The Sandlot (1993)

Okay, okay, I know it's been forever, but since we had to watch a sports movie for my graduate Sport and Sociology class I had the perfect excuse to blog again.

The Sandlot basically confirmed that I don't really care for movies about kids, or with kids, or featuring kids in any way except basically having them pass by as extras in a crowd scene (I'm the one who spent the entirety of the Harry Potter series mainly concerned with the adults. "Okay so they're all camping for 200 pages BUT WHAT IS MCGONAGALL DOING RIGHT NOW???"). That being said, The Sandlot was cute and everyone I watched it with really enjoyed it, so it may just be my cold black heart keeping me from really appreciating it.

The movie tells the story of Scott Smalls, a 5th grader who moves to a new town and ends up joining up with a gang of kids who play baseball on a sandlot (SPOILER ALERT). As a kid who starts out unable to catch a ball without giving himself a black eye, Smalls learns about the game as the Sandlot gang faces a variety of white-bread challenges, like the team of rich snobby kids (this plot point lasted ten minutes?), getting sick from chewing tobacco, getting kicked out of the pool after kind of sexually harrassing the hot life guard, and finally having to retrieve the signed Babe Ruth baseball Smalls stole from his stepfather and hit into a yard guarded by a terrifying animatronic dog. This last point takes up most of the movie, emphasizing all the misadventures and wacky hijinks. The plot didn't really go anywhere in this movie, and some points that could have actually made it more of a story were just kind of picked up and dropped, but I guess for a movie that's supposed to appeal to kids it had just enough stereotypical story elements to keep things moving along.

Did this movie introduce the phrase "You're killing me, Smalls" into the American lexicon? Because I say that all the time and had no idea it came from a kid's movie about baseball. Also, James Earl Jones cameo! I guess '93 was a slow year for him. (Okay here's an actual baseball plot point though. His character is a former player who says he was BFF's with Babe Ruth, and there's photos of he and Ruth standing together in baseball uniforms, but Ruth retired in 1935, 11 years before integration, so they couldn't have played together. I guess maybe Ruth was just implied to be friends with a dude in the Negro Leagues? But there's another white dude in uniform on the other side of him in this picture, filmmakers come on they couldn't have played together please understand baseball history. Also, he was wearing a cap with the Pittsburgh Pirates "P" on it, but the caps of the Negro League team in Pittsburgh had a "C" on them because the team name was the Crawfords. Yes, I just did twenty minutes of research on the Negro Leagues to prove the filmmakers screwed up here). Denis Leary is also in this movie and since the only other thing I've seen him in is Ice Age I feel pretty confident in assuming he only does children's movies.

Anyway, since I had to analyze this for a sociology class, I could talk about how children should develop their own sport experiences instead of playing structured games overly controlled by adults, the class distinctions and specific challenges faced by working-class athletes, the idea of meritocracy and social mobility and how it plays into the myth of the American Dream, athletes as religious figures, the transition post-career, and woman-demeaning language, but instead I'd rather talk about how attractive the second main character (Benny Rodriguez) is. Is that creepy? He's actually ten years older than me in real life so let's go with that instead of focusing on the fact that I spent most of the movie raising my eyebrows suggestively at a 15 year old. This problem could have been solved by just making the movie about Benny's professional career as an adult and his continued friendship with Smalls, who becomes the broadcaster for the Dodgers, but I guess that just brings this whole review around again to the fact that I don't like movies about kids. Anyway, cute film I guess, but I would never have watched this if not for class, and I probably won't ever think about it again.

Final Score: Single

Bull Durham (1988)

Okay, okay, I know, this movie is as old as I am and I hadn't seen it yet. How could I call myself a baseball fan? Why hadn't I watched this movie? Oh god oh god what is wrong with me as a human I should just lock myself in a closet and never eat again, right?

To answer these and other soul-searching questions I finally locked the door, turned off the lights, and settled in with as much beer-impersonating drinks and cracker jacks as I could stomach to watch what one reviewer calls "the perfect balance of entertainment and genius!" Not so fast, hotshot; would this movie really live up to the overwhelming hype?

The answer is: well, sort of. The plot revolves around the Durham Bulls, who at the time were the High-A affiliate of the Atlanta Braves (currently AAA affiliate of the Tampa Bay Rays). The Bulls have a young, hotshot pitcher, "Nuke" Laloosh, with a "million dollar arm and a five cent head," so the team signs journeyman catcher Crash Davis to mentor him and make him big-league ready. Meanwhile, Annie Savoy is a fan who every season takes one player from the team under her wing, mentors him, and has tons of sex with him, ostensibly to help the team. These three end up in a kind of love triangle, and wacky hijinks ensue.

The movie was cute, and had a lot of great one-liners about the game, but when I watch baseball movies, I like them to be about...well, baseball, and not devolve into a romantic comedy which is essentially what happened here. But that's really personal preference and neither here nor there, so on to my actual criticisms.

Susan Sarandon's character, Annie, was incredibly confusing as I kept alternating between "Damn, I want to BE this chick" and "Really? REALLY?" I guess my main complaint is that although she attends the games faithfully (like me), keeps score (like me), exhorts the players to do well from the stands (like me), and knows enough about the game to pass on advice that is actually helpful in the guys performing better (hopefully like me?), she is only listened to because she has sex with the players (NOT like me). If the lady knows that much about baseball, don't you think you should assume her opinions have some merit not just because she is bangin' your lights out after every game? Of course as the movie progresses she just becomes crazy because Laloosh won't sleep with her, afraid it will affect his winning streak, and because LADIES BE CRAZY AND RULED BY HORMONES AM I RIGHT FELLAS? She does have a couple really nice feminist-type moments though, and she and I had a minute together when she flips out on Laloosh for calling her cute. "Cute? Baby ducks are cute!" (Seriously, guys and girls. Be able to come up with a better compliment than telling someone they're "cute").

Meanwhile, remember how there are minority players in baseball? Don't worry if you forgot, so did the movie makers! The single African-American player doesn't have a single line to my recollection. The Latino player, Jose, fairs better in this department. He has quite a few lines, and they all have to do with voodoo! Because Latin-American players be all crazy and superstitious, right fellas? Guys, I get that the movie is about three white people but trying to ensure a realistic racial distribution on the team shouldn't really be that difficult.

On a baseball note, a minor plot point is that Crash is going to break the minor-league home run record this season and implores Annie not to tell anyone because he's embarrassed by it. When he does "there wasn't a single mention of it in the Sporting News." Wait, what? Are you telling me the all-time minor league home run record isn't being tracked by anyone? And yes, I know this is set in 1987 and statistics weren't as big a deal or computerized like they are now, but you want me to believe the only person who figures out a statistic as major as ALL TIME HOME RUN RECORD is some chick who's a fan of the minor league team the player is on, and Sporting News/AP/Sports Illustrated has NO IDEA that this record is about to be broken? OKAY. This movie does, however, pass the newly established Osmer test, which is: Does a movie about baseball/featuring baseball as a major portion of the plot feature a montage or transition using a song specifically about baseball (i.e. Take Me Out To The Ballgame or Centerfield)? CHECK.

I guess my biggest beef with this movie is just that the resolution seems rushed and a little forced. Laloosh is called up to the major leagues (from High-A?) and just vanishes from the movie. Annie later says "I didn't have to worry about him anymore." The end of the character? Except for one shot of him acting stupid in an interview, yep! Did you run out of film or something? It just seemed like the filmmakers couldn't really think of a great way to end the movie so they stuck in a couple strange plot points at the end and said DONE WHO'S BUYING THE ROUNDS?

It was a cute movie, the acting was great (and I mean, anyone can spend a couple hours staring at Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon, and Tim Robbins and come away alright) and had a few astute observations about the game, but let's face it, this is really a romantic comedy disguised as a baseball film, which helps explain its universal appeal but was a disappointment for me. Perhaps the smartest point in the movie is made about twenty minutes in, when Crash says "I believe there should be a constitutional amendment outlawing astroturf and the designated hitter." As a fellow worshiper at the church of baseball, Amen.

Final Score: Single

*61 (2001)

This movie was the first offered to me in my Netflix queue, as apparently asteriks come before everything else alphabetically, but the timing worked out well as I recently finished reading October 1964 by David Halberstam. That book is about the 1964 World Series between the Yankees and the Cardinals, but also covers the subject of this HBO movie, the home run race between Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle.

Media, fans, and to a certain extent management all hoped Mantle would be the one to break Babe Ruth's single season home run record; while Mantle's early relationship with the press was contentious, he quickly adapted to life under the spotlight of the New York media and the relationship became very congenial. Maris, on the other hand, was very blunt and uninterested in schmoozing with the press, earning a reputation as being surly and unfriendly. As a Midwesterner who never adjusted to city life in New York, the quiet and reserved Maris disliked media interviews and social situations, and in a time when the press was essentially the only gateway to the players for the casual fan, led to public opinion swinging wildly in Mantle's favor in the home run race, even to the point where Maris and his family received death threats. The need of the press to have a "hero", someone with "great baseball stature" breaking the record seems insane in a game that so often prides itself on being the sport of an everyman, where people from all different backgrounds can come and experience success.

This is the scene for the Billy Crystal-directed movie, which follows Maris and Mantle from opening day of 1961 through the end of the season. The movie does an excellent job of illustrating the power of the press at the time, a time when objective reporting was not necessarily considered industry standard. The pressure on the players is highlighted, especially Maris, who begins to collapse mentally as the season wears on (although the scene of him sitting alone in his room crying with newspapers with negative articles strewn at his feet while a blues song plays maybe tips the scale at melodramatic. THERE'S NO CRYING IN BASEBALL). The biggest issue is probably when Crystal (a Yankees fan) tries to turn the relationship between the two into a Three's Company style bromance (Maris and Mantle live with another player in the movie and there's plenty of scenes of "domestic bliss"). While Maris and Mantle were friends in real life, the friendship was, in Halberstam's words, "decidedly cool" and marked by a competitiveness not seen in the movie.

Another more relavant issue the movie does highlight comes in a scene where the writers and Commissioner Ford Frick debate whether the integrity of Ruth's record will be compromised as Maris and Mantle play a 162 game season, 8 games longer than when Ruth set the record. It's an interesting parallel with today's debate on steroids and broken records involving players known to have used them.

Sports movies obviously have a certain quotient of dramatic scenes; the touchdown hanging in the air, the batter coming to the plate, the soccer player lining up for the penalty kick. These usually happen in slow motion with dramatic music playing behind the action, and it's often hard to keep from going overboard in these moments. This movie occasionally gets to an eye-rolling level of drama, but for the most part tends to keep itself in check. Also, while some elements of the story are obviously played up for dramatic effect, it's nice to watch players breaking records who aren't hulking giants devoid of any semblance of personality like some of today's players. Plus, who doesn't love 1960's costuming and lines like "This could really turn into a cannoli of a season!" As Maris says, "the difference between hitting a home run and popping out is an eighth of an inch." This movie isn't quite a home run, and if you want a more accurate version of the story of the race, a book like Halberstam's or a Mantle or Maris biography is probably the way to go (and I highly recommend one; the stories of the championship Yankees of the 50's and 60's are great reading), but for a more casual fan, the movie is a fun two hours.

Final Score: Triple

*Note: Movies will be rated based on a baseball scoring system. From worst to best: Strikeout, Single, Double, Triple, Home Run, Grand Slam

Hey look, another blog on the internets

All my friends like to spend enormous amounts of their time watching movies. This has left me envious/perplexed, so while I am unemployed this summer I figured I would combine this activity with one of my other favorite activities, watching baseball, and ordered a Netflix trial subscription.

The plan: Watch as many baseball movies as possible and review them using an as-yet-to-be-determined rating system (probably something using as little complicated mathematics as possible). Because I currently read more than I watch movies, this may be expanded to include books about baseball. Join the fun