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Home » Baseball, The Vine

The Vine: May 14, 2008

Submitted by on May 14, 2008 – 8:21 AM129 Comments

Dear Sars,

I have read your blog for a long time, and I’ve searched the archives and I haven’t seen your estimation of the Best Baseball Movie Ever. Who better than you to make the call?

Well, my husband and I have an ongoing argument about what IS the Best Baseball Movie: Bull Durham or For Love of the Game. We recently watched both back-to-back just to make sure. My husband likes Bull Durham and I prefer For Love of the Game. My husband is a man of few words, and when I asked him for his reason (so that I can query you accurately) he said that Bull Durham has “everything in it that baseball is about.” I love the construction of For Love of the Game, as it plays out years of memories through a single “perfect game.”

Now, we both don’t like Field of Dreams and I’ve never seen The Natural, although I’ll trust my husband that both of the above movies come out ahead of Robert Redford’s movie. And neither of us are familiar with older baseball movies, so we may be missing a thing or two.

So, can you help our debate on the Best Baseball Movie (pick Bull Durham or For Love of the Game, one over the other), and if neither of those meets the title Best Baseball Movie, please recommend what does…

New member of “The Church of Baseball”

Dear New,

I don’t care for either of those, to tell you the truth; it’s baseball-fan heresy, this opinion, but I think Bull Durham is kind of annoying. …Wait, that’s not entirely accurate. I think Crash Davis is really annoying. His big speech to Annie, laying it all on the line — obnoxious. Like anyone’s sitting around all, “No, dude — artificial turf rules.” Come on. And the whole “fastballs are fascist” exchange, uch. It’s the same sort of world-weary smarming you have to put up with if you date much-older guys, like, if you’re so much more experienced and mature than I, how come you don’t date women your own age.

That said, the movie itself has good bits; the perennially underappreciated Robert Wuhl has a handful of excellent lines, and when it sticks to baseball instead of getting all Brother Crash Ignatius Explains It All For You, it’s fine.

For Love of the Game is quintessential ’90s Costner, which is to say that it takes itself very very seriously. We tend to forget that he did a bunch of good movies during the decade — JFK, A Perfect World — because of the unintentionally hilarious bombs like The Postman and Robin Hood: Prince of Dweebs, but the hallmark of all his projects from that time, well-received or not, is a post-Oscar Costner pulling a series of constipated faces, so hard is he concentrating on creating art of great portent.

FLotG marks the end of that period, fortunately, and it does have its adherents; I think it’s boring. (It does make me wonder why Kelly Preston never became a bigger star. She was so cute in Space Camp!) So, I have to give Bull Durham the edge in that face-off.

I prefer both The Natural and Field of Dreams to either of those, but it’s really a question of taste; many people consider both of those too sentimental, and I can’t disagree. Field of Dreams in particular is a love letter to baseball, the past, family, corn, and just about anything else you can name, and it’s got some overwrought speechifying for sure. But it’s my favorite baseball movie. “Want to have a catch, Dad?” kills me every time. Every damn time.

Honorable mention: Major League. Bob Uecker getting drunk in the booth! Tom Berenger follows his lady to her apartment in the bullpen cart! “Fuck you, Jobu”! During the season, it’s on cable like once a week, so if you’ve never seen it, try it; it doesn’t break any new ground, but it does what it does very well.

Just my take. The readers will no doubt have comments.

Dear Sars,

I have an etiquette/relationship question. I’ve recently (March, but it’s complex) broken up with my girlfriend of several years, and we’re going through the collecting stuff phase at the moment. I stayed in the communal house and she moved out to live with her parents, so most of her stuff is still here.

The other day I noticed that in her most recent stuff-collection visit, she’d gone through my bedside table. The little cupboard where I keep all my personal things, including the sex-related ones. When I asked her about it, she said she’d just glanced in it looking for something of hers, but she’d actually tidied it up — thrown out some things (that were still perfectly usable), stacked everything neatly in one corner, generally pawed through the whole lot.

I’m furious about this, because I’m a bit of a privacy nut. Even when we were together I didn’t like her going through my personal space. I didn’t demand a lot, just a drawer or two, but it was mine and I didn’t want her in it without permission. Now that she’s moved out and the relationship is over, I feel even more strongly about that.

My question is, is this a reasonable attitude to have? If it happens again (and it could, because she doesn’t seem to think she’s done anything wrong) should I make a big deal of it or just shrug and deal with it within myself?

Putting Locks On All The Drawers As We Speak

Dear Lock,

“Now that she’s moved out and the relationship is over,” you should both act like it — by which I mean that your home is no longer a shared one. I don’t know if you own the house jointly or what, and that may affect how hard a line you can take on this, but she doesn’t live there anymore, and as a result it’s not appropriate for her to have the same access to the space, or to your things, that she used to have. Do you see what I mean? It’s your home now, singular; if she wants to come over and pick up her things, that’s fine, and you don’t have to antagonize her for the sake of it, but it’s time for some ground rules in that regard.

To your actual question, yes, I think it’s a reasonable attitude to have, but per my comments above, if she can still come and go as she pleases, maybe it’s not a reasonable expectation — if the house is still “communal,” well, clearly that’s how she’s treating it, and you’ll have to take precautions accordingly.

As for what to do if it happens again…again, see above. Make sure it doesn’t — and I think the best way to guarantee that is either to decommunalize the house, or to speed up the process of stuff collection. If that means you move out and force her to gather up her shit, well, so be it. Y’all broke up; yes, that’s inconvenient for her if she needs to get a storage space for her furniture or whatever, but…tough.

So, no, I wouldn’t make a big deal of it; I’d set up the situation so that it can’t become a deal of any kind in future.

My mom recently passed away; it was her wish to be cremated and have her ashes spread with my father’s (who died many years ago). Surprisingly enough for my family, it’s all happening as she wanted, which is great, and we will do this privately in the next few months.

Here’s the quandary: my brother is the executor and the one handling all of the arrangements, but due to family drama, I’ve not really kept up correspondence with him (or any of my siblings) like I should. We’re not at each other’s throats, but we’re not close at all. Is it totally out of line to ask to keep some of my parents’ ashes for myself?

I’m not planning on a Keith Richards ceremony or anything disrespectful, but just want to have them together myself for a bit. Not that it makes much difference, but my father died when I was a baby, and I never got to know him or their relationship, which I’m told was terrific.

Okay — so first, is this a weird impulse, and second, is it okay to ask this of my brother, who really did all of the caretaking in mom’s last years? Or should I intellectualize/rationalize that this is just me hanging on to a physical vestige of something that no longer exists?

Trying Hard Not To Project-Manage My Grief

Dear Project,

I’m sorry for your loss.

I don’t think it’s a weird impulse; it sounds perfectly natural to me. In the absence of people we love, or after their deaths, we hold onto things, objects, talismans of them. My grandmother’s watch is one of my most prized possessions; it runs like shit (I think it misses her), but that isn’t the point. It’s something of hers, so it’s something of…her. It’s a little different with ashes, of course, because it’s the remains of the physical person, but you seem to have a solid grasp of what that is and what that is not. If you think it’ll help to spend some time with them, why not.

And by that same token, I think it’s perfectly okay to ask your brother if he’d mind saving some of the ashes aside for you. You should prepare yourself for the possibility that he’ll refuse — I don’t know what his take is on your relationship, but at times like this, resentments can come out that you don’t expect, never mind the ones you do — but it probably can’t hurt to ask. Just tell him what you’ve told me: you know he took care of everything at the end, you know he’s the executor, and you don’t want to put him to any trouble or come off like you don’t respect your parents’ wishes; after you’ve had some time with the ashes, you’ll do whatever he thinks is best with them, but you’d like to keep a little bit of them with you for a while. Give him some time to think it over, and stress that you really are just asking.

I don’t know if he’ll do it, but even if he says no, I think you should ask.

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129 Comments »

  • Molly says:

    I don’t really like baseball movies. Or baseball in general. (Yeah, I’ll show myself out.) But whenever A League of Their Own is on TV, I have to stop and watch it. I saw it in the theater when I was…god, nine? Loved it then, love it now.

    My father would probably say Bang the Drum Slowly is the best.

  • lknapp says:

    The “have a catch” line from Field of Dreams has me choked up just reading it. I grew up in the country with corn fields, and when I was living in New York I watched that movie, and at the point where the dusty corn in the sun rustles mysteriously I burst into tears, and still do.

  • Heather says:

    Major League was the only movie I can think of that my whole family (parents and sister) actually went to the theater to see. And while the parents were a bit dismayed at the language, we all had a great time. Still one of my favorite movies in general. I love the random fans with the drums and headresses.

    I remember seeing Field of Dreams in the theater as well. I was 13, and sitting with my friends in the 4th row (why, I don’t know). When Ray Liotta first appeared on the screen above us, all 5 of us audibly gasped. So yummy. And in general, a wonderful movie. I even remember seeing the Sandlot in the theater with my sister, and we totally loved it although we were decidedly not in the target demographic.

    These are the favorites, even though A League of Their Own is fun too. I guess going to the actual movie theater demonstrates love.

  • La BellaDonna says:

    Solaana, apparently tons got edited out of Alan Rickman’s part, in an effort to keep him from taking over the whole movie. Needless to say, it did NOT work, and senselessly deprived us of additional Rickman wonderfulness. Boo hiss.

    Michael, my personal thanks for contributing to a movie I happen to like a heck of a lot, even if it is terrible. Heh. And it had some great cheerleaders.

  • avis says:

    I never watched Field of Dreams because I had read Shoeless Joe not too long before and was so ticked at how different everything was that I only lasted about 10 minutes into the movie. From these comments, I may have to give this another try.

    “Field of Dreams… I lose it every time when Archie Graham crosses the line to save Costner’s daughter; seriously, I’m verklempt thinking about it now.”

    This was in the book too and gets me every time.

  • Jacq says:

    Project, a friend of mine lost her mother very suddenly a few years ago, and kept some of her ashes afterwards (I think she still has them). She says that it feels good to know that a part of her mother is still with her. Your instinct to do this is perfectly normal, in my opinion, and I very much hope that your brother will see this and support you in it (and I agree that you sound like a very sensitive and nice person, and there’s no reason to think that he won’t).

    Very sorry for your loss.

  • Sally says:

    Love, love, love The Sandlot in my family. My sister and I, in times of the other’s idiocy, can’t resist a good, “You’re KILLING me, Smalls.” We have also been known to call people, “Can’t hack it pantywaist who wears their mother’s bra.” Because we are, apparently, twelve. I like Field of Dreams, but love the more imminently quotable Major League, and cannot turn away from A League of Their Own if it’s on. Although I’ve always wanted Dottie to slap the bejeesus out of Kit. I’ve never cried over FOD, but man did I snot it up in The Rookie. I must confess, however, that I am originally from Alabama and as such, a football, not a baseball girl, and for my money no sports movie ever can bring the crying like Rudy. Every. Single. Time.

    Space Camp ruled. The movie and the actual camp.

  • Susan says:

    Watching Major League is an Opening Day tradition in our house. Favorite line: “Are you trying to say Jesus Christ can’t hit a curve ball?” Cracks my ass up, every time. Although when watching our beloved* Rockies on tv, we do tend to pull out the, “He’s not the best color man in the league for nothing, folks” line. I’d kill to have Uecker calling our games.

    RH:PoT: Am I the only one waiting for technology to catch up so that we can replace Kevin Costner with…anybody? The January Man, while not a fabulous movie, had Alan Rickman, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Kevin Kline. Swap out the Kevins and while it still wouldn’t be a masterpiece, RH:PoT would (IMHO) have been much more watchable.

    Question regarding an obscure baseball movie: Has anybody actually seen the 1951 film “Rhubarb” about the (former)alley cat who inherits the baseball team? I’ve heard it’s a good film, but I’ve never been able to find a copy. Cats and baseball…I’m in heaven!

  • Dayna says:

    Clearing out the old tear ducts, indeed! And at my desk at work too! I love the “have a catch” line but where I lose it is:

    Dad “Is this heaven?”
    Ray “It’s Iowa.”
    Dad “I coulda swore it was heaven.”

    Waaaaaah!

  • Suzanne says:

    “The Sandlot” !!!

    For-ev-ER! For-ev-ER! I loved it all, except for the narrator’s supremely dorky cap. And the dog slobber. And the fact that James Earl Jones was blind … (sniffle)

  • Terry says:

    meltina said: […] The Sandlot was my favorite. No other movie has ever taken a good natured neighborhood baseball game and turned it into an epic struggle of good vs. evil.

    I have never heard anyone call it an epic struggle of good versus evil. I love it! And seriously, some of the greatest one liners came out of that movie. We still tend to egg on battles with “You play baseball like a girl!”

    @ Avis: the book was a good read, and the movie tends to drag in places, but overall the two work as separate mediums (whereas sometimes the book is hands down better than the movie).

  • Trish says:

    DH and I have this “greatest baseball movie” discussion all the time. The answers *never* change, but it’s still a fun talk.
    He cannot turn past The Sandlot, Field of Dreams, or The Natural. The first 2, he quotes on a weekly basis. LOVE them all- except the weird chick-on-the-train part of Natural… never did get that. But the ending? SOB! The kid who chooses the next bat? And yes, the music, the x-mo vision, the MUSIC, the lights, the music, the showering of sparks that somehow don’t hurt anyone nor catch any grass on fire? Love.
    Sandlot and FoD are just perfect, to me. Love the book-banning scene though, cracks me up every time.
    RICKMAN. IS. AWESOME. I love Prince of Dweebs, *despite*. Morgan? AWESOME. Love love love.

  • Michael says:

    @ La BellaDonna – word on the street was the strippers-turned cheerleaders in The Replacements were mostly actual local strippers. Method acting I suppose…. When they weren’t showing the cheerleaders faces in any shots (distance shots, etc.) they used other extras & put them in the cheerleader outfits – they were 10x prettier than the cheerleaders you saw on screen.

    I love Field of Dreams – right balance of nostalgia, corn (both schmaltz and the Iowa kind), baseball, and silent hero (Costner’s quiet, but consistent determination to build & keep the field). The movie doesn’t make any sense, and works anyway. Plus I love James Earl Jones fumigating Costner with the bug sprayer when he learns he’s from “the 60’s” Hee.

    As for Bang the Drum Slowly – at least they got the slowly part in the title, so it is truth in advertising. I liked it better when it was called Brian’s Song (and was about football).

  • Randy's Girl says:

    May God bless Lou Brown!

    “All right people, we got 10 minutes ’till game time, let’s all gather ’round. I’m not much for giving inspirational addresses, but I’d just like to point out that every newspaper in the country has picked us to finish last. The local press seems to think that we’d save everyone the time and trouble if we just went out and shot ourselves. Me, I’m for wasting sportswriters’ time. So I figured we ought to hang around for a while and see if we can give ’em all a nice big shitburger to eat!”

    Sweetest – Field of Dreams
    Funniest – Major League
    Old School – Pride of the Yankees
    “Real” – Bull Durham

    Love *61 and the Natural, but they really screwed up Malamud’s ending…

  • Leda422 says:

    I’m from NY and I don’t think I have ever heard anyone say anything other than have a catch- if someone said play catch I would look at them funny.
    Major League definetly.

  • Alan Swann says:

    Sandman: “My memory of the novel is that it doesn’t bring the connection around full circle to John Kinsella. The father-son reunion is pure movie. Waah.”

    Actually, it’s a father-sonS reunion in “Shoeless Joe”: the movie omits Ray’s long-lost twin brother, Richard. The film also left out Eddie Scissons, and changed the writer Ray goes to find from J.D. Salinger to the fictional Terence Mann.

  • Trish says:

    Oh Sally– Rudy! -SOB- every.single.time. It doesn’t even matter if I’ve missed the entire movie and all I’m watching is the end of the game. I cry. That may be my Best Sports Movie Ever Winner (although there would be a couple close ties there….).

  • Sandman says:

    @Alan Swann: I might have guessed you’d have this one aced. I guess my memory of the book wasn’t as vivid as I thought. (Oops.) Does it sound completely pathetic if I say I remembered that Salinger was the original subject of Ray’s quest. (Too late.)

    @Michael: “Robbins was totally wrong for the role. First, he was too old to play Nuke. He was almost 30 when the movie came out -and looked it. As a result, the naivete, inexperience, and overall lack of self-and-world-awareness fell flat for me. His role was too silly and not at all believable.”

    Wait, what? You mean we weren’t supposed to think Nuke was mildly retarded? Oh.

    “Plus I love James Earl Jones fumigating Costner with the bug sprayer when he learns he’s from ‘the 60’s’ Hee.”

    “You’re from the ’60s, aren’t you?… Peace, Love, Dope! [sprays] Now get the hell outta my house!” Classic.

  • The Hoobie says:

    Oh, I loves me some Bob Uecker. Every time I get a great parking space, I say “I must be in the front row!” It’s automatic.

    I think I have the same thing about tender father-kid moments that Sars has, but for mother-kid moments. The scene in the car at the end of the Sixth Sense just undoes me. That’s a box of Kleenex, right there.

  • meltina says:

    Actually now that I think about it there were two epic struggles in The Sandlot: team vs. team, and boy vs. beast.

    What I also like about The Sandlot that makes it better than Field of Dreams is that it captures the same type of nostalgia that permeates FoD, without being manipulative or sappy. The ending two minutes of it were just as poignant to me as the catch scene in FoD, but the narrator’s words left me with a smile on my face. Highly recommended.

  • Megan says:

    A League of Their Own:

    How has no one mentioned the moment when Jimmy says the umpire looks like “a penis with a little hat on”?

    As far as whether or not Dottie dropped the ball, I could go either way on how she might handle it as far as only Kit (I agree with the competitive streak, but she’s also imminently practical, so I could see her just getting things over with and giving Kit a little push.), but I think that her responsibility to her teammates more than anything else would make her go all out, because it might have given Kit a little boost, but it would screw all of them to throw it, which would also hurt Kit in the long run because she’d have known that her gain was at her friends’ loss. If she earned it, so be it, but she would’ve wanted it fairly.

  • Deirdre says:

    Chiming in very late: Major League. I think I’ve got that movie memorized. Another great Lou Brown moment: urinating on Dorn’s contract specifying no unnecessary calesthenics. Hee.

    Like Chris, above, I am not a baseball fan, but I quite enjoy baseball movies (and movies about most sports, actually). I think it’s because they cut out all the interminably boring parts of the game and only show the cool stuff. And? They teach me stuff. I have a clearer understanding of football since watching Friday Night Lights (the show, not the movie). That’s not saying much, since my previous understanding was nil, but still, I’m learning.

  • rayvyn2k says:

    @The Hoobie: My hubby and I do that too! Every. Time.

  • Charity says:

    Can I put in a proxy vote? My grandmother, who loved baseball so much that it spilled over to my dad and to me, always said that the Sandlot was her favorite, because it was most like her own observations and experiences.

    Now, I haven’t seen it past the beginning, but this conversation has reminded me about it, and I think I’m going to go rent it and remember my grandmother.

  • Alan Swann says:

    Too late to add one more movie to the list? Long Gone, with William Petersen, Virginia Madsen, Dermot Mulroney, Henry Gibson, and Teller of Penn and Teller — in a speaking role! Hysterical, and how can you not root for characters named Cecil “Stud” Cantrell and Dixie Lee Boxx?

  • Druck says:

    Late to the discussion, but strictly to the argument of which is better of the two choices, then it’s obviously Bull Durham. KC may have a better individual performance in FtLotG, but the supporting cast in Bull Durham is better. Bill Simmons has written at length about the wet blanket girlfriend/wife character in sports movies and cites Kelly Preston’s role in this movie as a prime example. Space Camp also stars Joquin Phoenix in one of his first roles, I believe. SC should have been a hugely successfull movie and TPTB were trying to tie in the TeacherInSpace project and capture the general public’s imagination that yes, someday anybody will be able to travel. Of course the Challenger disaster shelved that concept and SC tanked when it was finally released.

    I would rank FoD and ALotO and maybe Major League above either of those two baseball movies. Honorable mention to The Sandlot and Bang the Drum Slowly, and for some of the acting performances in Eight Men Out. Think 70 years from now they’ll make a movie called One Giant Head Out, about how the media and TPTB railroaded Barry Bonds out of baseball? Heh.

    I can’t believe there is an argument that Dottie drops the ball on purpose, I always figured that the collision jars loose the ball (and that’s how it appeared over the weekend when LotO was on) and not that Dottie “gives” it to Kit. (It also appears that Kit never actually touches home plate, but that’s an argument for another time..)

    I love that we’re discussing the implausibilty of the use of the phrase “have a catch” cosidering that the character in question is asking the “ghost” of his estranged dead father. Heh.

  • Tony says:

    There’s about a zero-percent chance of this comment reaching the person who I’m replying to, but the DS9 episode about the baseball card was about a Willie Mays card, not Babe Ruth.

    And just to this comment isn’t entirely useless, The Sandlot is just so fantastic.

  • smmoe1997 says:

    I have to go with A League of Their Own with Major League coming in second.

    My mom’s next door neighbor was a batgirl for the Peoria team when she was younger! I love hearing her stories about it. She made a dollar week for that! Just think they paid for it, I’m so jealous that I can’t play baseball (not a big fan of softball). And she talked about how accurate the movie is which makes me love it even more. And it’s proof that girls are tougher than boys, they ran the bases and slid and dove and whatnot…while wearing skirts! I’d like to see some of our whiny major leaguers play wear shorts (although skirts would be funnier!), and see how tough they are.

    I will admit to liking For Love of the Game, Bull Durham, and The Rookie. Not so fond of The Natural, but that has more to do with the fact that I was forced to watch it in English class in high school and then “analyze” the storytelling elements. No better way to ruin someone’s enjoyment of movie than to make them write a 10 page paper on its elements. Ugh.

  • Dave says:

    Another vote here for Bad News Bears, mostly because I was 11 in 1976, and I played on a horrible team called the Bears, too. I even had a teammate with long hair and freckles named Kelly. BNB was my first PG movie, and I couldn’t believe the words coming out of Tanner’s mouth. I was majorly crushing on Tatum O’Neal, too.

    In retrospect, it’s still a great baseball movie, because it’s about baseball the way millions of us have played it, with overthrown balls, the worst player being stuck in right field, the fat kid getting stuck at catcher, obnoxious opposing coaches, and losing in the end. Stereotypes, yes, but I’m telling you, that was what my childhood baseball experience was like, and I loved seeing it on the screen.

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