Movie Review: The League (2023)

Title: The League
Release Date: June 12, 2023
Director: Sam Pollard
Production Company: Play/Action Pictures RadicalMedia Two One Five Entertainment YABBA Biri Productions
Summary/Review:

The Negro Baseball Leagues allowed the best Black American baseball players to play in a highly-competitive and entertaining professional sport from the 1920s to 1940s.  The leagues were Black-owned businesses who employed not only Black coaching staff and other Black employees on down to the vendors, becoming a major economic force in the Eastern and Midwestern cities where they played.  As such, Sam Pollard’s documentary focuses a lot on the executives behind some of the most successful ballclubs such as Rube Foster of the Chicago American Giants, Cum Posey of the Homestead Grays, and Effa Manley of the Newark Eagles (who was also a notable woman’s voice in a man’s world).

The documentary also sets the Negro Leagues in the context of the Civil Rights Movements of the 20th centuries as it relates to Black soldiers fighting in the World Wars having to fight a second battle for equality, the Great Migration from the South, and the Harlem Renaissance.  What the movie doesn’t focus on all too much is accomplishments on the playing field, which I found a little disappointing, although it does touch on many of the best players. Since almost everyone involved in the Negro Leagues has passed on, direct interviews were not possible, but the film does well incorporating historical interviews with figures like Satchel Paige. Passages from the memoir of a less well-known figure, Negro League umpire Bob Motley (voiced by Pollard), are used throughout the film as a connective thread.

While Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 is celebrated as a moral victory, it comes at a cost.  Major League executives like the Dodgers’ Branch Rickey openly scoffed at providing compensation to Negro League teams for signing away their contracted players.  Soon the Negro Leagues were picked clean of their best players and folded, or continued in a reduced fashion until the final league disbanded in 1962.  The economic effect on the Black community was devastating as well as the pride in being able to make something successful on their own.  One of the great “what ifs?” of American history is the possibility that Negro Leagues could’ve merged into Major League Baseball (much like the later NFL/AFL and NBA/ABA mergers), something that Rube Foster envisioned back in the 1920s!

This is an excellent, well-constructed documentary that should appeal to a wide audience, not just sports fans.  I learned a lot from it although I still feel in the time allotted it only skims the surface, leaving me wanting to know more.

Rating: ***1/2

Book Review: A Damn Near Perfect Game by Joe Kelly

Author: Joe Kelly
Title: A Damn Near Perfect Game 
Publication Info: Diversion Books (2023)
Summary/Review:

Major League Baseball relief pitcher Joe Kelly is primarily known for two things: 1. with the Red Sox, starting a fight with the Yankees after one of their player’s dirty takeout slide, and 2. with the Dodgers, making a pouty face at Carlos Correa soon after the revelations of the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal.  Kelly covers both of these incidents and their aftermaths in full detail early on in this memoir.  But the better part of the book follows.

Coming from a troubled background, Kelly found an escape in baseball.  As a professional player, he’s part of a younger generation who have spurned the “unspoken rules” of baseball’s elders and recognized that baseball is a game and it’s supposed to be fun.  In Kelly’s analysis, baseball can better engage fans by embracing the fun and allowing the players to show their personality.  Through stories of the game as a player and a spectator, Kelly demonstrates that “baseball isn’t boring.”  In the final chapter, other players, Hall of Famers, as well as actors, musicians, and athletes from other sports express their love for baseball.

Favorite Passages:

Baseball is different from any other sport, where often you can watch the last few minutes of a game and get the gist. The NBA? The NFL? The NHL? What you see is what you get. Nothing wrong with any of it. The fast pace, the tight focus on a moving object, the made-for-TV rhythms of the season—they’re all tailor-made for today’s fans. Baseball? It’s a bit more complicated and that’s okay. Baseball makes you think. It makes you talk. Questions are being asked and answered. Why is that player doing this or that? And when the answers do arrive, the world somehow always seems to be a little bit better of a place. If you’re patient enough, you can see that baseball is a combination of chess, ballet, a classroom, and cannon fire. When you’re watching bat flips, punchouts, home-run-robbing catches, and laser throws from the warning track, it’s easy to remember all the feels.

Baseball is built on emotion. That’s a fact. The feeling of wanting to explode in just the right way at just the right time is what the whole experience is about. Swinging a bat. Throwing a ball. Bursting down a base path. Springing toward the perfect fielding position. The heart rate shoots up and the body follows in lockstep. And in between all those actions, there’s the other side: controlling your emotions in order for your mind and body to ultimately take over. The battle between nerves, muscle memory, memories, and excitement is an every-game, every-inning, every-batter, every-pitch thing. That is what this sport demands.

For years, the invisible book of unwritten rules suggested batters pimping homers should be frowned on. Respect the pitcher. Respect the game. News flash: If you really want to respect baseball, understand that we need more of that personality. Pimp away. Take a minute rounding the bases. Pitchers, throw your hats up in the air. Pump your fists. Whatever you want. If somebody hits a home run off me, I’m already fucking pissed. The hitter doing whatever he’s going to do won’t make me any angrier.

For instance, Major League Baseball has access to all of these Wall Street executives, so why in the world can’t it set up a committee for players who are retired or about to be retired that can help them with investment information? The unfortunate fact is that 60 percent of MLB players who retire have financial problems. Or how about this? Set up an independent committee involving mental health professionals who can really help a problem that is lingering among players these days. There needs to be somebody for these guys to talk to if they don’t trust who the clubs are offering up, or if there is an issue that crops up in the middle of the night. Right now everything has to be done through the club, and that doesn’t always work for a player.

What teams and Major League Baseball were trying to do was treat their players like they were in the Army. That works in the Army, because discipline and consistency are essential to the work it does. There’s no messing around, and everybody better be on the same page. Understood. But we’re playing a game. It’s not the same.

Fun and encouragement have to stay at the top of our lists. We have to remember that while we are obsessing over having this game take root, these kids are fending off the pitfalls of bullying, puberty, and those first girlfriends or boyfriends. Everything leading to high school is end-of-the-world stuff. Baseball should be part of the solution, not another part of the problem.

Kids are being asked to define themselves at such a young age, being pushed into sports specialization by parents and coaches who fear falling behind. That’s insane to me.

I will never forget one of my favorite moments when Stephen Drew hit a home run in Game 6 of the 2013 World Series and I was on-deck and something just clicked in my brain when he hit it. I knew it was gone so I immediately turned around and watched the fans. That’s the greatest thing you can do as an athlete. Our success is really cool, but to see all the fans rise up together, high-fiving and watching strangers hug. Shit, I get chills just thinking about it. – David Ross

Recommended books:

• Take time for paradise : Americans and their games by A. Bartlett Giamatti
• Veeck–As In Wreck: The Autobiography of Bill Veeck by Bill Veeck
• The Lords of the Realm by John Helyar
• You’re Missin’ a Great Game: From Casey to Ozzie, the Magic of Baseball and How to Get It Back by Whitey Herzog

Rating: ***1/2

Book Review: The Grandest Stage : A History of the World Series by Tyler Kepner

Author: Tyler Kepner
Title: The Grandest Stage : A History of the World Series
Publication Info: New York, N.Y. : Doubleday, [2022]
Other Books I’ve Read By the Same Author: K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches
Summary/Review:

Tyler Kepner, an engaging writer of baseball history, takes on the big leagues’ great championship series played (almost) every year since 1903.  Instead of a straight chronological history, Kepner arranges each chapter around a theme.  Some of these include World Series heroes and goats (and some who were both in different years), players with short and unremarkable careers who peaked in the World Series, and perspectives of managers and general managers.  It’s chock full of interesting facts and stories for every baseball fan.  My personal favorite is learning that Vin Scully’s date to the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers’ victory party was Joan Ganz, future creator of Sesame Street.

Recommended books:

•  The Glory of Their Times : The Story of Baseball Told By the Men Who Played It by Lawrence S. Ritter
• The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn
• When Boston Won The World Series: A Chronicle of Boston’s Remarkable Victory in the First Modern World Series of 1903 by Bob Ryan

Rating: ***

Movie Reviews: Reggie (2023)

Title: Reggie
Release Date: March 24, 2023
Director: Alexandria Stapleton
Production Company: Bron Life | Creative Wealth Media Finance | Delirio Films
Red Crown Productions
Summary/Review:

When I was a kid, before I was even really a baseball fan, Reggie Jackson was one of my two favorite players (the other was Lee Mazilli).  This documentary details the career of Jackson as a slugger who won championships for the Oakland A’s and New York Yankees as well as an activist for Blacks and other minority players in sports.  In addition to a lot of archival footage and interviews with Jackson, this documentary’s strongest attribute is seeing Jackson in conversation with many of his contemporaries that offer a lot of insight, including: Henry Aaron, Vida Blue, Julius Erving, Rollie Fingers, Pete Rose, Dave Stewart (who first met Reggie as an Oakland kid attending A’s games), and even Derek Jeter has some interesting things to say.  As a documentary it’s a good glimpse at a time when Black players were becoming dominant in American sports coinciding with the emergence of players being able to control their pay and destiny with free agency.  It’s also an honest appraisal of Jackson as a player and a person, and he’s never been one to sugarcoat things.

Rating: ***

Song of the Week: “Journeyman” by The Baseball Project

The Baseball Project – Journeyman

The Baseball Project – a rock supergroup made up of former R.E.M. members Peter Buck and Mike Mills, Steve Wynn (the Dream Syndicate), Scott McCaughey (the Minus 5 and Young Fresh Fellows), and Linda Pitmon (Filthy Friends, Alejandro Escovedo) – are back with an introspective song that takes its inspiration from the National Pastime.

Songs of the Week for 2023

January

• “Happiness” by THICK
• “Abathembu” by uKhoiKhoi
• “Blood Rushes” by CIVIC
• “Doomscrollers” by Quasi
• “Fold” by Bonobo & Jacques Greene

February

• “Go Dig My Grave” by Lankum
• “Tokyo Dub Story” by Gezan & Million Wish Collective
• “MA EMILY (featuring Rapsody)” by C.S. Armstrong
• “All of the Time in the World to Kill” by The Milk Carton Kids

March

• “False Spring” by Shelli Le Fay
• “Barley” by Water From Your Eyes
• “exodus the north star” by Yaya Bey
• “Grey Eagle” by Mighty Poplar

April

• “My My Orca Card” by Who Is She?
• “Pop Song Baby” by MEDIOCRE
• “Too Many Things” by The Linda Lindas
• “Consumerism” by Acid Tongue

May

• “Freak Me Now” by Jessie Ware
• “Journeyman” by The Baseball Project

#FridayFictioneers – The Fair Pole

It was the bottom of the 5^th in an otherwise uneventful game between the Tigers and the Royals when fans in the right field bleachers noticed something out of the ordinary. A viral TikTok post summed it up: “Holy crap! The foul pole’s become sentient!”

In an interviews with KSHB News, the pole noted “When a fly ball hits me it’s a homerun so I’m actually a fair pole.”

Seeking greater fulfillment in life than watching baseball games and with a keen sense of right and wrong, the fair pole was later appointed a judge at the Jackson County Courthouse.

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Friday Fictioneers is a weekly photo prompt flash fiction challenge on Rochelle Wisoff-Fields’ Addicted to Purple blog.  See additional stories by other writers here!

Book Reviews: Rickey: The Life and Legend of an American Original by Rickey Henderson

Author: Howard Bryant
Title: Rickey: The Life and Legend of an American Original
Narrator: JD Jackson
Publication Info: HarperAudio (2022)
Summary/Review:

Rickey Henderson is a man of contrasts.  He was one of the great baseball players of all time, breaking multiple records, and then playing another decade seemingly never wanting to retire.  And yet football was his favorite sport which he really wanted to play instead of baseball.  He worked hard to develop his game and yet he got a reputation for lackadaisical play and missing games.  His flashy style of play earned him the enmity of the conservative, white sports media but the love of young fans especially in the Black community.  His approach to baseball of aiming to get on base by any means and scoring runs was looked down upon by the experts of the time who valued batting average and power, but was vindicated by the Sabermetric approach that came into vogue in the 2000s right as Rickey was retiring.

Bryant interviewed Rickey and several important people in his life, including his wife Pamela.  His life story is tied to his hometown of Oakland, a segregated city where the Black children found an outlet in the community sports leagues that produced a great number of professional sports stars.  One of these was Billy Martin, a cantankerous figure who became a mentor and friend to Rickey as his manager in Oakland and New York. Bryant follows Rickey’s career through 4 stints with the Oakland A’s, a troubled period with the Yankees, and a final decade as a nomad playing for any team who would have him.  Highlights include winning the World Series in the 1989 and 1993 and the AL MVP in 1990.

I can’t say that you really get to know Rickey Henderson from this biography.  Despite his outsized personality, he’s a very private person, and one who seems detached because of he worries about his lack of education showing as well as his inability to remember names.  But I think Bryant does a brilliant job regardless of telling Rickey’s story.  His career coincides with a time in baseball when free agency made the star players multi-millionaires and Black players like Rickey were no longer willing to show deference to the white owners and media.  I’ve always liked Rickey and this book just makes me like him more.

Recommended books:

• Becoming Manny: Inside the Life of Baseball’s Most Enigmatic Slugger by Jean Rhodes
• Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis

Rating: ****

Movie Review: Field of Dreams (1989)

Title: Field of Dreams
Release Date: May 5, 1989
Director: Phil Alden Robinson
Production Company: Gordon Company
Summary/Review:

One of my favorite authors when I was a teenager was W.P. Kinsella. I was excited when I learned that his novel Shoeless Joe was getting adapted into a movie.  But when I finally saw the movie, I was disappointed.  There were a lot of changes from the book to movie, and on screen the story just seemed to ooze with cheesiness.  Over the years, Field of Dreams has become regarded as a classic baseball movie to the extent that Major League Baseball has started hosting an annual regular season baseball game in an Iowa corn field. I figured Father’s Day was a good opportunity to revisit Field of Dreams and watch it with my kids for the first time.

The basic story is that aging hippie and baseball fan Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) having married Iowa native Annie (Amy Madigan), has acquired a farm that they live on with their young daughter Karin (Gaby Hoffmann). Hearing voices in the corn field, Ray comes to a realization that he must build a baseball field on his farm. As a result, the deceased but not ghostly former baseball star Shoeless Joe Jackson (Ray Liotta) appears, and is soon followed by other former baseball stars.  Other messages prompt Ray to go to Boston to take the reclusive counterculture author Terence Mann (James Earl Jones) to a Red Sox game, and then to a small town in Minnesota to find “Moonlight” Graham (Burt Lancaster), a baseball player who played only one half-inning in the 1920s.  As all this happens, the Kinsella’s farm is failing and faces foreclosure at the hands of Annie’s brother Mark (Timothy Busfield).

The movie still oozes cheese.  There are changes from the book (including removing two significant characters) that effectively change the story.  There’s also a move away from the book’s magical realism to more of a Reagan-era nostalgia for baseball as something emblematic of America.  My wife noted that James Earl Jones’ famous speech about baseball has elements that feel eerily close to MAGA ideology.  While baseball is upheld as being something that was from a time when America was “good,” all of the former ballplayers who emerge from the corn come from a time when baseball was segregated.  That being said there’s a scene in the movie I’d totally forgotten where Annie takes on a group of conservatives who are trying ban books at the public schools which felt unfortunately relevant to our times.  Even then though, the feel of the movie is still steeped in a toothless nostalgia, this time for for 1960s.

With all that being said, the biggest change from the book to the movie is also the best, and I think improves upon the book.  In Shoeless Joe, Ray takes the real life author J.D. Salinger to Fenway Park.  The filmmakers knew that they couldn’t depict the notoriously reclusive Salinger on screen and instead created the fictional 60s icon Terrence Mann, who is more than just a substitute for Salinger but a character with a well-developed history of his own.  It’s surprising that in 1989, Hollywood cast a Black actor in the role originally written as white character, doubly so since in 2022 there are people who still lose their minds when a Black actor is cast as a character originally written as white.  Jones is great for the part and his performance brings a lot of energy and authority to the movie right at a time when it needs a jolt.

I probably sound like I’m hating on the movie, it is a thoroughly enjoyable movie, but I’m just a harsh judge since I love the book so much.  It is a bit slow-going, but then again so is baseball.  I love baseball, and I’m not immune to the magic of ballplayers emerging from a corn field or an impassioned speech about baseball’s role as America’s pastime.  For all it’s flaws, Field of Dreams is one of the best baseball movies ever made.

Rating: ***

Book Review: So Many Ways to Lose by Devin Gordon

Author: Devin Gordon
Title: So Many Ways to Lose
Publication Info: New York City : Harper, 2021.
Summary/Review:

So Many Ways to Lose is a history of the New York Mets by a long-time fan and writer who happens to live near me in Massachusetts. Gordon’s thesis is that the Mets are a team that is known for their futility and for losing in creative ways, and yet that has only made their moments of greatness all the more endearing.

Since I’ve read a lot about the Mets (and of course, spent most of my life watching the team), I was familiar with many of these stories.  But I was impressed with the angles Gordon took on telling the stories. I particularly liked:

• connecting Cleon Jones story to the history of Africatown in Alabama which was founded by people brought from Africa on the last known slave ship the Clotilda
• How Mackey Sasser got the yips and had trouble returning the ball to the pitcher
• While Bobby Bonilla Day has become a day to mock the Mets, Gordon explains that it was a good deal with positive outcomes for the Mets
• the greatness of the Endy Chavez catch
• How Bernie Madoff bamboozled the Wilpons, owners of the Mets, but nonetheless a somewhat sympathetic portrait of the Wilpons

The parts on the Mets success in 2006 (and subsequent flops in 2007-2008) and 2015 feel rushed.  But then again I’ve read about those accomplishments in other books.  This is an enjoyable sports book and a requirement for every Mets’ fan’s library.

Recommended books:

• Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets by Greg Prince
• Mets by the Numbers: A Complete Team History of the Amazin’ Mets by Uniform Number by Jon Springer
• Taking the Field: A Fan’s Quest to Run the Team He Loves by Howard Megdal

Rating: ****

2021 MLB Postseason Predictions and Preferences

It’s that time of year again – playoff baseball! Actually, the Wild Card games have already been played, but I consider those more of a play-in game than an actual playoff.  The good news is that one of my two favorite teams, the Boston Red Sox, won one of those Wild Card games (my other favorite team, the New York Mets, failed to finish the season with even a winning record after being in first place for much of the first half of the season).  The other good news is that two of the three teams I loathe the most – the Yankees and Cardinals – were eliminated in the Wild Card games.  The other team I hate, the Los Angeles Dodgers, lives on to play another playoff series.

Here is my ranking of teams from the one I most want to win the World Series to the one I want to see make the earliest possible exit:

1. Boston Red Sox
2. Milwaukee Brewers
3. Tampa Bay Rays
4. Chicago White Sox
5. Atlanta Braves
6. Houston Astros
7. San Francisco Giants
8. Los Angeles Dodgers

And here are my dispassionate predictions for how I think things will actually play out:

League Divisions Series:

• Red Sox defeat Rays
• White Sox defeat Astros
• Dodgers defeat Giants
• Brewers defeat Braves

League Champion Series:

• White Sox defeat Red Sox
• Brewers defeat Dodgers

World Series:

• White Sox defeat Brewers

We shall see in a few weeks if my predictions play out.

Back in March I posted my 2021 regular season predictions and only managed to correctly predict 6 of the 10 teams that would qualify for the postseason.  I was way too high on the Mets and the Padres, but I think the Blue Jays (who I had predicted to win the AL East) were extremely unlucky to end up missing the postseason entirely based on their run differential.  The Giants and the Astros were teams I didn’t being as good as they ended up being.

 

Previous MLB postseason preferences and predictions:

• 2019
• 2018
• 2017
• 2016
• 2015
• 2014