In the absence of a baseball game yesterday, I watched a baseball movie I had never heard of called The Winning Team, starring Ronald Reagan and Doris Day. It is a cheesy account about the interesting and somewhat tragic life of Grover Cleveland Alexander, one of the greatest pitchers in MLB history.
After awhile I forgot it was actually Ronald Reagan in the film, which was interesting in its own right. The fact that we had a not-so-great actor become POTUS says a lot about this country.
Anyway, Alexander, who was for some reason nicknamed Pete and for obvious reasons called Alex the Great, was beaned in the head by a throw while trying to break up a double play before he even made it to the Majors. The accident left him unconscious for two days, and he suffered from double vision for a year. Then, by some miracle, it cleared up right before Spring Training in 1911, and Alex made his Major League debut with the Phillies, winning a stellar 28 games against 13 losses. He completed 31 games that season with a league leading 7 shutouts.
Granted, Alex pitched his best years during the Dead Ball Era, so his pitching stats are padded by that, but in a category that transcends time, he excels by even today's standards. The guy had impeccable control, posting a 1.6 BB/9 over his career, contributing to a 1.121 career WHIP.
Alex went 19-17 in 1912, 22-8 in 1913, 27-15 in 1914, 31-10 in 1915, 33-12 in 1916, and 30-13 in 1917, all with the Phillies. Then, at age 31, Alex went to war.
Sergeant Alexander spent most of the 1918 season trying to save Europe from its own destruction and save himself, too. He suffered shellshock, what we know today as post-traumatic stress disorder, losing some hearing and suffering from dizzy spells. It is said that his wartime was cut short by alcohol abuse and insubordination.
He had been sold by the Phillies, who were broke, to the Cubs. He started 3 games in 1918 and returned to his Hall of Fame form the next year. You can figure out from deduction that he never played in a World Series for the Cubs. He pitched for Chicago until 1926, when the Cubs cut him because of his alcohol problem. What they didn't know, what no one knew, was that Alex suffered from epilepsy that may have been a result of his war experience, and his frequent blackouts were often epileptic seizures. He hadn't even told his wife about his illness, as he was afraid he wouldn't be allowed to play baseball if anyone knew. His alcohol use was partially a result of the stress from his secret.
When Roy O came into the Phillies game last week, it was reminiscent of old time baseball. Alex, in what would become the best-known moment of his career, came into the 1926 World Series game for the Cardinals the day after he had started and won a game. He was pitching for the Cardinals after being out of baseball for part of the season. According to the movie, Alex's wife called Rogers Hornsby and convinced him to sign Alex, who was working in a circus. Who knows if that's true or not? Like I said, the movie is cheesy. Anyway, Alex got a Yankee to strikeout with the bases loaded and a one run lead to end the seventh inning, and he finished the game to give the Cardinals the Series.
The movie showed actual footage of the Series, and the most interesting part of this was footage of a square in St. Louis full of hundreds of people who were watching a scrolling sign that gave updates on the game. Now we can watch games from anywhere in the world thanks to signals from outerspace. Really incredible to think about.
The Winning Team ended after that World Series game, but Alex's career went on for three more seasons and part of a fourth. In 1927 at age 40 he went 21-10 for the Cardinals, won 16 more games the next season, and went 9-8 in 1929. He was traded to the Phillies in December 1929 for one last Philadelphia hurrah, pitching in 9 games (starting 3) in 1930. After he was released by the Phillies, he played with traveling teams until he was 51 years old.
Alexander wore no number to retire, but the Phillies retired the P logo they wore back then in his honor. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1938. While The Winning Team is not that great of a movie, it is still worth watching.
Commentary on baseball and society, baseball and philosophy, baseball and history, and baseball and baseball.
Showing posts with label Baseball Movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Baseball Movies. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
What to watch
The documentary, Cobb Field - A Day at the Ballpark, will have its national broadcast premiere on the Major League Baseball Network (MLB) on Sunday night, January 17th at 10:00PM Eastern time.
I wrote about the documentary here: A Handful of Banana Split Coupons at the Dairy Queen
I wrote about the documentary here: A Handful of Banana Split Coupons at the Dairy Queen
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Baseball in Technicolor
Continuing to rely on YouTube because I can't think of anything good to write, I thought I'd post this video of Reds pitching from the last decade and a blogger's response at the end.
You can watch the whole cartoon here. Pretty funny. And odd seeing ads in the cartoon for champagne and tobacco.
Another amusing old cartoon I found is "Goofy's How to Play Baseball" made back when Disney made films to make films:
I thought it interesting to hear some of the terminology we rarely use anymore like "speedball" and "slowball."
And here's a great Woody Woodpecker from 1943:
Here's Charlie Brown floating out to sea on a pitcher's mound:
Here, Clyde Crashcup from The Alvin Show invents a Cubs fan:
Ah, the good old days of cartoons.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
A handful of banana split coupons at the Dairy Queen
Get Cobb Field: A Day at the Ballpark!
A bright blue day under a massive Montana sky sits on creaking bleachers, beer in hand, buying raffle tickets from the pin hat lady. There’s one in every ballpark, you know. This version, Barbara, sticks her pins in a red floppy hat and tries to give everyone in the ballpark luck with her raffle ritual. A man plays the national anthem on a saw and a guy tries to win ten thousand dollars by throwing a baseball from the mound through a hole in a board at homeplate. You can get your ticket for five bucks and sit anywhere you’d like, maybe even next to the guy who played ball on the original team so many decades ago. It’s life as a fan in a minor league ballpark.
Billings, Montana. Population 89,847. The Billings Mustangs are “the professional sports team” and have been the Reds rookie league team since 1974. (There’s a minor league hockey team, too.) Until last year, they played in Cobb Field, a ballpark that stood from 1948 until its death in 2007. Prior to Reds affiliation, the Mustangs were a Royals affiliate – George Brett played rookie ball here. Jim Kaat, too, for an affiliate of the Washington Senators. Current Reds Joey Votto and Jay Bruce played here as well.
Cobb Field: A Day at the Ballpark is a must see film for any baseball fan. Told from the perspective of the field itself, the film goes through one day in the life of an old ballpark, from grooming the field for the day’s play to scrubbing out grass stains in the uniforms and sweeping away ballpark trash in the wee hours of the morning. It’s a sort of nine inning Ulysses, a tale told through brilliant photography and interviews with a future star, a Hall of Famer, those who merely sipped from the cup of The Show, and those who spend every waking moment dreaming about it.
From the film:
Ballparks are like people with all of our personalities and mortalities and triumphs and tragedies. When they are born, they are beautiful, miracles of construction, created by the labor of man and testament to the wonders and mysteries of life. They laugh with us, they cry with us, they share in our joys and our despairs. They shudder as the cold winter leaves them empty and they thrive with the rebirth of spring and the glory of the summer sun. With the passage of years, they accumulate memories they share with us each and every visit we pay them. They age. Their parts, once shiny and beautiful, begin to wither and fade, the splendor of youth lost with the wrinkles of time. Their skins become marred by their years, their organs weaken, they cough and wheeze and groan as their steel bones ache with a change in the weather. They begin to shake and creak and crumble and then they are gone. We go to their funerals and some of us have tears in our eyes as we watch them implode to the ground. Rest in peace, old friends.
Cobb Field: A Day at the Ballpark is an old man expressing the joys of life when he knows it is his time to go. He admires the youth that play on his green; in sixty years he has never tired of the dreams that dance on his field. There, on that dusty diamond in big town Montana, dreams were given legs that ran and bodies that played and mouths that smiled. The smile of one who holds a dream is truly beautiful – there is such an innocence to it all, a purity that makes you feel like maybe Eden was a minor league baseball field. No flashbulbs blind players from seeing a love of the game, no leather couches and plasma televisions in the locker rooms, no Congressional testimonies, no taking up two lockers in clubhouse, it’s just baseball in its virgin form.
There are a lot of things to like about this film. The photography is beautiful. The interviews are fun. The shots of the Mustang burgers make you hungry. My favorite part is the footage of future Reds star Todd Frazier making his professional debut. It’s a gem. Us Reds fans will watch this film years from now and adore seeing Todd help hitting coach Aaron Holbert try to pull buckets apart or that sweet, sweet swing of his that was beautiful even in the beginning, even when all but the fanatical diehards among us did not know his name. And I think he was cheating on his windsprints!
All of the photos here are screenshots of the actual film. I loved it and recommend that everyone visit the website and order a copy. Buy it here. Do it now!
Facebook page here - become a fan!
___
A bright blue day under a massive Montana sky sits on creaking bleachers, beer in hand, buying raffle tickets from the pin hat lady. There’s one in every ballpark, you know. This version, Barbara, sticks her pins in a red floppy hat and tries to give everyone in the ballpark luck with her raffle ritual. A man plays the national anthem on a saw and a guy tries to win ten thousand dollars by throwing a baseball from the mound through a hole in a board at homeplate. You can get your ticket for five bucks and sit anywhere you’d like, maybe even next to the guy who played ball on the original team so many decades ago. It’s life as a fan in a minor league ballpark.
Billings, Montana. Population 89,847. The Billings Mustangs are “the professional sports team” and have been the Reds rookie league team since 1974. (There’s a minor league hockey team, too.) Until last year, they played in Cobb Field, a ballpark that stood from 1948 until its death in 2007. Prior to Reds affiliation, the Mustangs were a Royals affiliate – George Brett played rookie ball here. Jim Kaat, too, for an affiliate of the Washington Senators. Current Reds Joey Votto and Jay Bruce played here as well.
Cobb Field: A Day at the Ballpark is a must see film for any baseball fan. Told from the perspective of the field itself, the film goes through one day in the life of an old ballpark, from grooming the field for the day’s play to scrubbing out grass stains in the uniforms and sweeping away ballpark trash in the wee hours of the morning. It’s a sort of nine inning Ulysses, a tale told through brilliant photography and interviews with a future star, a Hall of Famer, those who merely sipped from the cup of The Show, and those who spend every waking moment dreaming about it. From the film:
Starring: the home of the Billings Mustangs
Screenplay By: Craig Lindvahl, Susanna Rich
Produced By: Craig Lindvahl
Awards: 3 Mid-America Emmys (best trailer, music, cinematography), selected for 2008 Baseball Hall of Fame Film Festival
Plot Outline: Cobb Field; a day at the ballpark explores the world of minor league baseball through the eyes of Cobb Field, a sixty year-old ballpark in Billings, Montana, and home of the Billings Mustangs from 1948-2007.
Shot during the last weeks of Cobb Field’s existence, the film imagines what Cobb Field might share about history, about baseball, and about life. From retired players like Jim Kaat and Gary Redus, current players like Todd Frazier and Daniel Zeffiro, from coaches and staff members, and from umpires and fans comes a heartwarming story of baseball in the rookie leagues.
Ballparks are like people with all of our personalities and mortalities and triumphs and tragedies. When they are born, they are beautiful, miracles of construction, created by the labor of man and testament to the wonders and mysteries of life. They laugh with us, they cry with us, they share in our joys and our despairs. They shudder as the cold winter leaves them empty and they thrive with the rebirth of spring and the glory of the summer sun. With the passage of years, they accumulate memories they share with us each and every visit we pay them. They age. Their parts, once shiny and beautiful, begin to wither and fade, the splendor of youth lost with the wrinkles of time. Their skins become marred by their years, their organs weaken, they cough and wheeze and groan as their steel bones ache with a change in the weather. They begin to shake and creak and crumble and then they are gone. We go to their funerals and some of us have tears in our eyes as we watch them implode to the ground. Rest in peace, old friends.
Cobb Field: A Day at the Ballpark is an old man expressing the joys of life when he knows it is his time to go. He admires the youth that play on his green; in sixty years he has never tired of the dreams that dance on his field. There, on that dusty diamond in big town Montana, dreams were given legs that ran and bodies that played and mouths that smiled. The smile of one who holds a dream is truly beautiful – there is such an innocence to it all, a purity that makes you feel like maybe Eden was a minor league baseball field. No flashbulbs blind players from seeing a love of the game, no leather couches and plasma televisions in the locker rooms, no Congressional testimonies, no taking up two lockers in clubhouse, it’s just baseball in its virgin form. 
There are a lot of things to like about this film. The photography is beautiful. The interviews are fun. The shots of the Mustang burgers make you hungry. My favorite part is the footage of future Reds star Todd Frazier making his professional debut. It’s a gem. Us Reds fans will watch this film years from now and adore seeing Todd help hitting coach Aaron Holbert try to pull buckets apart or that sweet, sweet swing of his that was beautiful even in the beginning, even when all but the fanatical diehards among us did not know his name. And I think he was cheating on his windsprints!All of the photos here are screenshots of the actual film. I loved it and recommend that everyone visit the website and order a copy. Buy it here. Do it now!
Facebook page here - become a fan!
___
Monday, February 02, 2009
Heaven is a cornfield in Iowa
I did my annual viewing of Bull Durham and Field of Dreams this weekend. I do it every year around the same time – you know, this time of year when you’re drinking from sandlots because your thirst for baseball in the vast desert of the offseason is insatiable. I don’t have to discuss the merits of those two movies (which are probably my two all-time favorites) – every baseball fan regards these as gospels. I am actually a fan of the entire Kevin Costner trilogy, being a fan For the Love of the Game as well, and though it is the weakest of the three, it’s still a darn good movie for baseball fans. I’m going to have to rent Major League and Eight Men Out and The Natural soon as I do every year at this time. I don’t own many movies but I probably should buy those because I love them so.
Field of Dreams – that one gets me every time. “Dad, do you wanna have a catch?” It’s my favorite movie, though Bull Durham is a close second (I named this blog because of it, after all.) But Field of Dreams captures the magic of the game in a way no other movie – or book – has ever done. Only The Natural comes close, but the book is so depressing that it ruins the magic. I’ve said over and over again how the conspiracy theorist in me believes that J.D. Salinger wrote Shoeless Joe – if I ever get back to grad school and decide to study English (among the myriads of other things I want to study), my thesis is going to be on that. I think Ray Kinsella is Holden Caulfield all grown up.
Salinger turned 90 last year, and I have this irrational, desperate longing for him to live forever. He did it. He said fuck it all to the world and managed to live that way, managed to discard all of the corporate bullshit and the media vultures and all that. Those of us liberal hippy progressive whatever the heck you want to label us types who bitch about the corporate jesus can only wish we could be like Salinger as we put ads on our blogs and buy our trendy organic brands and all of that crap that makes us hypocrites, makes us the phonies that Holden hated so. But we grow up and become Ray Kinsellas and build gateways to Heaven and have reconciliations, so I guess it all works out in the end.
___
Field of Dreams – that one gets me every time. “Dad, do you wanna have a catch?” It’s my favorite movie, though Bull Durham is a close second (I named this blog because of it, after all.) But Field of Dreams captures the magic of the game in a way no other movie – or book – has ever done. Only The Natural comes close, but the book is so depressing that it ruins the magic. I’ve said over and over again how the conspiracy theorist in me believes that J.D. Salinger wrote Shoeless Joe – if I ever get back to grad school and decide to study English (among the myriads of other things I want to study), my thesis is going to be on that. I think Ray Kinsella is Holden Caulfield all grown up.
Salinger turned 90 last year, and I have this irrational, desperate longing for him to live forever. He did it. He said fuck it all to the world and managed to live that way, managed to discard all of the corporate bullshit and the media vultures and all that. Those of us liberal hippy progressive whatever the heck you want to label us types who bitch about the corporate jesus can only wish we could be like Salinger as we put ads on our blogs and buy our trendy organic brands and all of that crap that makes us hypocrites, makes us the phonies that Holden hated so. But we grow up and become Ray Kinsellas and build gateways to Heaven and have reconciliations, so I guess it all works out in the end.
___
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