Rtm

Sometimes, when you feel right, there’s a groove there, and the bat just eases into it and meets that ball. When the bat meets that ball and you feel that ball just give, you know it’s going to go a long way. Damn, if you don’t feel like you’re going to live forever.

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Eight Men Out is about the Chicago Black Sox, a team most of us learned about when their ghosts walked out of a cornfield in Iowa in Field of Dreams.

In 1919, seven members of the greatest team in the world agreed to take money in exchange for throwing the World Series. When the conspiracy eventually came to light, all seven players were banned for life. Buck Weaver was also banned, even though he played well in the series and didn’t take any money. He was exiled just the same for knowing about the plot and not informing anyone. His ban had less to do with his actions, and more to do with a league trying to save face in the wake of a scandal so severe it had the power to undermine the legitimacy of the entire institution.

Critics really love this film, which confuses me. It’s not a bad film, but such effusive praise seems misplaced. There’s some solid camerawork, and a few standout performances, but overall the film is really ham-fisted and clumsy. There isn’t an ounce of subtlety throughout, from the writing to the majority of the acting. I felt like there was a lot of tell, and very little show. Perhaps it’s just a style I’m not partial to. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Either way, the story is a captivating illustration of the economic realities in America, both then and now.

What the players did was unquestionably wrong. I’d normally argue against most conceptions of the so-called “purity” of baseball, but even on my short list, intentionally losing games for money is a desecration.

However, the story here is just as much about the circumstances that precipitated the crime as it is the crime itself. If the economics of the game hadn’t been rigged against the players in the first place, the whole thing likely never would have happened.

Then, as is still true today, the people responsible for revenue are not the ones who profit from it. The players were the reason people bought tickets to see the game, but they were paid very little while White Sox owner Charles Comiskey made a fortune. Functionally, they weren’t men being paid commensurately for their skill and talent, they were a product being exploited to make the rich richer.

The unfair power dynamic is also clear in that the players were banned for life for defrauding the game. And yet, while trying to minimize the fallout, Comiskey committed well-documented fraud, in conspiracy with other owners, and faced no consequences.

It’s a microcosm of the economic realities in America at the time, and the dynamic is stronger now than ever. It’s true economically — instead of being paid market value for our skills and abilities, the result of our labor primarily benefits an elite group who hold all the cards. And it’s true in terms of accountability. If I get caught conning you, I go to prison. If corporations and billionaires get caught conning the world, the worst case scenario is they get their wrists slapped and write themselves billions of dollars in severance checks.

I get that this may seem too political for this series. Playful was my intended tone when I started this whole thing. After all, I’m just following through on the ridiculous decision to watch 30 baseball movies in 30 days, because I couldn’t handle the start of April without the game. It’s reasonable to assume I’d avoid discussing anything polarizing. But I’m just going where the movies take me. As these films are immediately compared and contrasted with one another due to my daily viewing schedule, the corrupt economics of the game becomes an clear a thread I can’t ignore.

A conversation on economics isn’t coming out of left field [rim shot]. Baseball reflects the country, and economic disparity has been a part of the game for the near entirety of its history. It’s not just depicted in films indicting the game, it’s also referenced in films heralding its enduring beauty. With each passing movie, it got harder and harder to avoid the topic altogether.

I love baseball, but I can’t ignore the fact that the institution is synonymous with exploitation.

So, go ahead and call me a socialist, claiming to do so in the so-called capitalism. But if I’m criticizing the economic realities listed above, the system I’m criticizing isn’t capitalism, but aristocracy.

Up Next: Let’s leave behind talk of economics as we watch: [reads card] Moneyball. Okay, nevermind then. Let’s keep talking about wealth gaps.

Show me what you’re made of, why don’t ya?

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The Phenom is another film in this series you should watch even if you don’t enjoy baseball.

The story follows Hopper Gibson, a young pitcher wrestling with the impact his abusive father has on his life and his relationship with the game. Writer-director Noah Buschel has created something really special. Combined with powerful performances by Johnny Simmons and Ethan Hawke, as the father and son, the result can be hard to watch. The weight of the contempt and emotional violence is visceral.

I have no idea what sort of research and life experience works at the core Buschel’s script, but his depiction of weathering that sort of abuse is so accurate to reality. It’s clearly rooted in either personal experience, or deep empathy — perhaps both. That’s also true of the performances. Hawke’s portrayal of limitless contempt for his son, contempt that only increases as his son achieves things personally and professionally that escape him, looks exactly how it did in my own life. And on the other side, Simmons perfectly reflected back to me the experience of having to keep your head down and ride out a firestorm of emotional violence once it gets going. You only hope to avoid doing something to escalate it, but often acquiescence itself fuels the rage as it burns hotter and hotter until it elicits a response. You can see in his performance the portrayal of the way trauma can become commonplace. It’s not that it ever stops hurting, it’s just that the pain becomes the expected climate of your life.

It’s always laudable when a film gets the details right when it’s depicting something you have a lot experience with. This is especially true when the subject matter is associated with personal trauma. I’m grateful for this film.

And as a bonus, the baseball is really authentic, too!

Fun fact: The film has a musical theme, but it’s entirely diegetic, i.e. all the music in the film comes from sources within the film. So we hear the theme as organ music at a game, or when someone is whistling, or on the radio.

Up Next: Eight Men Out, the story of eight players given a lifetime ban from baseball for their role in throwing the 1919 World Series.

This guy’s the out you’ve been waiting your whole life for.

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I’m going to be honest with you friends, I don’t really like this movie. I don’t hate it, I just don’t adore it the way most baseball fans seem to. There are a sizable percentage of fans who list this as their #1 all-time favorite baseball movie. It wouldn’t be in my top ten [I think it’s genuinely blasphemous to call it the best, but I’ll explain that later this month, because I’m saving the best for last.]

So, if you’re among the film’s many devoted fans, I’d ask you to look away. I don’t want to be the guy who shits on something you love without invitation. Let’s just agree to disagree on this one. See you next post.

Still here? Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Major League is a light, baseball themed 80s comedy that does exactly what it sets out to do. Like most 80s comedies, it’s got several fun, likable characters who don’t really have arcs as much as isolated comedic situations that somehow, through the goodwill of the audience, resolve into something resembling a satisfying conclusion.

Does anyone’s growth from the beginning of the film to the end make sense? No. Do people expect it to in your average 80s comedy. Also, no.

However, the racism against indigenous peoples is turned waaaaaay up past eleven. It’s a given from the outset, when the central team is called the Indians and has a mascot named Chief Wahoo. But they really get after it over the course of this movie. That part of the film didn’t age well, which is good, because it shouldn’t have been ok in the 80s, either.

Then there was the gross dynamic of the central relationship between protagonist Jake Taylor and ex-girlfiend Lynn Wells.

Their love story: Jake comes back to Cleveland, where he knows Lynn lives. He makes no attempt to look her up until he sees her at a restaurant with another guy. Instead of approaching her at her table to say hello, he fakes a phone call as way to talk to her away from her date, so he can tell her he’s moved back to town. I guess he’s assuming she’ll immediately drop everything to be with him again. He asks her for her number, and refuses to accept her answer when she says no. She gives him a fake number, because she doesn’t want to talk to him. He then arrives, unsolicited, at her place of work. She tells him she doesn’t want to talk to him, because he was a cheating asshole when they were together. After that, he apologizes, acknowledges he was the one who fucked things up between them, tells her she deserves all the happiness in the world, and then respects her wishes by leaving her alone. He moves on with his own life, taking with him the lessons he’s learned after his own behavior has driven away the woman he loved. LULZ, jk. He totally ignores what she’s saying, and continues to harass her. He doesn’t know where she lives. Because she didn’t tell him! Because she didn’t want him to know where she lived!! Because she DOESN’T WANT TO TALK TO HIM! So he follows her car home to find out where her apartment is. He does this TWICE, because the first time he accidentally went to her fiancé’s apartment! The second time he follows her home, she cheats on her fiancé with him. Which, okay, in other circumstances, having hate sex with an ex you have a lot of chemistry with before you get married makes sense. But with the guy who’s been stalking you for the last few months?! After that, with absolutely no further interactions, she abruptly leaves her fiancé, and shows up at the game to be in love with Jake Taylor forever. Even though he’s done absolutely nothing to show he’s grown up at all. He’s merely stalked her, disregarded her wishes – because ‘no’ means ‘probably’ – and ignored her relationship with another man, because he wanted her so it doesn’t matter that she’s in a relationship with another adult. Oh, and then, even though only three men on the team could possibly know who she is, because again, Jake and Lynn don’t have an actual relationship, she is carried onto the field after the game and celebrated by the team just as much as the pennant. Freeze frame. The end.

To use a Liz Lemonism: Whuck?

Major League has better moments. Wild Thing Vaughn and Willie Mays Hayes are silly 80s comedic characters of the highest order, back when Sheen and Snipes were still relatively normal, or at least we didn’t know they were fame-monsters, yet. The two characters are also the most authentic baseball personalities in the film. Intentional caricatures, to be sure, but they felt like baseball to me, if that makes any sense… probably not.

But, for the most part, the movie falls into the same traps as many 80s comedies: it’s largely a juvenile male fantasy where characters are mostly just cartoons whose personalities are made of up a series of one-liners, with plenty of racism and misogyny spread throughout.

Wow. That got waaaaay more critical than I anticipated once I got going.

Up Next: A gem many people have never heard of, 2016’s The Phenom. It’s about a wildly talented rookie pitcher in the midst of a breakdown. Spoiler alert: The post is going to include me recommending you watch it.

You told me once, “A man has to know where he’s goin’!” Where are you goin’, Monty?

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I finally liked a baseball movie from the 40s or 50s!

In The Stratton Story, Jimmy Stewart plays real life pitcher Monty Stratton, whose burgeoning career was cut short when he lost his right leg in a hunting accident in 1938. At 26 years old, his career as a superstar was over. But Stratton trained himself to pitch on his prosthetic, and eventually played in the minors from 1946 to 1953. If there was ever a story deserving a film adaptation, this is that fucking story!

An athlete’s skill is often exaggerated on the way to a big screen adaption. Elite talent plays better in a story like this, so Hollywood has been known to fudge the numbers a bit. In this case, no exaggeration was necessary. Stratton was the real deal. As a 25-year-old, he won 15 of his 21 starts, pitching to a 2.40 ERA and an MLB leading WHIP of 1.087. He was 25!!

It’s heartbreaking to think of a kid with that much promise cut down by a freak accident. But what might have ended as a tragedy became a story about the triumph of the human spirit overcome seemingly insurmountable odds. I know that’s a cliche, but it’s true. The guy lost his leg, and eight full years later he returned to pitch at the professional level. Even with all their appendages, it’s an unlikely story for a player to leave the game and return to professional play eight years later. I wouldn’t believe Stratton’s story in a purely fictional film, but he actually did it! He never achieved sustained success at any level after his return, but getting paid to pitch for seven more years under those circumstances is remarkable

I didn’t expect much going into this one, but it was far superior to more celebrated baseball films of the era. It transcended those films because the emotional cues were richer and more authentic. I cared about these characters.

The core of the film is Stratton’s relationship with his wife, Ethel. If that hadn’t worked, nothing could have saved the film, but it really, really worked. In far too many films, the character of Ethel would have been a two-dimensional foil for Stewart to play off of as he fights his way back from the edge of despair. In The Stratton Story, Monty becomes more of a side character through the end of the second act, as we follow the emotional toll on Ethel as she tries to keep things together and help her husband remember who he is. Her character is still primarily played in terms of her husband’s story, but she’s a three-dimensional character whose worth doesn’t derive from him. She loves him, and fights against the hopelessness shadowing her family after the accident. June Allyson crushes it in the role, and I don’t think the film would have worked without her.

Unfortunately, they didn’t stick the landing. Stratton’s return to baseball is illustrated through his first game back on the mound. The game is overly contrived, doesn’t make any sense, and undermines the power of what Monty Stratton actually accomplished. The film depicts superhuman success, where Stratton is able to overcome one obstacle after another as he pitches, fields bunts, and knocks in game winning RBI. What he did was already amazing. There was no need to fabricate this sort of performance.

This crime of a finale reaches its denouement with the film’s final line (which is delivered by a disembodied narrator that I guess is meant to be a sportscaster). I don’t even remember the actual wordage, but it’s painfully overwritten nonsense hammering home the fact that Monty Stratton was courageous and inspiring. We just watched an entire film showing us that. Then, as if we haven’t gotten the point, they fabricate an impossibly successful return to the mound in a game full of scenarios that make absolutely no sense on a baseball field. Then, in case we still haven’t gotten it yet, they basically just tell us, word for word, what the takeaway about ole’ Monty Stratton was meant to be.

I have no idea what the real story is, but it felt like someone wrote a great movie, and then the studio was like, “Yeah, but do you think the audience will understand what you’re trying to say? Let’s really nail it home! I want to make sure everyone leaves knowing they are supposed to be impressed by Monty Stratton. You’ve gotta lay it on thicker!”

That was a long complaint, but even so, I enjoyed the rest of the film enough that I’m really glad I added it to the list.

Also, I couldn’t write this whole post without pointing out that Jimmy Stewart joins Cooper and Redford in the ridiculous club of old men playing baseball prospects. A 41-year-old Stewart played a man who was only 26 when he lost his leg. Stratton was only 42 years old when he retired the second time. And yet, we have Stewart playing a 21-year-old early in the film, and he was older than Stratton was at any point in the story. What is the deal with this phenomenon in baseball movies?!

On the other hand, with the notable exception of the final game (ugh), the movie was better at depicting baseball than others of the time. Baseball movies from the 40s and 50s — at least the ones I’ve seen — play really fast and loose with the details of the game itself. That being the case, I was shocked and impressed that in scenes with Stratton on the mound, Stewart pitched from the stretch with runners on base! It’s a detail that would be expected these days, in the age of hyper-criticism. But in 1949, it speaks to an admirable commitment to respect the player and the game. Perhaps I’m the only person alive who cares about this detail, but I audibly reacted the first time it happened, and I was watching the film alone.

Up Next: The 80s baseball classic, Major League.

Listen, Lupus, you didn’t come into this life just to sit around on a dugout bench, did ya? Now get your ass out there and do the best you can.

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The Bad News Bears is amazing. It’s still hilarious, and at its core, it’s as socially relevant today as it was when it was released in 1976. It’s an essential baseball movie, an essential sports movie, and an essential movie in general.

It was a truly unique onscreen depiction of baseball when it came out. Before it, cinema sanitized the game — a practice that often happens even still. It’s common when baseball is projected on the silver screen that the imperfections have been airbrushed out, a lens filter gives the whole affair a heavenly glow, and bad words are overdubbed with more family-friendly alternatives. The functioning belief was that the game is only beautiful when it’s pristine and unblemished.

Then, The Bad News Bears came along to make clear that baseball is beautiful even when it’s dirty and irreverent. Maybe especially then.

Irreverence is an underrated quality. The world is tilted against the little guys, the outsiders, the freaks and weirdos, the marginalized. The systems and authorities that govern our world aren’t built for us. Irreverence is the appropriate response to the powers that be. The people with money and power walk all over us, treat us like shit, and then, if we’re lucky, offer a half-hearted apology.

There’s only one sane reaction, which can be summed up in the immortal words of the great poet Tanner Boyle: “Hey Yankees… you can take your apology and your trophy and shove ’em straight up your ass!”

The film itself, and the characters within the film, refuse to let baseball belong to the establishment. [Fun fact: the film was released at the peak of Portland Mavericks baseball.] The team refuses to toe the line of respectability which everyone else assumes to be a given. They reject the idea that some authority gets to dictate what makes the game beautiful, and how a good life should be lived. You could definitely pick a worse movie to glean life lessons from.

And speaking of life lessons, I came away with three while watching it this time around.

1. “This quitting thing, it’s a hard habit to break once you start.”
2. When success comes, it can be tempting to join the dark side. But in the end, it’s not worth winning if it means playing by their rules.
3. We’re always going to be afraid of fucking things up, but, “you didn’t come into this life just to sit around on a dugout bench, did ya? Now get your ass out there and do the best you can.”

Next Up: The Stratton Story — Jimmy Stewart plays real-life pitcher Monty Stratton, who lost a leg in a hunting accident and still fought his way back to pitch in the minors.

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My friend Phil made a 7th inning stretch reference when I mentioned being two thirds done with this series. I immediately realized it made a great excuse to take a day off.

Obviously, a man cannot live on baseball films alone. I’d originally planned on publishing all sorts of non-baseball related posts about the things helping me get through isolation. But, it turns out that writing 30 posts in 30 days is a lot when you’re entirely out of shape in terms of consistent writing.

But now I have a day off!

So, here’s the rest of the stuff helping me survive:

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Movies: Obviously, most of my movie time has been taken up by baseball movies. Still, I rewatched Knives Out, which is just as brilliant the second time. I saw Pedro Almodóvar’s Pain and Glory, which is fucking amazing. Antonio Banderas is remarkable in it. And Emily and I are working our way through the MCU movies again.

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Shows: Like everyone else in the world, I watched Tiger King. I also watched The Outsider, Last Week Tonight, lots of Seth Meyers and Colbert segments, Cowboy Bebop, and the final season of Schitt’s Creek. There’s a bunch of shows still on my quarantine list, including Tales from the Loop and The Midnight Gospel.

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Books: Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino, Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James, and Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb. All highly recommended. If you haven’t read Hobb before, she’s great. I’d start with Assassin’s Apprentice.

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Comics/Graphic Novels: The Weatherman by Jody Leheup-Nathan Fox-Dave Stewart, The Backstagers by James Tynion IV, Head Lopper by Andrew MacLean, The Sandman: Overture by Neil Gaiman. You should read all of them!

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Video Games: I’m working my way through Spider-Man for PS4 — thumbs up — but Emily has been playing the ever-loving shit out of Stardew Valley. Emily spending all of her time playing a video game is definitely the most surprising development from this whole thing.

I also have a huge backlog of games to get to, but I’m assuming I’ll still use this as an excuse to buy either Final Fantasy VII Remake or Divinity: Original Sin 2. Or both.

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Puzzles: I bought Emily a puzzle for Christmas. Neither of us had done a puzzle in years, and I thought it would be fun. I had no idea it would become a way of life — and that was before this all went down! Fortunately, our new puzzle obsession meant we were well stocked to be trapped in our apartment for two months.

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Music: A new Childish Gambino album in March, and a new Orville Peck song released just in time for my birthday.

I wholeheartedly recommend adding them to your survival kit.

[I also didn’t know until yesterday that Frank Ocean released new music this month, so I’ll checking that out right now.]

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I have just created something totally illogical.

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To slightly alter the familiar refrain, no one ever watches the same movie twice. At least, not if you’re watching closely. Our experience of film — or books/music/etc. — is usually even more about us than the artifact itself. We bring more into the experience than we often admit. I don’t think I’ve seen Field of Dreams in two decades, and watching it now, in my late 30’s, I’m watching a different movie.

It’s still mostly the same; an airy, fantastical, sentimental homage to baseball’s lasting power to connect us to the past, and make adults feel like children again. It’s the sort of film that rarely gets made anymore: a family-friendly, adult-oriented, live-action drama — and with a supernatural bent at that.

But watching it at this stage of life, there’s a resonance for me in Ray’s fear that he’ll miss his last chance to ever do something surprising or remarkable. He’s about to enter the next act of his life, and he’s more aware of his mortality than he was as a younger man. It’s a bonafide mid-life crisis, because let’s be honest, even for the luckier amongst us, our late 30’s is likely right smack in the middle of our lives.

The film picks up his story right after he’s left his life as a city-dweller and moved his family to a farm in the middle of Iowa. By anyone’s standards, that’s about as surprising and remarkable as it gets. And still, he’s nagged by the fear that he’ll live his entire life having never done something beautifully illogical on a grand scale.

That means more to me than it could have when I was a teenager, or even in my 20’s. As the familiar genre of mid-life crises shows, more of us than not are familiar with the question — which can range from niggling to oppressive — Is this all there is? We’re not the hero of our story the way we’d once imagined we’d be. Perhaps we’re at a point in life where anything that may have resembled potential has withered on the vine. Is this it? Is it too late?

And so, the film functions as a bit of wish fulfillment. In the midst of his ennui, a voice comes to Ray Kinsella and tells him what he needs to do. Sure, it’s still an insane gambit, but he only needs to find the courage to follow instructions, crazy as those instructions might be. He’s worried he’s out of chances to be the man he’d once dreamed he’d be, and then a disembodied voice speaks to him out of a corn field. It’s not exactly a burning bush, but building a baseball field is a relatively easy sell. So he creates a totally illogical thing, but he doesn’t do it ex nihilo.

That sounds pretty good, but we don’t get voices in corn fields. Ray Kinsella got a road map to a new frontier outside of the life that felt like resignation. The rest of us don’t get that. Here’s to hoping we still might find heaven in a cornfield.

Up Next: One of the all-time greats: The Bad News Bears. The ’76 version, obviously.

It is not confusing. It’s simple – you won. You go ahead and tell the whole wide world that the greatest ballplayer who ever lived is also the greatest bastard. Eureka! Who fucking cares?

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As the title suggests, Cobb is a 1994 film in which Tommy Lee Jones plays Ty Cobb, one of the greatest baseball players of all time — many would say the greatest.

The film plays as a ‘so crazy it’s true’ account of Al Stump’s time spent traveling with Ty Cobb to ghostwrite his autobiography. As it would turn out, ‘so crazy it’s true’ was actually ‘sensational bullshit made up by Stump to sell books.’

Decades after Cobb’s autobiography, My Life in Baseball: The True Record, was published, Stump released another volume telling the story of what really happened during their time together. Other biographers would later discover that the account was almost entirely fabricated. It turned out Stump made a habit of forging and fabricating during his career, especially in relation to Cobb. The truth about the book came out after the film, so at the time it was still believed to be a true account.

Still, even if those particular events were fabricated, Cobb was still quite possibly the most miserable son of a bitch to ever step on a Major League ball field. He was a racist, bigoted, misogynist, abusive, world class piece of shit. His opponents hated him, his teammates hated him, his family hated him, even baseball fans often hated him. Anyone who had the misfortune of interacting with him lamented the experience.

On the field, Cobb played dirty. He was famous for his attempts to harm opposing players — something he was transparent about. For example, he consistently slid into bases with his spikes high enough to cause injury. Cobb apparently kept his metal spikes sharp for this explicit purpose.

As a human, he was the worst. He was also one of the most remarkable baseball players of all time. Like Ruth, he single-handedly changed the game. That fact is particularly interesting because they men were contemporaries, had opposite playing styles, and still left indelible marks on the game moving forward. Cobb changed how the game was played forever.

With a character like that, a really compelling biopic could be made about his life. This was not that biopic. I’d say some grace was necessary for a film made 28 years ago, but it came out the same year as Pulp Fiction, The Shawshank Redemption, Quiz Show, and The Professional, just to name a few.

The movie is a mess in so many ways. To name one, the tone changes wildly from time to time, then swings back. For example, there’s a zany segment where Stump tries to survive as a drunk Cobb drives a car along windy roads in a snowstorm. The scene is complete with playful, adventurous music that belongs in a dated film about a troublemaking but lovable rascal, something in the vein of Uncle Buck. Why was that placed in the middle of an otherwise dark film about a monstrous man at the end of his life? I don’t know, you’re going to have to tell me.

I also think Jones’s performance — which many see as the lone saving grace in the film — is significantly overrated.

I wouldn’t say I outright hated Cobb, but I also can’t think of a single positive to say about it.

Whatevs, onto the next one!

Up Next: Field of Dreams — After three straight films I didn’t like, it’ll be nice to get back to an old standby to right the ship.

You wanna know why people go to reunions? To tally up who they’re beatin’. They just gotta find out who’s worse off than they are.

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I’ll keep this relatively brief. Nick Nolte plays Ray Cook, a lonely, alcoholic high school umpire who catches a kid vandalizing his house. Turns out, the vandal was a pitcher, and earlier that day Nolte’s character had made a ball four call that ended the kid’s season one game short of playing in the championship. In exchange for not calling the cops, Cook forces the kid to agree to clean up the damage. After that, he wants the kid to accompany him to his high school reunion, pretending to be his son, so he doesn’t look as sad and lonely as he actually is.

As for the kid, his mom has abandoned the family. In the aftermath, his dad is a shell of a human who has disconnected from his children, and life in general.

Camaraderie ensues, there’s some empathy and pathos, characters grow, you know the drill. I won’t spoil what happens after that, in case you decide to watch the movie.

For me, this felt like a mediocre-at-best film, made by someone with a lot of potential to be really good eventually. As it turns out, that’s exactly what happened. I like what I’ve seen of writer-director James Ponsoldt’s later work much more. Films like The End of the Tour and The Spectacular Now are critically lauded films that show there was a great filmmaker in there.

As for this one, none of it connected with me. I got what Ponsoldt was trying to do, but it didn’t land. With the exception of Nolte, the performances are wooden and shallow. The emotional cues are weak. There are some story beats that had a lot of potential, and a refreshingly unexpected conclusion that was so close to being really good, but never quite got there. Scenes needed more flesh and depth. I didn’t feel like the movie earned the supposed gravity and growth of the characters and their relationship.

What are you gonna do? With 30 baseball movies in a row there’s no chance I’d love all of them.

Up Next: Cobb, a biopic about legendary baseball player, and detestable human being, Ty Cobb. Tommy Lee Jones plays Cobb, a man who everyone hated. Literally everyone. He played dirty, he was a racist-bigoted asshole, and he was a monstrous husband and father. He also changed the game of baseball, and is one of greatest, if not the greatest player of all time. [I still pick Willie Mays as greatest of all time, but these things aren’t a science.]

Gee! Ain’t that somethin’? She’s the kinda girl I’ve always dreamed about. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be married to a girl who played baseball? 

Take Me Out to the Ball Game is the second and final musical of these 30 baseball films.

I love baseball. I love Gene Kelly. Even with that going for it, I still disliked this one.

Now understand, I didn’t dislike it because I didn’t know what I was getting into watching a Kelly-Sinatra musical. I enjoy plenty of 40s and 50s musicals. I’m saying that judging the film by the standards of this particular genre, I still think this one isn’t any good.

I expected the baseball to be silly. This is Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra pretending to be ballplayers, I didn’t expect it to look like they’re the real deal. If they’d been able to competently swing a bat, that would have been a bonus. Granted, they didn’t even get the basic rules of the game right, but still, the poor quality of the baseball element and my enjoyment of the film were in no way mutually exclusive.

The problem was that the rest of the movie wasn’t any good, either.

There was no arc to any of the plotlines, characters basically just teleported from one emotional state to the next. The romance makes even less sense than it does in most musicals from the 40s — and that’s really saying something, because that’s about the lowest bar there is. And the songs are lackluster at best.

There’s also a plotline in which a wealthy, corrupt gambler conspires to keep Kelly’s character from helping his team win the pennant. This should have been the central throughline in the film for a number of narrative reasons. Instead, it’s jammed into the final 25 minutes of the movie. That sort of arc is either the heart of the plot, or it’s not in the film. It shouldn’t have been randomly tacked on in the third act.

We don’t even get a trademark Gene Kelly surrealist dance segment. I know it was the late 40s and Kelly still hadn’t reached the height of his powers, but still. They even had one in On the Town, so I don’t think it’s too much to ask for them to throw us a bone. It wouldn’t have saved the movie, but at least it might have given us something worthwhile to watch for 7-12 minutes.

When I’m finished with these baseball movies, I’m going to need to watch An American in Paris or Singin’ in the Rain to get this taste out of my mouth.

Related fun fact: I’m going to be honest, and say I actually fucking hate the song ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game.’

Up Next: Nick Nolte plays a directionless, alcoholic high school umpire in Off the Black. It’s a 90’s indie-drama, not like, a script that was originally meant to be Bad Umpire starring Billy Bob Thornton.