Immediately after making Jayne sit through The Final Season, I decided to change my plans for baseball movie month. Instead of 29 movies in 29 days, I’m going to shoot for 15 in 29. At least 8 of which have to be non-documentaries. So today I had a doubleheader. After going to the Hawkeye basketball game, I watched Catching Hell and then Mr. Baseball.
Years ago I saw a little bit of it on TV, but you don’t really get the glory of Tom Selleck’s hairy ass until you watch the unedited version. I was a bit concerned when it was categorized under romantic comedy. I didn’t remember the romantic part of the movie when I saw part on TV. I do remember the comedy part which is interesting because they must have edited in the comedy for TV. This time around there wasn’t much to laugh at.
I wasn’t expecting a whole lot. Tom Selleck’s more geared toward mother-in-laws. Although that is pretty good casting for a burly first basemen. I love that they addressed shaving his mustache once but then never again. I thought for a second we’d see a clean shaven Tom Selleck. I was forgetting this was his prime. I’m sure now he’ll shave anything for a job that’s not CBS Friday nights.
I don’t know what Japanese baseball or culture is really like, but if it’s like any other comedic film, I’m sure this was a racially-tinged exaggeration. Possible political incorrectness aside, I did again enjoy the baseball action. This time I especially enjoyed the stadium, surroundings and scoreboard. One of my (and I’m sure most’s) favorite elements about baseball is the different settings. I’m sure watching a baseball game in Stade Olympique wasn’t a super pastoral experience but it’s just cool to know that you could watch baseball there. No one ever strives to visit all the NBA arenas but tons of people would love to see a game at every baseball stadium. As a kid, I would draw up or imagine all sorts of places baseball could be played. Let’s be honest I still think about that. Maybe I’ll unleash my master plan to “save” Tiger Stadium someday. The Japanese games in Mr. Baseball looked totally different. The huge scoreboards were really cool and the whole set had one of those 70s-80s futuristic (but in retrospect, not-so-futuristic) feels.
Mr. Baseball – 1 for 4, hard-fought bunt single not breaking Uchiyami’s record (spoiler)
For my second movie, I started already chipping away at my documentary limit, but it was worth it. For a while now, Jayne and I have been wanting to watch Catching Hell, about the Steve Bartman incident and scapegoating. We are both fans of the 30 for 30 series on ESPN. The first one we ever saw was the one about the death penalty on the SMU football program. It must be good because I have no interest in SMU football and Jayne certainly doesn’t.
So I figured if we’re going to spend a disc it would be on a movie that Jayne would watch too. I think Catching Hell did its job because Jayne seemed really into it. The movie did a great job of conveying the living nightmare Bartman must have gone through with the entire stadium chanting “Asshole” at him.
The story of Bartman is fascinating because he is someone who did not want to capitalize or respond to the situation. The stories of him turning down six figure amounts for card shows or $25,000 to sign a picture of himself are pretty amazing. I mean if I went through that crap I’d be tempted to harvest it some.
Like most decently done documentaries, the score is a cakewalk. It’s hard to strike out with me if you’re a documentary. The only strikeout for this movie was when it tried to reach a little further and make further scapegoat connections including a minister who gave some sort of sermon on Steve Bartman and scapegoating. I understand the stress a minister must have of coming up with a topic every week but her story seemed pretty fluffy and not really needed for the movie.
Catching Hell – 3 for 4, strikeout, two singles and a homerun
As you’re probably aware this scoring system is already pretty weak. I’ll just say this was a good movie. It made me feel for Bartman and made me want the Cubs to win a World Series for him but to never win a World Series for the rest of the fans. The homerun was definitely for the selection of the topic. It was a great choice to get the ESPN Films treatment.
I wanted to kick off Baseball Movie Month with a movie that’s been on my list for a while. It’s not been on there because I anticipated it being awesome but it was one of those “I have to see it”s because it is based on a true story from Iowa and was shot entirely in Iowa. In fact, several scenes were shot down the road from my folks’ place along a road I drove down twice everyday for three years. It’s no Hollywood blockbuster but it’s cool to see things you know in the pictures.
Sutliff Bridge - This is no longer there thanks to the flood of '08. Bonus Iowa law reference
That said, this movie was terrible. Baseball movies are bad, I think. One thing I typically hate is the action in baseball movies but this was actually The Final Season‘s strong suit. I felt like the action was more realistic and interesting. In fact, sadly, probably my favorite part of the entire movie was a montage of the team taking infield. It was beautiful. So there you have it, the rest of this movie was worse than watching a team take infield.
The rest of the movie was a huge cliche. I feel like I’m more sensitive to cliches but this one was way over the top. Just about every line of dialogue was just cliche responding to cliche. There’s a scene where Tom Arnold argues with his son about smoking and it has everything. The crumpling up of the remaining cigarettes, the “Mom did it too”, the “these things killed your mother”, the “your high stress job and lack of fathering has led me to these cigarettes.” This was all in like one minute.
The only other good thing I can say about this movie is it is the first one I’m reviewing which gives me the chance to unveil my scoring system.
Final Season, The – 1 for 3, walk, infield single
The walk was a gimme. The movie took place in Iowa and had shots of places I knew. The movie gracefully took this walk and while simplifying Iowans somewhat it was quite true to the look/feel of rural Iowa.
The infield single is really another gimme. But, I might say this is the best baseball action I’ve seen in a movie. What kept that dribbler fair down the 3rd base line was Rachael Leigh Cook. I guess I really haven’t thought about her since high school but she was a good bonus to keep me going through a shitty movie. I’m not saying she was spectacular and my reasoning’s pretty basic and patronizing but she looked cute in a baseball glove.
Ever since last year’s MLB season ended I’ve been trying to think of a way to ease the pain. My wife says I’m always looking for the next fix. She’s even said I’m this close to hanging out at parks asking, “You sure you kids don’t want to just play some baseball so I can watch?”
Last November I thought maybe I’d have an off-season baseball movie month but we were in the middle of a move back to Iowa so I delayed my plans. I ultimately settled on February for a few reasons. There’s not much baseball going on and it would be a good lead in to the college baseball season and spring training. Also, my experience with baseball movies is they tend to suck, so I should probably start with the shortest month. I don’t want to try my wife’s patience any further.
So that’s what I’m going to do here. I thought I’d lay down some ground rules/expectations. First, I’m going to try for 29 movies. I’m really going to try for a movie a day but as nice as the weather’s been maybe someone will show up and ask me to play some pickup baseball one day and I’ll have to watch two movies the next. One can dream right?
I have a list of movies to pick from and I’ll try to post a more official list soon but for now the focus is going to be on movies that I’ve wanted to see/should see. I will probably mix in some novelty movies. I have actually not seen a ton of baseball movies so there are some classics that will be on the list. I’ve never seen The Natural or Bull Durham and I’ve only seen movies like Field of Dreams and Eight Men Out when I was really young. Oh and I haven’t seen Ed, we can’t forget Ed.
I’m going to lean towards fiction. Documentaries are easier movies for me to pick. I have a documentary about origami in my Netflix queue for Pete’s sake. So I’m going to set a 50% limit on documentaries. I will try to even include biopic-type fare in that count like The Babe.
The most important ground rule is that I will lean towards movies that interest Jayne. I’m guessing that’s about three films, tops. There are several good choices on Netflix Instant so I don’t have to “spend” a disc on a baseball movie. The ones that are “important” will warrant a spent disc occasionally. For example, as a baseball fan in Iowa, The Final Season is required viewing. I’m expecting it to be pretty weak but we’ll recognize places plus Samwise!
In fact The Final Season is the first one to arrive tomorrow. We’ll let that one get us started, I’ll probably have some more ground rules, a more finalized list and a scoring system to come. Obviously I wouldn’t be telling you about this if I wasn’t going to keep you posted on each movie. Pitchers and catchers report tomorrow for The Final Season.
I’m going to go ahead and commit a blog crime by reposting something I’ve written elsewhere. Several reasons are driving this decision.
One, is it really reposting if nobody read it the first time around? Two, with Aaron’s article kind of blowing up thanks to a Redleg Nation link, I feel a desire to give the people (should they ever return) more to read. And honestly, who wants to talk about football, Aaron?
Finally, Josh Wilker wrote about an invented game and it reminded me of our invented game. Josh’s is hypothetical but I believe, put into action, it would be an interesting variant. Is there anything more fun than successfully inventing a game? All of the iterations and tests to get to something perfect. That’s what we’re obsessing over right now, isn’t it? Some game tried and tried until we got to a point that we were satisfied with the challenge enough to pay people millions of dollars to play it in front of us.
So here’s my invented game. Feel free to create a league and talk about my little brother’s wins above replacement.
I am not a sabermetrician. Not because I don’t “believe” in it but because I’m not really smart enough/dedicated to try to understand it. I have read Baseball Between the Numbers and Moneyball (even though that’s not really a book that teaches sabermetrics), so I get the concept and that some of the old ways of analyzing baseball aren’t really accurate.
Despite my sabermetric inadequacies, I do have a friend who gets it and I regularly follow some of his favorite writers, namely Rob Neyer and Joe Posnanski. The latter I do not follow as closely because he is the king of long-form posts. Kind of funny since I’m kind of the prince of verbosity. Willing to write tons of pages about myself but not willing to read any others. Probably says something about me and about why I don’t have a ton of regular followers.
One of the Joe Posnanski posts I managed to break down and read entirely was this one. It’s an interesting post that begins by mocking a writer who used the typical “mom’s basement” term to demean some nerd who understands things a lot better than him. Posnanski goes on to talk about the great games that took place in his mom’s basement when he was a kid. Fun to read about but mostly it reminded me of the games I played with my brothers. Games I hadn’t thought about in a while.
There was one game that I played with both my brothers and, many times, visiting cousins or neighbor kids. We called it Basement Baseball. I think you can kind of understand the premise just from the title, but there were some interesting quirks about the game. First, our basement had those high up basement windows that let enough light in just to remind you that it was daylight out and you were in your basement playing Sega. Because I had actually broken one once and had to pay for it, we made sure to use balls that wouldn’t break the windows. These came in the form of those cheap plush mini balls you get in a random kids’ meal. Ours came from White Castle. Funny, because I never recall actually eating White Castle as a kid.
Historians never documented basement baseball. This photo of Tyler and I hanging out in another basement will have to suffice. Tyler is the one wearing a raquetball racket cover on his head. I was busy writing and had no time for such foolish actions.
Also in the confined quarters of a basement, a regular bat would not work. If you swung it, you might end up bopping the person in the ondeck circle (the bottom of the stairs). So we had to improvise. Our family was way ahead of the recycling curve. Back before there was home pickup of recycling, we used to store our recycling in bins under the basement stairs until the stairs were overflowing and then we’d load up the Ford Ranger (probably sitting four across the front, with the stick shift between one of the boys’ legs) and take it out to Clermont County on our way to the garden and recycle it. I would like to say it was because we were an environmentally concerned clan, but I have my suspicions that it was more a way of keeping from paying for more garbage bins per week. So with a bin full of two liters and Sunny Delight bottles under the steps, we had our pick of Eastons and Louisville Sluggers.
Each “bat” had its own specific qualities. Lotsa Red Pop had a cheaper, thinner plastic. I think this helped envelop the ball and direct it down the third base line better. Big K Sparkling Punch was a tighter plastic and the ball kind of popped off of it. Plus as an added bonus, you were using a pink bat that smelled like strawberry chemicals. My personal favorite was Sunny D. We used it sparingly for some reason. I think we liked to police ourselves and not get too much of an advantage. The ball seemed to go farther off of it. I’m not a physics teacher but I think it had something to do with the size of the gallon bat. It also made the most satisfying “whoomp” noise when you caught the meat of the bat. Gallon milk jugs were the occasional failed experiment due to their lack of a neck and a round body.
The writer taking his basement technique to the backyard. Check out those leg muscles powering through the foul tip.
But the bats weren’t the only unique element these little Doubledays came up with. We also had a strange playing field. Our basement was unfinished for many years and right in the center of the open space was a metal pole. It was clearly an important support for the house but it was a very unfortunate part of Sanderson Field. But as kids with limited construction budgets we made do. In fact it was just a little off center in the basement to the point that we could make it our third base and foul pole. To the right side we had a cement wall where we positioned first base across from the pole. Second base was against the adjacent wall which also doubled as our centerfield and outfield fence. Both first and second were represented by large pillows. I don’t remember the exact rules about fouls and homeruns. I believe if you managed to get the ball up in the windowsill, that was a homerun. Also walls were in play. So there was a lot of strategy to ricochet shots. In fact one method of attack was to get the ball to bounce back into what is normally foul territory. Sometimes if you were lucky the ball could end up buried in the dirty clothes or get stuck behind the toybox in the back corner.
With limited players we of course had ghost runners. Also with limited players we had ghost defense. Instead of forcing an out at first you just threw the ball at the wall. If it beat the runner, the runner was out. But in tag situations, you didn’t even have to tag the runner. You could just bean the runner with the ball so long as they were off the bag. We called these “soakies”. I have no idea about the etymology on that word and as a kid thought it was a universal term. I think this rule benefited my older brother Justin the most because he had an excuse to wing a plush ball at his little brothers without getting into trouble.
The three inventors of Basement Baseball before their moment of genius. I think Justin's jambox as well as the Little Tikes Coupe spent some time in the basement on Heatherglen.
Justin is seven years older than me and nine older than Tyler. At ~14 he was basically an adult to us, so he was required to play the game from his knees. I imagine if he played on his feet he would be able to get from home to first in two strides. I think when Dad participated he played from his knees too. Dad was also pretty good at runner interference. He would reach out his giant adult man arms and just pull you in as you rounded first until Justin found the ball and pegged you with it.
We played Basement Baseball enough that everything was pretty well established including placement of pillows and usage of bats. I think we played long enough that I was eventually big enough to have to play from my knees. It was an awesome game that ended in a lot of stubbed toes or scraped elbows. Then we refinished the basement and created a whole bunch of new memories there. Like windowsill slam dunk contests and knee races around the pool table.
I’ll have to use another post to tell you about another invented game Tyler and I played: Bookseeds (or two man baseball). With preemptive apologies to the Nagys’ lawn.
I had a long dry spell with baseball a few years back. Now, making up for lost time, I get teased for having a baseball addiction. I was officially diagnosed this past summer when I recounted my day’s accomplishments and they included multiple games of early round Little League World Series.
Being a slow time for baseball, I’ll watch anything. That’s when I found Home Run Derby on Hulu. Here’s a Red-centric one for you.
