"A League of Their Own" is a great baseball movie. Written by Kelly Candele, brother of former Dodger Casey. "Bull Durham" is a little cutsie at times but very good. Also: "Eight Men Out."

Has there ever been a good (or bad) movie about Bo Belinsky?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116165/

http://baseball.oyez.org/

It's really hard. Even when you set it on "easy".

Eight Men Out
Pride of the Yankees
Field of Dreams
Bang the Drum Slowly
Major League - Who knew Pete Vuckovich could act?
The Sandlot - How can you not like a movie where one of the characters grows up to be a Dodger?

Justice Taney wrote Dred Scott.

Yeah, I can go with that.

The Sandlot is underrated.

But BNB is my favorite. I appalled another dad at T-Ball this morning (before seeing this post) when I admitted I'd let my four year old watch that movie. He loved it, and asks a lot for the one with "the girl pitcher.")

The key to winning that part.... Making lucky guesses.

My mom and I saw "Field of Dreams" together and we both left a bit misty-eyed. But she grew up without a father for most of her life. She died before "A League of Their Own" came out, but it makes me sad just because of the ending when there are a bunch of baseball-loving women who would be approximately my mom's age talking about the game.

"Bang the Drum Slowly" is a surprisingly good film, although it looks very 1970s-ish. I've seen the TV version from the 1950s which has Paul Newman and Albert Salmi in it, but it's not quite as good as the film.

I would recommend that if you haven't seen "Bang the Drum Slowly" that you READ the book that preceded the film, which is called "The Southpaw". That is one of the best baseball novels I've ever read and the best one in Mark Harris's 4-part series on the life of Henry Wiggen. Two of the four books aren't particularly good "Ticket for a Seamstich" and "It Looked Like Forever".

for my money, jon's right -- bad news bears can't be topped. in fact, i was thisclose to persuading my wife to name our last kid tanner. the deal-breaker was the way it flows into our last name, which, alas, rhymes with anus. (for the same reason, we never even considered seymour.)

"Eight Men Out" is probably my No. 2.

I like the 70sness of Bang the Drum Slowly, since I love almost everything from the 70s anyway, but it's the actual parts where they play baseball that I'd rather not see.

It's clear that most of the actors in that film spent their childhoods on stage instead of on a baseball field. I think Major League has done the best job so far with realistic gameplay action. Even Corbin Bernsen looks like a 3B.

And don't forget the Brady Bunch episode with Drysdale.

FYI-checking out the future games rosters and was reminded that LaRoche was signed by Evans as a 39th round pick. No one thought he'd go pro but Logan White took a flyer and then we gave him a huge bonus to sign. That should go in the WIN column for Mr. Evans. I'm getting fonder and fonder of Mr. Evans these days but then I always liked him. Just sticking the Yank's with Brown will always put him on a pedestal for me.

Lisa: What happened, dad? They didn't really burn her, did they?

Marge: Of course they didn't honey. Just then, Sir Lancelot drove up on a white horse and saved Joan Of Arc, they got married and lived in a spaceship, the end. [tears out page and eats it] Well, it's easier to chew than that Bambi video!

Robert DeNiro is sort of small to be a catcher, but I guess he's Paul Lo Duca-sized.

I think Paul LoDuca was modeled after the DeNiro character. Full of heart and soul.

In "The Southpaw" Henry Wiggen, called Arthur by his teammates, gets Bruce Pearson, the ill-fated catcher as his roommate toward the end of the book. Pearson is a nice guy, but not very bright and Henry doesn't like him because he pees in the sink. Nobody likes Bruce Pearson except for Henry Wiggen at the end of the first book.

Sorry to bring up that issue again, but it's really a plot point in the book!

I also liked field of dreams. It's the only movie I can stomach with Costner in it.

Sandlot rocked. The mouth-to-mouth scene at the pool was the best.

However, Bad News Bears is probably the best of them all. Classic.

Totally enjoyed the The Untouchables but maybe it was because Connery was so great but don't remember Costner being bad in that movie.

I guess with all the great male American actors getting old or dying and the new one's not very good is why every good movie now has an Aussie or Englishman playing an American. We have lots of stars but very few actors.

"I didn't see 'Field of Dreams.' I don't watch movies about what I do," San Francisco slugger Barry Bonds said.

What a guy!

What are you, a librarian or something?

Moriarty could have thrown left-handed in the movie and not looked any less awkward.

His band's music was heard for about a minute, but I dutifully paid attention to hear it!

The Pads lead the M's 3-0 after 1. And Peavy is pitching today against Aaron Sele, so I wouldn't count on the Mariners scoring 14 runs.

The Mark Harris series is one of the few series of novels I've ever finished. And the last two were quite disappointing. The third book is just a novella.

Top baseball picks, in no particular order:
- For Love of the Game
- Eight Men Out
- Major League

They went: 1) great 2) not as good 3) even less good 4) pretty good.

My favorite movie that year was Miller's Crossing. It didn't even get nominated.

Ever

Beltre doubles in a run against Peavy to make it 3-1 Padres over Seattle.

I think the best baseball movie is The Pride of the Yankees, if only because the speach at the end is one of the few moments in a mans life where he is given a free pass to wipe away a tear. The other's being: birth of first child, the other kids don't count,unless the other ones were girls (kidding), graduation of your kids, death of either parent and the end of Its a Wonderful Life (I may be biased on that last one).

That said, I still think the Dodgers were smart not to pay him what Seattle is paying him.

...except for the stellar job by whoever it was played the announcer in that one.

The original was a terrific film. When you watch the original, make a note to check out the area surrounding the playing field. Then, drive by the intersection of Sepulveda and Ohio. The difference, as you could imagine, is night and day.

-Sandlot
- The Natural
- Bad News Bears (Tanner was my idol)

"Losing is a disease, as contagious as syphilis, infecting one
but affecting all."

Hey, I used to practice softball there. Used to work in SM and that is where we'd go after work to get some playing time in.

How far has Kearns fallen that 1st Encarnacion is brought up to DH this week and then Romano when Freel goes on the DL? I guess Miley wasn't the problem and O'Brien still wants to teach him some kind of lesson.

Beltre is 1 for 2 with 2 RBI, one on a double and the other on a sac fly.

San Diego is jut +5 in runs scored coming into the game (and at +8 now). I would love to see no one in the NL West be in the black in that category this year.

It would be fitting for this division, which is pretty much the Ship of Lost Souls.

from a recent thread on Primer by "Too Much Cofee Man":
---------------------------------
On XM's Baseball Beat yesterday, I heard an interview w/ one of the beat writers for the Marlins, maybe Kevin Barker, but I don't recall exactly. He was trying to explain why the Marlins weren't playing up to the "tremendous expectations that everybody had for them." His explanation was essentially bad luck - they were pitching great and hitting great, just not hitting with runners in scoring position.
So, here's the data (ranks for NL only)

ERA - 1st, Avg - 4th
Avg, RISP - 5th, OBP - 5th
Runs - 14th

Now, I'm thinking that if you're the beat writer for a team, you could spend the 30-40 seconds it takes to pull this information. Then, the question was, what should they do to turn it around. His answer was, stand pat, because:
a) if it's just bad luck (i.e., Avg-RISP), that should go away (reasonable if the premise was correct)
b) there's no one they could trade and upgrade.

He then went on to say that the reason for the high expectations was that they have an all-star or all-star caliber player AT EVERY POSITION!

OK, let me pull this back to the Dodgers. As a group, beat writers and columnist lack the ability to objectively evaluate the talent on the teams that they cover. The Dodgers got Werth and Bradley for nothing last year, and writers in LA couldn't see any reasons for the team scoring more runs then the year before. As a writer, part of your job is to explain the ebbs and flows in a season, and if you do not think of random chance as an explanation and you cannot evaluate talent, you're left with hypothesizing "motivation", "clutch," "luck" etc., with nothing that can disprove your hypothesis. In time, the hypothesis turns into opinion and then into fact.
end of post
--------------------------------

Good stuff. So then I stumble on this in Stark's latest column...

"The Marlins are second in the league in ERA, third in batting average, first in average with runners in scoring position and first in starting pitching ERA. So how can they possibly be fourth in the NL East in the standings, 12th in the league in runs scored and nine games under .500 since May 24?

How do we explain all that? Well, for the first time under Jack McKeon, this team has lost the quality it once rode all the way to a World Series upset of the Yankees – that feeling that it would always find some way to win the close ones."

GoBears, you really have to see `Dances With Wolves'. Costner really isn't that bad in it (though not as low key as in `Open Range'...where he was Antonio Banderas in his `lowkeyedness'). It's simply a great story.

Currently re-reading `Centinnial'...man, I'd love to see the teleplay of that again. Don't know how many of you have seen it, but it ranks right up there with `Band of Brother' in the pantheon of all time great miniseries.

Oh, sorry, this is about baseball movies. A little surprised no one has mentioned two of the best `small' baseball flicks...`Soul of the Game' and `Long Gone'.

Maybe it would help Choi if he visited his hometown,sawed a bat out of a fallen tree, and gave it the Korean version of the name "Wonderboy".

I tend to confuse it with "Long Gone" which came out around the same time. (Or so I thought, but they actually came out four years apart)

Both are pretty good.

Wouldn't it? With the Mariners down 3 and all.

Good or fun, movies with Kevin Costner:

Silverado
Bull Durham
Field of Dreams
Dances with Wolves
The Untouchables
No Way Out
A Perfect World (his most underrated)
Tin Cup

And I didn't hate For Love of the Game.

All in all, that's not a bad career at all.

To me, Mike Binder is the Scott Erickson of HBO series.

Perfect World was a very good flick...Costner did a good job of acting in the era. Plus, his young co-star did a fine job.

Padres 8, Mariners 5

Time to watch the scoreboard to see if the Tigers can beat the DBacks!

How does he expect Teahen to reach his full potential if he sits him against lefties all the time?

And c'mon Clint Hurdle, Dustan Mohr instead of Jorge Piedra?

Sheesh!

I figure that I can wrap that up in a day or two and then just watch baseball games the rest of the time.

That being...I really am a sucker for most baseball movies. One of the more obscure ones called "Pastime" starring William Rus. Yes, it was a tear-jerker. Set in 1950's Central California, (Modesto if I remember right) Rus plays an aging ballplayer that's been stuck what seems like his whole life in the minors. He's given the assignment to watch over, or befriends a young new rookie--only he's black, and as would be an example of the era, most of the team is set out to ruin any chance or promise the rookie has in making it to the bigs. It's loaded with some of the great baseball stars of our pastime playing parts as VFW members who support the team as fans. (Duke, Bob Feller, "Mr. Baseball" Ernie Banks)

The movie is outstanding and I recommend it to all. One of the Great baseball movies ever made that no one ever really saw, and that's ashame.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105109/combined

I'll just stick to Japanese food.

This is typical Japanese breakfast food:
http://www.blogography.com/photos6/Natto.jpg

It's actually pretty good if you put some mustard on it.

That photo is not an exaggeration.

Of course, I can't bring them wrapped, but I'm sure I can get someone in a department store to wrap them for me. Watching a Japanese store clerk wrap something is a sight to behold.

I am physically unable to wrap any gift correctly. My brain does not consider a third dimension when considering how much paper I need.

I give people a lot of gift cards now.

Not just Asia, but here in Hawai'i, too. I've been on numbers of inter-island flights where passengers were loaded down with island-specific gifts (Maui chips being brought back to Oahu, forex). Out here the custom is called omiyage, which is probably stolen from Japanese.

Homer Simpson on Maui chips: Mmmm, Maui chips. Mmmm...

There is one exception. Natto. It's heinous. They call it fermented soy beans, but what they really mean is "Spoiled."

Natch, my wife eats it just to emasculate me. Yuck! In fact, most Japanese, especially younger than 50, won't eat it.

I used to ride past the Bad News Bears park on Sepulveda and Ohio every day on my way to work (have since moved so that it's no longer on the way). I just took their word for it (there's a sign), because I sure didn't recognize it.