5/4/25 4:07PM Tigers @ Angels

[Motor City Sonics]

2 hours ago, oblong said:

The backlack against Field of Dreams bugs me.  It's like suddenly they thought they were being clever by pointing out the 'flaws'.  Bashing it became the cool thing to do.  "Hey, look how smart I am!"

 

 

People can ruin any entertaining movie with that nonsense.   Just chill out and enjoy the story (not you, the Realism Police).    Yes, Tim Robbins had a HORRIBLE pitching delivery.   Robbins grew up playing hockey and basketball

[oblong]

I mean... it's a fantasy movie so of course some things aren't going to make sense.

As for Robbins... his quirky delivery added to his overall quirkiness as a pitcher.

 

[gehringer_2]

31 minutes ago, oblong said:

his quirky delivery added to his overall quirkiness as a pitcher.

right - LaLoosh was good in spite of all the reasons he shouldn't have been,

Edited Monday at 06:04 PM by gehringer_2

[papalawrence]

I enjoy baseball movies, but Hoosiers is my favorite sports movie

[VegasTiger]

8 hours ago, romad1 said:

Underrated "B" movie about baseball is the HBO movie "Long Gone" with William Pederson, Dermot Mulroney and Virginia Madsen.  Also features Lary Riley who was notable as being the baseball playing murder victim in the film version of "A Soldiers  Story".  It also features William Gibson and Teller (from Penn and Teller) as the owners of the minor league team.

It has substantially a similar plot to "The Natural" combined with "Bull Durham" where you have an aging ball player considering his end-of-career options and a game fixing scheme he needs to play along with.   As usual with baseball movies the light wins out over the darkness, because that's baseball man.

Another point of order. It was Henry Gibson (of Laugh-In fame. I remember the first time I saw Penn and Teller I thought Teller looked like Henry's kid. When I saw this movie I realized I wasn't the only one.

 
 

[IdahoBert]

I don’t know how to quantify baseball movies to discern if one is better than another. Field of Dreams just resonates with me more deeply than others.

I distrust sentimentality because it is so easily exploited by demagogues. But for me Field of Dreams transcends the narrow scar of sentimentality.

For me, it’s a recollection of something sewn into the fabric of my childhood that intersects with something deeper and more vibrant than myself. I like being reacquainted with that spring-like purity as often as I can.

Other films don’t do that for me, and they are no less worthy of enjoyment because of it. Field of Dreams just makes all eight of my cylinders fire in the perfect sequence. To me it’s like Music.

[CMRivdogs]

5 hours ago, oblong said:

The backlack against Field of Dreams bugs me.  It's like suddenly they thought they were being clever by pointing out the 'flaws'.  Bashing it became the cool thing to do.  "Hey, look how smart I am!"

 

 

Hopefully this doesn’t venture to close to the political spectrum but when Field of Dreams first came out a minister friend did a sermon aligning one of the main themes in the movie to the Prodigal Son story.

He was maligned by some members of the congregation for not preaching on the scripture that Sunday 

As an aside, anyone notice that three of the films mentioned starred Kevin Costner?

[Motor City Sonics]

2 hours ago, CMRivdogs said:

Hopefully this doesn’t venture to close to the political spectrum but when Field of Dreams first came out a minister friend did a sermon aligning one of the main themes in the movie to the Prodigal Son story.

He was maligned by some members of the congregation for not preaching on the scripture that Sunday 

As an aside, anyone notice that three of the films mentioned starred Kevin Costner?

Yes.  Bull Durham, For Love Of The Game, Field Of Dreams........and there is one more...........partially filmed in Detroit, with WRIF being part of the story  (okay, the movie is not ABOUT baseball, but Costner plays a retired baseball player in it).   

Edited Monday at 11:04 PM by Motor City Sonics

[romad1]

4 hours ago, VegasTiger said:

Another point of order. It was Henry Gibson (of Laugh-In fame. I remember the first time I saw Penn and Teller I thought Teller looked like Henry's kid. When I saw this movie I realized I wasn't the only one.

 
 

Man....its almost as If I had a head injury this morning.

I will also say that if anyone hasn't given love to "9 Men Out"* then you are missing a good baseball yarn.  It stars Cyril Cusak, and Emilio Estevez is in it.

 

 

*i did that deliberately

[CMU97]

58 minutes ago, Motor City Sonics said:

Yes.  Bull Durham, For Love Of The Game, Field Of Dreams........and there is one more...........partially filmed in Detroit, with WRIF being part of the story  (okay, the movie is not ABOUT baseball, but Costner plays a retired baseball player in it).   

The Upside of Anger. Not a bad overall movie, but not much baseball besides Costner trying to hang on to the glory days and stay in the spotlight although no one wants him there anymore.

 

The BEST baseball movie ever is "The Slugger's Wife".  And by best, I mean it is absolutely horrible. Lots of baseball in it, including Mark Fidrych pitching for the Astros. There were probably some other real baseball players in it too. Michael O'Keefe (the star of the movie) does not come as a baseball player. Or a very good actor.

 

Edited because I cannot spell Fidrych.

Edited Tuesday at 12:04 AM by CMU97

[papalawrence]

I would love to see a full length motion picture about the summer of 1976 and a dude called the bird. I was 10 that summer. It was one of the highlights of my life

[papalawrence]

I've also watched *61 about a dozen times. One of my favs.

[Motor City Sonics]

7 hours ago, papalawrence said:

I've also watched *61 about a dozen times. One of my favs.

Scene shot at the players entrance at Tiger Stadium......The scene where Maris puts a literal X on the ball and the fan gets mad............when they were asking extras if any of them can speak or sound like a New Yorker, a guy raised his hand and Billy Crystal walked over and said "You think you can sound like a New Yorker, oh yeah, let me hear it." and the guy said "Go f**k yourself, Crystal" and Billy said "Yep, he's the guy". LOL

[chasfh]

21 hours ago, romad1 said:

correct...it is an all time favorite.  I mangled that CJ was a suicide. 

Denzel Washington was sort of a stand-in for the earlier, Jackie Robinson who got court martialed and was more of a hot-head than he was when he became a MLB color-barrier breaker.   Adolph Caeser was damn good in that role. 

It was the signature role Caesar had honed through his hundreds of performances on stage in the role.

Something I did not know before looking it up just now: Denzel was original Peterson on stage as well.

[chasfh]

I can’t believe this is the first post in this thread to mention A League of Their Own. One of the greatest (yes, not just best) baseball movies of all time. The premise is absolutely riveting, and the actual baseball playing is top notch in Hollywood terms. I don’t know who the technical advisor was who managed to make even Madonna and Rosie O’Donnell look passable as baseball players, but that person should get an Oscar for their work on it.

[oblong]

24 minutes ago, Motor City Sonics said:

Scene shot at the players entrance at Tiger Stadium......The scene where Maris puts a literal X on the ball and the fan gets mad............when they were asking extras if any of them can speak or sound like a New Yorker, a guy raised his hand and Billy Crystal walked over and said "You think you can sound like a New Yorker, oh yeah, let me hear it." and the guy said "Go f**k yourself, Crystal" and Billy said "Yep, he's the guy". LOL

I regret not heeding the call and trying to be an extra.  It was the season after Tiger Stadium closed and I didn't want to go back inside.  We said our goodbyes after the final game.

 

[Motor City Sonics]

12 minutes ago, chasfh said:

I can’t believe this is the first post in this thread to mention A League of Their Own. One of the greatest (yes, not just best) baseball movies of all time. The premise is absolutely riveting, and the actual baseball playing is top notch in Hollywood terms. I don’t know who the technical advisor was who managed to make even Madonna and Rosie O’Donnell look passable as baseball players, but that person should get an Oscar for their work on it.

Debra Winger was supposed to play Dottie Henson (after Demi Moore turned it down).    I can't imagine anyone but Gena Davis in that role.   Winger quit after Madonna was cast.  She thought it wouldn't be a serious movie.   But as bad as Madonna can be in some movies, she was terrific in that.  And as far as being a Prima Donna, she wasn't like that at all.  She trained really hard to get better at baseball, but she did grow up with a few brothers, so so wasn't a total sports novice.  

[romad1]

14 minutes ago, chasfh said:

I can’t believe this is the first post in this thread to mention A League of Their Own. One of the greatest (yes, not just best) baseball movies of all time. The premise is absolutely riveting, and the actual baseball playing is top notch in Hollywood terms. I don’t know who the technical advisor was who managed to make even Madonna and Rosie O’Donnell look passable as baseball players, but that person should get an Oscar for their work on it.

The absolute fury that Lori Petty has when she's competing against her sister and her own demons, particularly in the final game is pretty great.    My wife hates Lori Petty for reasons i don't understand but I can absolutely salute the look in Petty's eyes in those scenes

[romad1]

My wife and I will laugh when we are looking at Zillow on the appletv and see a feature deliberately shown in long view to obscure imperfections with a "What a hitter!" 

[romad1]

1 minute ago, romad1 said:

The absolute fury that Lori Petty has when she's competing against her sister and her own demons, particularly in the final game is pretty great.    My wife hates Lori Petty for reasons i don't understand but I can absolutely salute the look in Petty's eyes in those scenes

You can see it here as a matter of fact.   Having coached some good fastpitch softball players in my day...if you see this look, you either have a gamer or a girl who needs therapy or both. 

[chasfh]

1 minute ago, Motor City Sonics said:

Debra Winger was supposed to play Dottie Henson (after Demi Moore turned it down).    I can't imagine anyone but Gena Davis in that role.   Winger quit after Madonna was cast.  She thought it wouldn't be a serious movie.   But as bad as Madonna can be in some movies, she was terrific in that.  And as far as being a Prima Donna, she wasn't like that at all.  She trained really hard to get better at baseball, but she did grow up with a few brothers, so so wasn't a total sports novice.  

It definitely could have been a terrible movie in the wrong hands. Any great movie could have been much worse for the same reason, just as any number of movies that were supposed to be terrible got saved by producers and directors who took them seriously and made them sneaky great—like Major League, which could have been more like Major League 3 in the wrong hands. My Cousin Vinny is another movie like that which, nine times out of ten, would have sucked eggs with the wrong director or producers, because the premise was so ripe for phoning it in.

[Motor City Sonics]

3 minutes ago, oblong said:

I regret not heeding the call and trying to be an extra.  It was the season after Tiger Stadium closed and I didn't want to go back inside.  We said our goodbyes after the final game.

 

Same here.   That last game was very emotional.   Hanging on the wall right next to me is the lanyard with the ticket and some dirt from the infield, it's one of my most prized possessions.     I buried a friend that day and coudn't imagine going back in there.   I avoided driving anywhere near there when they were tearing it down.    

[Tigeraholic1]

10 hours ago, papalawrence said:

I've also watched *61 about a dozen times. One of my favs.

Fun fact, filmed at Tigers Stadium and they painted the seats green to look like Yankee Stadium. I have a set of seats. They tried to power wash them or whatever after filming but my set has a good amount of green on the metal frames. I never tried to remove it, kinda like patina and lore to show people that stop over to have an old fashion.

[papalawrence]

One of my childhood neighbors played for the Grand Rapids Chicks. Dolly was very kind to me always. RIP

https://www.mlive.com/sports/2018/09/connie_konwinski_grand_rapids.html

[papalawrence]

38 minutes ago, Tigeraholic1 said:

Fun fact, filmed at Tigers Stadium and they painted the seats green to look like Yankee Stadium. I have a set of seats. They tried to power wash them or whatever after filming but my set has a good amount of green on the metal frames. I never tried to remove it, kinda like patina and lore to show people that stop over to have an old fashion.

Very cool!