DON GONYEA, HOST:
Now time for Cineplexity, our weekly movie conversation segment where talking about the movies allows us to talk about everything else. This week, we are talking about America's pastime.
(SOUNDBITE OF TOMMY WALKER'S "CHARGE!")
GONYEA: That's right, baseball. The sport remains a cornerstone of American culture. So it's no surprise that they've been making movies about baseball for about as long as there have been movies going back to the 1898 documentary short "The Ball Game." Later classics, of course, include 1942's "Pride Of The Yankees"...
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE PRIDE OF THE YANKEES")
GARY COOPER: (As Lou Gehrig) Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.
GONYEA: ...1988's "Field Of Dreams"...
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "FIELD OF DREAMS")
JAMES EARL JONES: (As Terence Mann) The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball.
GONYEA: ...1992's "A League Of Their Own."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN")
TOM HANKS: (As Jimmy Dugan, yelling) Are you crying? There's no crying. There's no crying in baseball.
ROSIE O'DONNELL: (As Doris Murphy) Why don't you...
GONYEA: And we could just keep playing these clips forever. And with the Major League Baseball All-Star Break this coming week, we thought it'd be a perfect time to discuss baseball movies with two NPR colleagues who love both baseball and the movies - Morning Edition host A Martínez. A, welcome.
A MARTÍNEZ, BYLINE: Good to be here.
GONYEA: And Pop Culture Happy Hour host Linda Holmes, welcome to you both.
LINDA HOLMES, BYLINE: Thank you very much. Go Phillies.
GONYEA: So I am biased as a Detroit Tigers fan who goes to a lot of games, scorecard in hand, but it just feels like a fact of life that there are more good movies about baseball than any other sport here in the U.S., more than basketball, football, hockey. Certainly, those sports have inspired a great movie or two. But come on, baseball has so many classic film moments. Why do you guys think baseball provides such great material for the movies?
HOLMES: Well, I think there is a mythos around baseball for good and for ill. But also, there are some practical things. You can see people's faces and bodies. There's no pads, no helmets. The action is easy to follow. But I think the biggest thing is it is the game where you do not run out of time, so miraculous comebacks and unexpected endings are sort of more common. Just the other day, the Mets scored five runs in the top of the ninth inning, went ahead 10-3, and then the Braves scored six in the bottom of the ninth inning and only lost 10-9. That is the kind of outcome that you get in baseball because there's no clock. And I think the fact that it is so expansive in that way is one of the reasons why it works really well for narrative.
MARTÍNEZ: And there's no other sport in America or in the world that really mirrors the daily struggle that is life. Football got one game a week, basketball, a few games a week. Baseball is every single day, and it is extremely difficult to play baseball, which is like what most people deal with every day. They have to deal with a tough day. And the great thing about baseball is that if you have a awful day, then you can make up for it tomorrow.
GONYEA: Baseball starts in the spring. It ends in the fall. It's the whole year, really, with the exception of that thing we call winter.
HOLMES: Absolutely.
GONYEA: OK, so let's dive into some of your favorites. Linda, you first.
HOLMES: Yeah, my very favorite is "Bull Durham," which is from 1988.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BULL DURHAM")
KEVIN COSTNER: (As Crash Davis) Why you shaking me off, huh?
TIM ROBBINS: (As Ebby Calvin "Nuke" LaLoosh) I want to bring the heater to announce my presence with authority.
COSTNER: (As Crash Davis) To announce your what?
ROBBINS: (As Ebby Calvin "Nuke" LaLoosh) To announce my presence with authority.
COSTNER: (As Crash Davis) To announce your...
HOLMES: It is the story of a - an aging catcher named Crash and a young pitcher named Nuke and a woman named Annie who is interested in both of them.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BULL DURHAM")
SUSAN SARANDON: (As Annie Savoy) These are the ground rules. I hook up with one guy a season. Usually takes me a couple of weeks to pick the guy. It's kind of my own spring training. And, well, you two are the most promising prospects of the season so far.
HOLMES: Beautifully balanced between really caring about baseball, really caring about its characters and really showing the trajectory of this guy who is - honestly, like, he's not a great baseball player. He's just a really good baseball player and spends his life in this largely uncelebrated spot.
MARTÍNEZ: So I spent 10 years traveling with the Los Angeles Dodgers as their pre- and postgame show host on the radio. And one of the things that ball players would tell me more than any other movie, "Bull Durham" really nails down the Minor League experience.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BULL DURHAM")
COSTNER: (As Crash Davis) Your shower shoes have fungus on them. You'll never make it to the bigs with fungus on your shower shoes.
GONYEA: OK, so "Bull Durham" is Linda's favorite and mine. I will - I'll put my 2 cents in there. A, what's your favorite baseball film?
MARTÍNEZ: No. 1 for me - 1984, "The Natural," Robert Redford.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE NATURAL")
WILFORD BRIMLEY: (As Pop Fisher) You're going down.
ROBERT REDFORD: (As Roy Hobbs) It took me a long time to get here, Pop. I won't do it. I can't. I came here to play ball.
MARTÍNEZ: He plays Roy Hobbs, this very mysterious, 35-year-old rookie who just shows up to this made-up team, the New York Knights, that no one had ever heard of. Nobody had ever heard of this guy. They're like, where did you come from? Where - you know, give us your history. And he's cagey. He doesn't want to talk about where he's from and what has happened to him because some awful things have happened to him. But he's in the Majors now, and he's superhuman. He literally hits the cover off the baseball in his very first at bat.
(SOUNDBITE OF RANDY NEWMAN'S "KNOCK THE COVER OFF THE BALL")
MARTÍNEZ: And there's so much magic and mysticism and melodrama in this film. And another thing I loved about this film is the character Max Mercy, played by Robert Duvall.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE NATURAL")
ROBERT DUVALL: (As Max Mercy) I wouldn't want the public to get the wrong idea about you. There are a lot of stories floating around about you. One says that you used to play for another Major League team. One says he used to be an acrobat in a circus.
MARTÍNEZ: He plays a sports writer, a very seedy sports writer, and it gave me - for me, you know, as a kid - a couple of choices now because I wanted to be in Major League Baseball so badly, but I thought, OK, if I can't play the game, I'll write about the game. Max Mercy was my sports writing model. You know, I thought I could be exactly what he was in this film. And even though I didn't wind up becoming a sports writer, I wound up talking about baseball on the radio for 10 years. So I think that laid the foundation for me.
GONYEA: What about a film like "Major League," which lands on a lot of people's best of baseball movies list - a big screwball comedy.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "MAJOR LEAGUE")
JAMES GAMMON: (As Lou Brown) They tell us you're a pitcher. You're sure not much of a dresser. We wear caps and sleeves at this level, son.
HOLMES: Yeah. I think, you know, there is a rich tradition of baseball comedy, certainly "Major League" being, I think, probably the most beloved. You also will run into stuff like "The Sandlot" and the "Bad News Bears."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BAD NEWS BEARS")
BILLY BOB THORNTON: (As Morris Buttermaker) Hey, Engelberg.
BRANDON CRAGGS: (As Mike Engelberg) What?
THORNTON: (As Morris Buttermaker) There's chocolate all over this ball.
CRAGGS: (As Mike Engelberg) Look, Mr. Buttermaker, quit bugging me about my food.
HOLMES: I think probably the most prominent of those for me comedy-wise is "A League Of Their Own," which obviously has some dramatic elements. But I think "A League Of Their Own" is a fantastic, also very funny baseball movie, and that's probably my favorite of the baseball comedies.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN")
MADONNA: (As Mae Mordabito) What are you looking at?
O'DONNELL: (As Doris Murphy) Yeah, what are you looking at?
GEENA DAVIS: (As Dottie Hinson) Nothing.
O'DONNELL: (As Doris Murphy) That's right - nothing.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. And the great thing about the film is that those women trained very, very hard to try and get the baseball scenes to be as realistic as possible. I saw pictures of some of the scrapes and bruises that these women had all over their bodies as they were slide - I mean, it's all them doing this. It's not as if they got a bunch of softball players to play the - I mean, Tea Leoni is in this film. She's actually playing baseball. Madonna, Rosie O'Donnell - they're all playing baseball in this film. So is Lori Petty. And that's one of the things I loved about it.
GONYEA: And we have to give credit to the great Penny Marshall for directing that film.
HOLMES: Absolutely.
GONYEA: As we wrap up here, is there maybe one more movie each of you would recommend to a real baseball fan in your life, one we haven't mentioned yet?
HOLMES: I would start with the 2008 film "Sugar," which is about a young Dominican pitcher trying to work his way through the Minor League system.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "SUGAR")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Flyball.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As characters) Flyball.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: Line drive.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As characters) Line drive.
HOLMES: I think it's an exceptional drama, very, very good and, I think, very honest about that system.
MARTÍNEZ: For me, it would be "For The Love Of The Game." That's Kevin Costner, who is in a lot of baseball movies, by the way. He seems to be very good at doing baseball movies. But it's - you know, it's an aging pitcher who's pitching in his last game at Yankee Stadium for the Detroit Tigers. And as he's reflecting on his life as he's pitching this game, he's also throwing a no-hitter.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "FOR THE LOVE OF THE GAME")
JOHN C REILLY: (As Gus Sinski) What's the matter?
COSTNER: (As Billy Chapel) I don't know if I have anything left.
REILLY: (As Gus Sinski) Chappie (ph), you just throw whatever you got, whatever's left.
MARTÍNEZ: I love that it shows how in between these athletic moments, someone could have something else entirely on their mind.
GONYEA: All right, and go Tigers. And thank you to both of you guys. That was Morning Edition host A Martínez and Pop Culture Happy Hour host Linda Holmes. Thank you both for coming on.
MARTÍNEZ: Thanks for having us.
HOLMES: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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