlett Giamatti as his on-air farewell--Casas' return, and a reprise of Boston's storied past (which, between the two series, I've kind of had enough of by now). Also an informal monthly gathering of writers where Bill Lee (guest or regular, I don't know) says that if the Red Sox had brought Roger Moret into G2 of the '75 series--loved hearing that name; I use him on the grid all the time--he'd be president today. (Meaning Lee himself, not Moret.) Not sure I follow the logic--a side-swipe at Trump, I think--but my favourite moment anyway.

E7, primarily focused on two things: 1) the Jarren Duran suspension, and 2) the season starting to slip away, culminating in a nightmarish loss to the Rangers (up 4-3, tied, go ahead 7-4 in the bottom of the 8th, botch a double-play in the 9th, 7-7, lose in extras). Very good use of Three Dog Night's "Shambala" and Jonathan Richman's "That Summer Feeling"; funny throwaway dugout chatter, I think from Jason Varitek: "It's National Give-Your-Fucking-All Day."

Yeah this was a brutal episode. They don’t give you the clear timeline in this but Casas returned mid August but was not there for that Texas series. What were your thoughts on this? I thought it was a good illustration of a particularly awful stretch of the season.

I didn’t see that Bill Lee moment, because I can’t stand Dan Shaughnessy and I skipped the whole segment. What did you think of Carlos Correa in episode 8? Seems like a nice fella. I like seeing players talk when they get on base.

I got in the habit of calling Vladdy greeter-in-chief, like he worked at Walmart (especially when he wasn't hitting); he can share the nickname with Casas. I see Grissom isn't doing too well these days--he turns up right at the end. I was so convinced that was a great trade for Boston. Still only 23, though.

Yeah impossible to know but I think he’s 24 now. Did you like the Jays when they show up? I know Vlad has a supervillain style home run moment in the series but can’t recall which episode, I think it was a bad Bello outing. Grissom is also the guy in the IL support group and telling Casas he could outwrestle him in the dugout.

There was some Jays stuff, yeah, but I don't remember any big moments. Fair amount of Danny Jansen after the trade, though--but I was surprised they didn't make note of the freakish two-teams-in-one-doubleheader story.

Netlix documentary, Oct. 21:

https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/who-killed-the-montreal-expos-doc-release-date-news

it was the owners. end scene.