1991 Babe Ruth (TV, Primary) Directed by Mark Tinker. Written by Robert W. Creamer and Kal Wagenheim. Produced by Lawrence A. Little and Frank Pace. Starring Brian Doyle-Murray, Donald Moffat, Yvonne Suhor, Steve Lang, and Pete Rose. A more accurate bio-pic of the baseball star than the William Bendix version of 1948.

 

1991 City Slickers (Secondary) Directed by Ron Underwood. Written by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel. Produced by Billy Crystal and Irby Smith/Castle Rock/Columbia Pictures. Starring Helen Slater, Patricia Wettig, Billy Crystal, Daniel Stern, and Bruno Kirby. Three yuppie professionals from the city decide to “get away from it all” and join a working dude ranch where they will have to work for two weeks on a cattle drive. The clever script weaves baseball references throughout the film. A major theme is how each character, during his childhood developed a strong relationship with his father through baseball. There is also a friend-to-friend bond expressed in the film when on several occasions we see that all three of the men think in baseball terms and use baseball references as a common code. And Billy Crystal’s character wears a Mets cap instead of a cowboy hat for the first two acts of the film.

 

1991 Hard Way, The (Secondary) Directed by John Badham. Written by Lem Dobbs, Michael Kozoll and Daniel Pyne/MCA Universal Pictures. Starring Rob Cohen, William Sackheim, Michael J. Fox, James Woods, Stephen Lang, Annabella Sciorra, and Penny Marshall. Fox plays a movie-idol actor shadowing real NYC cop Woods to learn the business for his next role. Woods uses a bat in a confrontation using it as a method of persuasion. Fox unsuccessfully tries to imitate Woods’ use of the bat when he tries to retrieve his belongings from a gang.

 

1991 Hook (Secondary) Directed by Steven Spielberg. Written by J.M. Barrie, James Hart, and Malia Scotch Marmo. Produced by Dodi Fayed and James Hart/Amblin Entertainment/Tri-Star Pictures. Starring Julia Roberts, Bob Hoskins, Maggie Smith, Robin Williams, and Dustin Hoffman. An update of the Peter Pan story with Williams as Peter. Captain Hook uses baseball to kidnap Peter’s children. Peter has been neglecting his family and has missed his son’s Little League games. There’s a baseball game between the pirates and the pirates to entertain Peter’s son. Peter eventually learns the error of his ways and recaptures his child-like persona to restore harmony to the family.

 

1991 Love Hurts (Secondary) Directed by Bud Yorkin. Written by Ron Nyswaner. Produced by Mitchell Cannold and Steven Reuther/Vestron Pictures. Starring Judith Ivey, John Mahoney, Jeff Daniels, Cynthia Sikes, and Cloris Leachman. Baseball is a theme in this movie because insurance executive Paul Weaver (Daniels) had been in the minor leagues and pitched a no-hitter the day before he and his wife got married. Other baseball references help define Paul’s character and that of his father.

 

1991 Only the Lonely  (Tertiary) Directed and written by Chris Columbus. Produced by Tarquin Gotch/20th Century Fox. Starring John Candy, Maureen O’Hara, Ally Sheedy, Kevin Dunn, and Milo O’Shea.  Danny (Candy), a cop, meets and falls in love with Theresa (Sheedy). They become engaged, despite sneaking around behind his mother's back, but when push comes to shove, Danny can't quite quit worrying about his mother long enough to be any kind of lover to Theresa. (Gregg Long)  In one scene, Danny is at Comiskey Park, talking about his baseball escapades with his buddies, such as using barrels for bases.      

1991 Pastime (Primary) (a.k.a. One Cup of Coffee) Directed by Robin Armstrong. Written by David Eyre, Jr. Produced by Robin Armstrong and Eric Tynan Young/Miramax Films. Starring William Russ, Duke Snider, Ernie Banks, Bob Feller, Glenn Plummer, and Scott Plank. It’s 1957 and a 41-year old minor-league relief pitcher, Roy Dean Bream (Russ) is so gung-ho about the game that he estranges himself from his much younger teammates. A new talent joins the team and is inspired by Bream’s enthusiasm and love for the game. Bream is dropped from the team and goes to the ballpark to throw his last barrage of balls into an empty stadium before dropping dead of complications from high blood pressure.

 

1991 Prince of Tides, The (Tertiary) Directed by Barbara Streisand. Written by Pat Conroy and Becky Johnston. Produced by Andrew Karcsh and Barbara Streisand/Columbia Pictures. Starring Barbara Streisand, Nick Nolte, Blythe Danner, Kate Nelligan, and Jeroen Krabbe.  Tom Wingo (Nolte) and his sister Sallie (Danner) are both miserable with their lives. Together, they must uncover their past and find out what is holding them down in the present. Baseball provides a point of common interest between Nolte and his father. Mel Allen’s radio voice can be heard in the background saying the Yankees are “out in front.”

 

1991 Son of the Morning Star (TV, Tertiary) Directed by Mike Robe. Written by Evan S. Connell and Melissa Mathison. Produced by Republic Television. Starring Stanley Anderson , Rodney Grant, Gary Cole, Rosanna Arquette, Terry O’Quinn. Made for TV movie that retells the story of Custer at Little Big Horn. In one scene Custer returns from a scouting mission and as he crests the hill overlooking the encampment, the men, including Custer’s brother, are playing a game of baseball.

 

1991 Talent for the Game (Primary) Directed by Robert Young. Written by David Himmelstein, Tom Donnelly, and Larry Ferguson. Produced by Martin Elfand and David Wisnievitz/Paramount Pictures. Starring Jamey Sheridan, Edward James Olmos, Lorraine Braco, Jeffrey Corbet, and Terry Kinney. Virgil Sweet (Olmos) is a baseball scout for the California Angels. He finds a pitching sensation, Sammy Bodeen (Corbet), somewhere in Idaho. Bodeen does best when Virgil is catching for him. As a publicity ploy, the team starts Sammy in his first pro game. He gets stage fright, and is getting clobbered until Virgil sneaks in and substitutes as the catcher. Sammy gets a new contract with the Angels.

 

1991 V.I. Warshawski (Secondary) Directed by Jeff Kanew. Written by Sara Paretsky, Edward Taylor, and Nick Thiel. Produced by Penny Finkelman Cox and John P. Marsh/Warner Bros./Buena Vista Pictures. Starring Jay O. Sanders, Charles Durning, Angela Goethals, Nancy Paul, and Kathleen Turner. V.I. Warshawski (Turner) playes the female equivalent of the male cliché private investigator. Baseball is in the first part of the film to set the locale (near Wrigley Field) and establish Warshawski’s love of the game. When Warshawski is walking by Wrigley Field she asks fans leaving the game, “Did we win?” One fan replies sarcastically, “What do you think?” Her apartment overlooks Wrigley Field and she simultaneously watches the game on TV and out her window. Later in the film the little girl Warshaski is trying to protect wears a Cubs jersey/night shirt. Baseball references in the film are dialogic and visual. At the end of the film, a reporter is shot twice and as he is being put in the ambulance, he asks if it’s true that he’ll be all right. Warshawski says, “Of course you’re going to make it.” When the reporter retorts with “I just don’t want to die without seeing the Cubs win a pennant,” the cop  (Durning) says wryly, “Don’t go asking for immortality!”

 

1992 Alan and Naomi (Tertiary) Directed by Sterling Vanwagenen. Written by Myron Levoy and Jordan Horowitz. Produced by Jonathan Pillot and Don Schain/Matlese Productions/Triton Pictures. Starring Lukas Haas, Vanessa Zaoul, Michael Gross, Amy Aquino, and Kevin Connolly.  Set in the 1940s, a young Jewish boy is called on by his parents to help a young girl come out of her shell, after she watched her father die at the hands of the Nazis. In the beginning of the film, kids are playing ball and it serves as a vehicle to begin the movie and represents ethnic assimilation into American culture.

 

1992 Babe, The (Primary) Directed by Arthur Hiller. Written by John Fusco. Produced by Walter Coblenz and Bill Finigan/Universal Pictures. Starring John Goodman, Bruce Boxleitner, Peter Donat, Kelly McGillis, and Trini Alvarado.  A biopic of George Herman “Babe” Ruth (Goodman), some of which was shot in Wrigley Field.

 

1992 Bad Lieutenant (Secondary) Directed by Abel Ferrara. Written by Able Ferrara and Zoe Lund. Produced by Ronna Wallace and Patrick Wachsberger/Bad Lt. Productions. Starring Harvey Keitel, Brian McElroy, Frankie Acciarito, Peggy Gormley, and Stella Keitel.  A police Lieutenant (Keitel) goes about his daily tasks of investigating homicides, but is more interested in pursuing his vices which include alcohol, drugs and gambling. He has accumulated a massive debt betting on baseball, and he keeps doubling to try to recover. Throughout the movie, one hears snippets of a mythical playoff championship series between the New York Mets and the Los Angeles Dodgers, as the Mets come back from being down three games to none to win the NL pennant. The playoffs are on the radio, on television and the subject of conversation between and among the cops from the beginning to the end of the film. Despite the Lieutenant’s addiction to drugs and alcohol and his aberrantly violent behavior, it is his addiction to gambling on baseball that proves fatal.

 

1992 Comrades of Summer (TV, Primary) Directed by Tommy Lee Wallace. Written by Robert Rodat. Produced by Tim Braine. Starring Michael Lerner, Mark Rolston, John Fleck, Joe Mantegna, and Natalya Negoda.  A baseball comedy in which a major league manager who’s lost his job takes on the task of training a Russian baseball team for the summer Olympics.

 

1992 Consenting Adults (Secondary) Directed by Alan Pakula. Written by Matthew Chapman. Produced by Peter Jan Brugge and Katie Jacobs/Buena Vista Pictures. Starring Kevin Spacey, Rebecca Miller, Forest Whitaker, Kevin Kline, and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. A murder mystery-thriller revolving around a scheming next door neighbor of the Parker household (Kline and Mastrantonio). Baseball is used to show how the two couples bond their friendship, but the bat with Richard Parker’s (Kline) fingerprints on it is found by the body of the neighbor’s wife who had been bludgeoned to death. A second murder uses the same baseball bat occurs and in the tense and dramatic and ironic ending the killer is killed by the same baseball bat.

 

1992 Diamonds on the Silver Screen (Primary) Narrated by James Earl Jones. Interviews with Glenn Close, Bob Costas, Frank Deford, Phil Dusenberry, Barry Levinson, Mickey Mantle, Charlie Sheen, Joel Siegal, Gene Siskel and Theresa Wright. Produced by American Movie Classics.  The Movie Channel (TMC) special on the history of baseball films including footage from primary and secondary films.

 

1992 Few Good Men, A (Secondary) Directed by Rob Reiner. Written by Aaron Sorkin. Produced by Castle Rock/Columbia/New Line Cinema. Starring Jack Nicholson, Kevin Bacon, Keifer Sutherland, Tom Cruise, and Demi Moore. In this film about a military trial, the backdrop of baseball as a calming influence on key character/attorney Daniel Kaffey (Cruise) runs throughout the film. Kaffey, the lead lawyer, is obviously hooked on baseball (he plays softball, wears a Red Sox cap, watches games on TV and thinks with a bat in his hands, which he relies on to help him think. For example, he holds two impromptu meetings with other attorneys on a baseball field while hitting infield drills and taking batting practice During the meetings held at Kaffey’s home with his co-counselors, he walks around the room with his bat. At one point, he actually says to them, “I think better with my bat.”  To which, his sidekick retorts, “He does think better with his bat.”

 

1992 It’s Spring Training, Charlie Brown (TV, Primary) Directed by Bill Melendez. Written by Charles Schultz. As springtime rolls around, Charlie Brown's team is performing the usual hopeless task of getting in shape for the new season. To improve the team's morale, Charlie Brown manages to find a potential team sponsor who agrees to provide uniforms, provided that the team wins the first game of the season. However, considering the usual competence of the team, including new members like Leland who is too young to even tie his shoes, the challenge seems impossible. (Kenneth Chisholm)

 

1992 Jumpin’ at the Boneyard  (Tertairy) Directed by Jeff Stanzler. Written by Jeff Stanzler. Produced by Lloyd Steven Goldfine and Lawrence Kasdan/20th Century Fox. Starring Danitra Vance, Samuel L. Jackson, Joey Allen, Tim Roth, and Alex Arquette. A moving story about the effects of drug abuse and the attempt by Manny (Roth) to help his brother. In the opening scene, Manny is awakes when he hears intruders and grabs a baseball bat to use if needed, but finds that the thieves are his brother and his brother’s girl-friend.  The other references to baseball are a baseball cap on Manny’s dresser and in a school yard some kids are laying stick ball. The baseball bat is used as a threatening weapon. The cap probably indicates that while Manny may be divorced and unemployed, he is still a baseball fan and a good guy who tries to help his brother.

 

1992 League of Their Own, A (Primary) Directed by Penny Marshall. Written by Kim Wilson, Kelly Candaele, Lowell Ganz, and Babaloo Mandel. Produced by Penny Marshall and Eliot Abbott/Columbia Pictures. Starring Lori Petty, Jon Lovitz, Geena Davis, Tom Hanks, Rosie O’Donnell, and Madonna. The story about the formation, struggles and eventual success of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League during WWII.  (Note: a documentary on the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, When Diamonds Were A Girl’s Best Friend, was produced and directed by Janis L. Taylor and may be available through the Film Department at Northwestern University.)

 

1992 Mr. Baseball (Primary) Directed by Fred Schepisi. Written by Theo Pelletier, John Junkerman, and Gary Ross. Produced by John Kao and Jeffrey Silver/Universal Pictures. Starring Ken Takakura, Aya Takanashi, Dennis Haysbert, Toshi Shioya, and Tom Selleck.  A comedy and love story about an aging American baseball star, Jack Elliot (Selleck) is traded by the Yankees to the Nagoya Dragons in Japan.  He’s got a hot temper and a bad attitude that doesn’t quite fit the Japanese culture. When Jack falls in love with the daughter of the manager of the team, he has a cultural adjustment .

 

1992 Used People (Secondary) Directed by Beeban Kidron. Written by Todd Graff. Produced by Michael Barnathan and Lloyd Levin/20th Century Fox. Starring Bob Dishy, Kathy Bates, Jessica Tandy, Shirley MacLaine, and Marcello Mastrioanni. The story of a middle-aged Jewish woman just widowed (MacLaine) and Mastrioanni, a middle-aged Italian persistently courting McLaine. The movie is a slice-of-life in a Jewish and Italian family in the Bronx in the 1960s. Baseball is used nine times in the film. In short segments, the film follows the Mets winning the1969 National League pennant and World Series. The Mets win the final game during MacLaine’s wedding, which briefly disrupts the ceremony. Baseball bridges the cultural void between the Jewish community and the Italian community.

 

1993 Bronx Tale, A (Secondary) Directed by Robert DeNiro. Written by Chazz Palminteri. Produced by Peter Gaitien and Robert DeNiro/Tribeca Productions/Savoy Pictures. Starring Chazz Palminteri, Robert DeNiro, Lillo Brancato, Francis Capra, and Taral Hicks.  A movie about a young boy growing up in racially divided, Mafie-infested Bronx, New York. The baseball moments can be classified in two groups. The first is The New York Yankees connection. Situated in the Bronx in 1960 and 1968, several references to the Yankees include .  Lorenzo’s (DeNiro),  young son (Capra) is a Yankee fan who wears a Yankee cap and idolizes Mickey Mantle. DeNiro’s hero is Joe DiMaggio, because of his great “talent.” Lorenzo is a bus driver and listens to the radio broadcast of the 1960 World Series. By 1968, with the Yankees in last place, Lorenzo’s son (now played by Brancato) is no longer interested in baseball as he looks up to Sonny (Palminteri), a local gangster who has replaced Lorenzo as the son’s mentor. The son throws away his baseball cards because “Mantle can’t pay the rent.” The second use of baseball relates to violence. The movie is about gangsters who use guns as well as baseball bats to wield violence. A man who smashed another’s car windshield is subsequently shot by Sonny. Rumbles between the Italian kids and Black youngsters depict the use of baseball and stickball bats. Also, there are several scenes of men and boys playing stickball in the street.

 

1993 Cooperstown (TV, Primary) Directed by Charles Haid. Written by Lee Blessing. Produced by Michael Brandman and Steven Brandman/Turner Pictures. Starring Ed Begley, Lori Seabourn, Joanna Miles, Hope Lange, and Alan Arkin.  Former pitching great Harry Willette (Arkin) has been waiting to be selected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. His friend, who Harry hasn’t talked to in many years because of a grudge, is selected to the Hall the night before he dies. The ghost of his friend helps Harry rectify being passed over by the Hall of Fame selection committee.

 

1993 Dave (Tertiary) Directed by Ivan Reitman. Written by Gary Ross. Produced by Michael Gross and Joe Medjuck/Warner Bros. Starring Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, Frank Langella, Kevin Dunn, and Ving Rhames.  Dave Kovic (Kline) is drafted by government agents to stand in for the President of the United States because he is an exact likeness of him though a completely different and unorthodox personality. The comedy revolves around his problems adapting to his new Presidential duties including adjusting to the President’s wife, and the realization that as President he can wield influence and power. In one scene, he throws out the first ball of the opening day at a Baltimore Orioles game.

 

1993 Falling Down (Tertiary) Directed by Joel Schumacher. Written by Ebbe Roe Smith. Produced by Aaron Michan and Dan Kolsrud/Warner Bros. Starring Michael Douglas, Robert Duvall, Barbara Hershey, Tuesday Weld, and Rachel Ticotin. William Foster (Douglas) is man whose mind snaps because of daily pressures and begins a rampage against what he believes to be the injustices that thwart him.  Prendergast (Duvall) is the cop who chases down Foster.  Foster vents his frustration by using a baseball bat to smash displays of food in a convenience store. Foster then uses the bat to defend himself against a street gang. Prendergast keys in on the bat to track down Foster.

 

1993 Free Willy (Secondary) Directed by Simon Wincer. Written by Keith A. Walker and Corey Blechman. Produced by Richard Donner and Arnon Milchan/Warner Bros. Starring Jason James Richter, Lori Petty, Jayne Atkinson, August Schellenberg, and Michael Madsen. Jesse (Richter) is a troubled teenager taken into a couple’s home as a foster child where they try to give him the love and care he’s missed since being abandoned by his mother. Jesse gets a job helping to care for Willy the whale at the aquarium. The story involves the boy’s attempts to free the whale before it is killed by the insurance hungry owner and adjust to life in his new home. Baseball plays a pivotal role in the relationship between the foster father, Glen Greenwood (Madsen) and the boy. To cement the relationship the man tries to play with him and fails, but gives the boy a new ball and a worn glove as a gift. In an act of defiance the boy throws the baseball through a picture window which precipitates the beginning of a parent-son relationship. Later in the film, Jesse, the boy, is torn between staying with his new family and skipping out to Florida with some of his buddies. The struggle is represented by Jesse balancing the baseball given to him by his father and the postcard of Florida.

 

1993 House of Cards (Secondary) Directed by Michael Lessac. Written by Michael Lessac, Vittorio Cecchi, and Robert Jay Litz.  Produced by Gianni Nunnen/Miramax. Starring Asha Menina, Shiloh Strong, Kathleen Turner and Tommy Lee Jones.  When Ruth Matthews' (Turner) husband is killed in a fall at an archaeological dig, her daughter Sally (Menina) handles her father's death in a very odd manner. As Sally's condition worsens, Ruth takes her to see Jake (Jones), an expert in childhood autism. Jake attempts to bring Sally out of her mental disarray through traditional therapy methods, but Ruth takes a different route. (Kathy Li)  Baseball references are employed in three scenes.  In a flashback, their past family life when the father was still alive reveals that the family played baseball together.  In another situation, baseball is used to reveal the child’s autism. While watching kids play baseball, a line drive is hit directly at Sally and she automatically bare hands the ball. In one scene, Sally climbs out on the roof of the house to retrieve a baseball.  At that height, she’s closer to the moon where she believes her father is. 

 

1993 Man From Left Field, The (TV, Primary) Directed by Burt Reynolds. Written by Wayne Allan Rice. Produced by Burt Reynolds Productions. Starring Burt Reynolds and Reba McEntire. After taking a job managing a Little League team, a homeless man inspires the kids to reach for it all and they inspire him to reclaim his life.

 

1993 Philadelphia (Tertiary) Directed by Jonathan Demme. Written by Ron Nyswaner. Produced by Ronald Bozman and Gary Goetzman/Columbia Tri-Star Pictures. Starring Roberta Maxwell, Buzz Kilman, Jason Robards, Tom Hanks, and Denzel Washington.  There are three baseball moments: 1) law partner Wheeler (Robards) uses a baseball allusion to Andy Beckett (Hanks) to become a “major league” lawyer; 2) home movies of Beckett show him and his sister playing as little kids—the sister totes a bat and a ball to Andy who is shown wearing a glove; and 3) lawyer Joe Miller (Washington) remarks that one of the things that makes him happy is the Phillies winning the pennant.

 

1993 Rookie of the Year (Primary)  Directed by Daniel Stern. Written by Sam Harper. Produced by Jack Brodsky and Irby Smith/20th Century Fox. Starring Thomas Ian Nicholas, Gary Busey, Amy Morton, Daniel Stern, and Albert Hall. Henry (Nicholas) is the worst player on his Little League team, that is, until he breaks his arm.  Henry’s arm heals in a way that allows him to pitch a ball faster than anyone in the major leagues.  This gets Henry a position pitching for the lowly Chicago Cubs.

 

1993 Sandlot, The (Primary) Directed by David Mickey Evans. Written by David Mickey Evans and Robert Gunter. Produced by Mark Burg and Cathleen Summers/20th Century Fox. Starring David Mickey Evans, Tom Guiry, Mike Vitar, James Earl Jones, and Maury Wills.  A children’s movie about a group of neighborhood kids in the 1960s who constantly play baseball in their local sandlot. A new kid comes to town who is a real baseball klutz, but the leader of the group takes him in and he becomes part of the team. The ball field is adjacent to a mysterious house where a giant ferocious baseball-and-child-eating dog resides with a blind, former Negro League player (Jones). The boys test the story about the ferocity of the dog when a valuable ball goes into the yard and they retrieve it. They discover that the “ferocious” dog is not nearly the monster of their imaginations and the dog’s owner loves talking baseball—even with kids. 

 

1993 Searching for Bobby Fischer (Secondary) Directed by Steven Zaillan. Written by Fred Waitzkin and Steven Zaillan. Produced by Mirage Entertainment/Paramount Pictures. Starring Max Pomeranc, Joan Allen, Ben Kingsley, Laurence Fishburne, and Joe Mantegna. Young Josh (Pomeranc), a budding chess genius, loves baseball, a very normal thing for a young boy to do, especially since his father (Mantegna) is a sports writer and often brings Josh with him to cover games. This is obvious when Josh, his mother, and sister meet his father at Yankee Stadium and one of the other writes calls Josh by name and asks, “What do you wanna do when you grow up?”  Josh says, “Play second base for the Yankees” (just as the Yankee second baseman lets a ball roll through his legs). At the beginning, baseball is is an activity that draws father and son together, but then as chess becomes a driving competitive force in both father and son’s lives, baseball is pushed into the background until Josh’s mother, the tower of reason, attempts to bring balance and normalcy back into her son’s life, which includes the return of baseball.

 

1993 Sleepless in Seattle (Tertiary) Directed by Nora Ephron. Written by Jeff Arch, Nora Ephron, and David Ward. Produced by Patrick Crowley and Lynda Obst/Tri-Star Pictures. Starring Ross Malinger, Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Bill Pullman, and Rob Reiner. Sam (Hanks) is a recent widower who is seeking someone new. Sam's son Jonah (Malinger) is also looking for a new mother, so when Jonah puts his father on national radio, hundreds of women write to him. One of the women is Annie (Ryan). She's reluctantly engaged to another man and finally accepts her interest in Sam and goes to great lengths to meet him. In fact, when Annie announces that she and Walter (Pullman) are engaged, and someone asks how he feels, he cites Lou Gehrig’s “farewell speech,” even to the point of simulating radio feedback. Baseball is used in subtle ways throughout this film, mostly as reference points and to draw characters together through the commonalities of baseball. For example, when Sam flashes back to his dead wife, they are going to a Cubs game with their son. Also, Hanks begins dating for the first time and when his son meets his girlfriend, the boy’s initial question in, “Do you like baseball?”  Her lukewarm response spells doom. In direct contrast, when the Annie writes to Sam, she kiddingly says she’s an “excellent third baseman for as long as I or anyone else can remember  . . . Brooks Robinson is the best third baseman ever.”  The response: “Everyone thinks BR is the greatest—it must be a sign.”

 

1994 Angels in the Outfield  (Primary) Directed by William Dear. Written by Dorothy Kingsley and George Wells. Produced by Irby Smith, Joe Roth, and Gary Stutman/Walt Disney Pictures. Starring Christopher Lloyd, Danny Glover, Tony Danza, Brenda Fricker, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Ben Johnson.  Remake of the 1951 movie by the same title about a last place club that, due to an abandoned boy’s fervent wish to the heavens, is transformed into a winning team with the help of angels visible only to the boy (Gordon-Levitt).  The 1951 film involved the Pittsburgh Pirates, this one involved the California Angels. After the boy convinces the hot-headed manager, George Knox (Glover), of the angels’ existence, the two grow closer. As the angels help the Angels learn to win again, their self-confidence is restored so completely that during the pennant-clinching game, the players surprise themselves and win without any “angelic” support.

 

1994 Baseball  (TV, Primary) Directed by Ken Burns. Written by Ken Burns and Geoffrey Ward. Produced by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. A “nine-inning,” eighteen and one-half hour documentary on the history of baseball. Old-time photos and illustrations depict the game’s early years, while newsreels and video clips highlight more recent times. Players and participants speak in their own words, and sports writers and broadcasters offer commentary on the sport and events they witnessed.

 

1994 Clear and Present Danger (Tertiary) Directed by Phillip Noyce. Written by Tom Clancy, Donald Stewart and Steven Zaillian. Produced by Mace Neufeld and Robert Rehme/Paramount Pictures. Starring Anne Archer, Joaquim de Almeida, Henry Czerny, Harrison Ford, Miguel Sandoval, and William Dafoe. Convoluted Clancy story of the CIA’s war on drugs in Columbia. Columbia drug lord Ernesto Escobeda (Sandoval) spends time hitting a baseball pitched automatically by a pitching machine. His character is established via his prowess with the bat at the beginning of the film. Near the end of the film, he confronts his intelligence officer-turned-traitor with an aluminum bat in hand. While he uses the bat to strike a couple of non-lethal blows, he is shot and killed before he can kill with the baseball bat.

 

1994 Client, The (Tertiary) Directed by Joel Schumaker. Written by Akiva Goldsmith and John Grisham. Produced by Warner Bros. Starring Susan Sarandon, Tommy Lee Jones, and Mary-Louise Parker. A street-wise kid, Mark Sway, sees the suicide of Jerome Clifford, a prominent Louisiana lawyer, whose current client is Barry “The Blade” Modano, a Mafia hitman. Before Jerome shoots himself, he tells Mark where the body of Senator Boyd Boyett is buried. Mark escapes, and Clifford shoots himself. Mark is found at the scene, and both the FBI and the Mafia quickly realize that Mark probably knows more than he says. Mark decides he needs a lawyer, and goes looking for one. He finds Reggie Love, who also becomes convinced that Mark knows more than he says, but Mark isn't talking  (Liz Jordan). There are two moments with baseball in the film. The first is dialogic, a comment by Mark. The second visual when Sarandon finds the glove of her son who is living with his father.

 

1994 Cobb (Primary) Directed by Ron Shelton. Written by Al Stump and Ron Shelton. Produced by Aaron Milchan and Davis Lester/Warner Bros. Starring Tommy Lee Jones, Robert Wuhl, Lolita Davidovich, Ned Bellamy, and Scott Burkholder.  Al Stump (Wuhl) is a famous sports-writer chosen by Ty Cobb (Jones) to co-write his autobiography before his death. Cobb, widely feared and despised, feels misunderstood and wants to set the record straight about “the greatest ball-player ever,” in his words. However, when Stump spends time with Cobb, interviewing him and beginning to write, he realizes that public opinion of Cobb is largely correct. In Stump's presence, Cobb is angry, violent, racist, misogynistic, and incorrigibly abusive to everyone around him. Torn between printing the truth by plumbing the depths of Cobb's dark soul and grim childhood, and succumbing to Cobb's pressure for a whitewash of his character and a simple baseball tale of his greatness, Stump writes two different books. One book is for Cobb, the other for the public.

 

1994 Home Run: Baseball in the Movies (TV, Primary) Produced by Susan F. Walker.

 

1994 It Could Happen To You (Secondary) Directed by Andrew Bergman. Written by Jane Anderson. Produced by Gary Adelson and Craig Baumgarten/Columbia Tri-Star Pictures. Starring Rosie Perez, Wendell Pierce, Isaac Hayes, Nicolas Cage, and Bridget Fonda.  New York cop Charlie Lang (Cage) who promises to split his lottery ticket winnings with a down-on-her-luck waitress Yvonne (Fonda) because he doesn’t have change for a tip. Baseball references are used to help define Charlie’s “Good Neighbor Sam” character.  In several scenes, Charlie is seen playing stickball in the street in front of his apartment with the local kids.  Also, after he becomes a lottery multi-millionaire, Charlie rents Yankee Stadium for an afternoon and brings a bus load of neighborhood kids there for a game among themselves.

 

1994 Little Big League (Primary) Directed by Andrew Scheinman. Written by Gregory Pincies and Andrew Scheinman. Produced by Andrew Bergman and Steve Nicholaides/Lobell-Bergman Productions. Starring Luke Edwards, Timothy Busfield, John Ashton, Ashley Crow, and Kevin Dunn. When the owner of the Minnesota Twins dies suddenly, his will bequeaths the team to his grandson Billy (Edwards), a devotee of baseball who, although only 12, has devoured voluminous lore, knows the team intimately, and has shown an uncanny sixth sense of what they need to improve. The players hate the manager, so Billy quickly fires him, winning instant approval. However, this turns to dismay when he announces that he will be their new manager. How will Billy convince a gang of proud, tough men to stick around and take orders from a kid? On the other hand, what's to lose? The team has nowhere to go but up.

 

1994 Love Affair  (Tertiary) Directed by Glen Gordon Caron. Written by Mildred Cram and Leo McCarey. Produced by Andrew Z. Davis/Warner Bros. Starring Warren Beatty, Annette Bening, Katharine Hepburn, Gary Shandling, and Chloe Webb.  Ex-football star Mike Gambril (Beatty) meets Terry McKay (Bening) on a flight to Sydney, which is forced to land on a small atoll. Both engaged to others, they become romantic on board the ship sent to take the 'plane passengers to a larger island. They agree to meet in New York three months later to see if the attraction is real. Kip DeMay (Shandling) tries to interest Mike in sports memorabilia, showing him a 1954 Willie Mays baseball card, mentioning that Ernie Banks signs autographs for money, and noting that on Home Shopping Network one can talk to Mickey Mantle and Nellie Fox.  Later, a cab driver brags that he could have played in the majors.

 

1994 Major League II (Primary) Directed by David Ward. Written by David Ward and R.J. Stewart. Produced by Gary Barber and James Robinson/Warner Bros. Starring Charlie Sheen, Tom Berenger, Corbin Bernsen, Dennis Haysbert, and James Gammon. After losing in the ALCS the year before, the Cleveland Indians are determined to make it into the World Series. First, though, they have to contend with the former team owner Rachel Phelps when she buys back the team. Also, has Rick "Wild Thing" Vaughn (Sheen) lost his edge? Are Jake's (Berenger) knees strong enough to make it as a catcher another year? These and other questions are answered as the Indians recapture the magic and win the championship "their way."

 

1994 Murder Between Friends (TV, Secondary) Directed by Waris Hussein. Written by Philip Rosenberg. Starring Timothy Busfield, Stephen Lang, Martin Kemp and Lisa Blount. A woman is found dead in her home and her husband and his best accuse each other of committing the crime, relating different versions of the events to the police and later in court. Adults playing softball is part of the setting of the scene for this film. Billy (Martin Kemp) hits Kerry (Stephen Lang) with the bat. There is an extended scene will Billy holding Kerry as hostage/prisoner in his own home with his own bat. Kerry’s wife ends up being killed with the bat. The courtroom reporter called the case the Baseball Bat bludgeoning, “that bat changed his entire life.”

 

1994 Renaissance Man (Tertiary) Directed by Penny Marshall. Written by Jim Burnstein. Produced by Touchstone Pictures. Starring Danny DeVito, Gregory Hines, James Remar, and Ed Begley, Jr. Bill Rago (DeVito), an advertising man whose career is slowly sliding downhill, is fired from his job. He signs up for unemployment and one day they find him a job: teaching thinking skills to Army recruits. He arrives on base to find that there is no structure set up for the class. Rago takes his daughter to Tiger Stadium as a way to reestablish his feelings for her.

 

1994 Richie Rich (Tertiary) Directed by Donald Petrie. Written by Neil Tolkin, Tom Parker, and Jim Jennewein. Produced by Joe Bilella and John Shapiro/Warner Bros. Starring Macaulay Culkin, Jonathan Hyde, Edward Hermann, Christine Ebersole, and John Larroquette. The richest kid in the world, Richie Rich (Culkin), has everything he wants, except companionship. While representing his father at a factory opening, he sees some kids playing baseball across the street and he eventually wins them over. When a plot to kill the Rich family is devised by Rich Industries' top executive, Laurence Van Dough, Richie must take over control of the company while searching for his lost parents with the help of some new friends. (Mark Popp)

 

1994 Scout, The (Primary) Directed by Michael Ritchie. Written by Roger Angell, Andrew Bergman, and Monica Johnson. Produced by Jack Cummins and Herd Nanas/Warner Bros. Starring Albert Brooks, Brendan Fraser, Dianne Wiest, Anne Twomey, and Lane Smith. Al Percolo (Brooks) is a major league baseball scout sent to scout in Mexico as a punishment. However, he eventually stumbles across Steve Nebraska (Fraser), a young American who can pitch and hit better than anyone else can do either. He signs Steve and returns home in glory. It soon becomes obvious, though, that Steve is immature and possibly unstable, and Al turns to psychiatrist Doctor H. Aaron (Wiest), whom he picks solely based on her last name, for help. Nebraska eventually shows his stuff and Percolo regains his credibility.

 

1994 With Honors (Tertiary) Directed by Alex Keshishian. Written by William Mastrsimone. Produced by Peter Guber and Jon Peters/Warner Bros. Starring Moira Kelly, Patrick Dempsey, Josh Hamilton, Joe Pesci, and Brendan Fraser.  This film is about a success-driven Harvard student Monty Kessler (Fraser) who is forced to befriend a dying, homeless, but wise Simon Wilder (Pesci) who, through the course of their rocky relationship, teaches him and his roommates about the true meaning of life and work. The single baseball reference aptly captures how baseball defines father-son relationships. When Simon sees Monty’s bitterness towards his father (who left when Monty was a kid), he asks, “What’s the matter, didn’t your father play catch with you?”  Then, as their poignant conversation about their father-son experiences ends, Pesci makes several snowball “baseballs” and tosses them at Fraser who happily swats them with his school books.

 

1995 American President, The (Tertiary) Directed by Rob Reiner. Written by Aaron Sorkin. Produced by Castle Rock/Columbia.  Starring Michael Douglas, Annette Bening, Martin Sheen, and Michael J. Fox. A Clinton-esque U.S. President ( Douglas) is in the White House, but he was elected after being widowed. Now, 3 years into his presidency, he starts to date again, becoming involved with a environmental lobbyist (Bening) despite the political fireworks that may cause. (David Stumme). Baseball is dialogically important in the film with multiple uses of baseball metaphors such as “keep your eye on the ball.”

 

1995 Bye Bye, Love (Secondary) Directed by Sam Weisman. Written by Gary David Goldberg and Brad Hall. Produced by Ubu Productions/20th Century Fox. Starring Matthew Modine, Paul Reiser, and Randy Quaid. Donny (Reiser), Dave (Modine) and Vic (Quaid) are best friends in this is a story about the breakup of the family. In particular, it focuses on the lifestyles of three divorced men. The film is presented from their perspective and it reveals their relationships with their children, ex-wives, girl friends, male friendships, and their identities as divorced men. In addition to dealing with divorce, the film touches on spousal loss and young adult homelessness. (Joel Shesser) Baseball helps define many of the characters and their relationships. Dave’s girlfriend says she loves baseball and “keeps score and everything.” Donny says he traded baseball cards as a kid, now he trades recipes. One of the character’s daughters plays T-ball and scores. Vic’s favorite team is the Boston Red Sox and he wears a Boston Red Sox cap. Another character’s kid asked for the Dodgers score at one point in the movie.

 

1995 Casino (Tertiary) Directed by Martin Scorsese. Written by Nicholas Pileggi and Martin Scorsese. Produced by Barbara DeFina and Joseph Reidy/Universal Pictures. Starring Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci, Sharon Stone, James Woods, Don Rickles.  Ace Rothstein (DeNiro) and Nicky Santoro (Pesci), mobsters who move to Las Vegas to make their mark, live and work in this paradoxical world. Seen through their eyes, each as a foil to the other, the details of mob involvement in the casinos of the 1970s and 1980s are revealed. (Tad Dibbern) Attempting to integrate socially into Las Vegas, Nicky enrolls his son in the Little League. In a brief scene of the son and father at Little League practice, Pesci talks with the coach. At the end of the film, thugs use baseball bats to torture and kill Nicky and his brother in a brutally graphic scene.

 

1995 Clockers (Tertiary) Directed by Spike Lee. Written by Spike Lee and Richard Price. Produced by Monty Ross and Rosalie Swedlin/MCA Universal Pictures. Starring Harvey Keitel, John Turturro, Delroy Lindo, Mekhi Phifer, Isaiah Washington.  Strike (Phifer) is a young city drug pusher under the tutilage of drug-lord Rodney Little (Lindo), who, when not playing with model trains or drinking Yahoo for his ulcer, likes to chill with his brothers near the benches outside the projects. When a night man at a fast-food restaurant is found with four bullets in his body, Strike's older brother turns himself in as the killer. Det. Rocko Klein (Keitel) doesn't buy the story, however, and sets out to find the truth, and it seems that all the fingers point toward Strike & Rodney. (Michael Silva) Three references to baseball help shape the film’s climate: 1) when examining a corpse that has a bullet caught in his teeth, Harvey Keitel and other homicide detectives make baseball references, particularly to Willie Mays’ great 1954 World Series catch; 2) a store owner shows off a Roberto Clemente model bat that he was going to use to clear some clockers out of his restaurant; and 3) when Strike goes to pay his sister-in-law $5,000 towards his brother’s bail money, she is playing catch with her two young sons.

 

1995 Forget Paris (Tertiary) Directed by Billy Crystal. Written by Billy Crystal, Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel. Produced by Billy Crystal and Peter Schindler/CastleRock/Columbia Pictures. Starring Debra Winger, Cynthia Stevenson, Billy Crystal, Richard Masur, and Joe Mantegna. Mickey Gordon (Crystal) is a basketball referee who travels to France to bury his father. Ellen Andrews is an American living in Paris who works for the airline he flies on. They meet and fall in love, but their relationship goes through many difficult times. The story is told in flashback by their friends at a restaurant waiting for them to arrive. (Philip Apps)  There are two minor baseball moments: Mickey comments on seeing the Dodgers at Ebbets Field when he was a boy, and Andy (Mantegna), Mickey’s best friend, mentions collecting baseball cards. Mickey also refers to the stereotypical WWII movie, in which some guy named “Brooklyn” mentions that he can’t wait to get home to see his Dodgers play only to get shot soon thereafter.

 

1995 Hank Aaron: Chasing the Dream (Primary) Directed and written by Michael Tollin. Produced by Turner Pictures. A documentary on the life of Hank Aaron.

 

1995 Heavy (Secondary) Directed and written by James Mangold. Produced by Herbert Beigel/Columbia Tri-Star Pictures. Starring Shelley Winters, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Liv Tyler, Debbie Harry, Jeff Dando and Joe Grifasi.  Victor (Vince) is a cook who works in a greasy bar/restaurant owned by his mother, Dolly (Winters). It's just the two of them, a waitress named Delores (Harry), and a heavy drinking regular, Leo (Grafasi). But things change when Callie (Tyler), a beautiful college drop-out, shows up as a new waitress and steals Victor's heart. But Victor is too shy to do anything about it, and too self-consciously overweight to dream of winning Callie away from her demanding boyfriend, Jeff (Dando). Victor is a Yankee Fan as revealed early in a scene in his bedroom full of baseball memorabilia. Later in the film, Victor, carrying his Yankees jacket, is at the hospital cafeteria where his mother has been dying, and a patient asks him if he is a fan. The patient asks him if he is a Thurman Munson man; Vince says yes, and the patient goes off on a speech that Munson crashed on purpose in 1979 to win back the attention that Reggie Jackson has diverted from him. That Reggie had gotten fat and Munson was the patron saint of baseball, and that both he and Victor were "Munson Men."

 

1995 It Takes Two (Tertiary) Directed by Andy Tennant. Written by Deborah Dean Davis. Produced by Mel Efros and Keith Samples/Warner Bros. Starring Kirstie Alley, Steve Guttenberg, Mary-Kate Olsen, Ashley Olsen, Phillip Bosco.  Amanda Lemmon (Mary-Kate Olsen), an orphan, attends summer camp situated right next to a very rich man, Roger Calloway (Guttenberg), whose daughter Alysa (Ashley Olsen) looks exactly like Amanda.  When Calloway decides to marry a back-stabbing woman, the two girls sabatoge the wedding and “help” him fall in love with someone else. Opens with a city stick ball scene that helps to establish the story line.

 

1995 Kid in King Arthur’s Court, A (Tertiary) Directed by Michael Gottlieb. Written by Michael Pratt and Robert Levy. Produced by Mark Amin and Robert Levy/Walt Disney Pictures. Starring Thomas Ian Nicholas, Joss Ackland, Art Malick, Paloma Baeza, and Kate Winslet. Calvin Fuller (Nicholas) is on a quest to help King Arthur regain his lost confidence. To accomplish this, he fights the bad guy, saves the Princess, and makes the King happy. In several scenes, baseball is used to show the boy’s character, particularly his lack of and then new-found confidence. 

 

1995 Losing Isaiah (Tertiary) Directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal. Written by Seth Margolis and Naomi Foner. Produced by Naomi Foner and Howard Koch/Paramount Pictures. Starring Jessica Lange, Halle Berry, David Strathairn, Cuba Gooding Jr., and Daisy Eagan.  An African-American baby, abandoned by his crack addicted mother is adopted by a white social worker and her husband. Several years later, the baby's mother finds out her son is not dead, as she thought before and goes to court to get him back. (Cindy Kessler) Charlie Lewin, while carrying his adopted two-year-old son Isaiah on his shoulders, is explaining about baseball: swing level, touch all the bases, and slide home. 

 

1995 Murder in the First (secondary) Directed by Marc Rocco. Written by Dan Gordon. Produced by Marc Frydman/Warner Bros. Starring Christian Slater and Kevin Bacon. Henri Young (Bacon) is an almost catatonic prisoner at Alcatraz who is able to keep his sanity during three years of solitary confinement by replaying, in his mind, all the baseball games he saw. He scratches out an infield diamond on the cell floor and mumbles about the Giants and the Yankees. When his attorney Stamphill (Slater) finally manages to coax Henri to talk, one of the first things he askes was how Joe DiMaggio is doing.  Stamphill (a nonbaseball fan) doesn’t know and Henry asks “How could you not know about baseball?”  Henri informs Stamphill of DiMaggio’s 32-game hitting streak. When Stamphill asks Henri how he thought the Redskins would do against the Yankees, Henry explains the difference between football and baseball.  Stamphill was shown talking to his brother at home while a baseball game could be heard on the radio in the background. Later, a different announcer says that DiMaggio broke Keeler’s 44-game streak. A radio announcer could be heard giving the news that the streak was stopped in Cleveland at 56 games (Henri asked if it was 54 or 56 games). When Stamphill finally saves Henri from the death penalty, he tells Henri that he will become a baseball fan.  The film includes 1941 baseball footage.

 

1995 Past the Bleachers (TV, Primary) Directed by Michael Switzer. Written by Christopher A. Bohjalian and Don Rhymer. Produced by Signboard Hill Productions. Starring Richard Dean Anderson, Barnard Hughes, Glynnis O’Connor, and Grayson Fricke. Bill (Anderson) and his wife (Thompson) recently lived through the loss of their eleven year old son. When Bill decides to coach a Little League team, he meets a young mute boy named Lucky (Fricke), who turns out to just what the team needs in order to win. A very mysterious child, Lucky helps heal the wounds from Bill's past.  (Phil Fernando)

 

1995 Smoke (Tertiary) Directed by Wayne Wang. Written by Paul Auster. Produced by Bob Weinstein and Harvey Weinstein/Miramax. Starring Giancarlo Esposito, Jose Zuniga, Steve Gevedon, Harvey Keitel, Jared Harris. This film tries to convince us that reality doesn't matter so much as aesthetic satisfaction. In Auggie's (Keitel) New York smoke shop, day by day passes, seemingly unchanging until he teaches us to notice the little details of life. Paul Benjamin (Hurt), a disheartened and broken writer, has a brush with death that is pivotal and sets up an unlikely series of events that afford him a novel glimpse into the life on the street which he saw, but did not truly perceive, every day. (Tadd Tibbern) The movie opens to a radio broadcast of a Mets/Reds game and then follows with an argument in the tobacco shop about who the Mets had traded away from the 1986 team. Later in the movie, Paul flips on the TV to a baseball game, but the TV quickly fades out.

 

1995 Three Wishes (Tertiary) Directed by Martha Coolidge. Written by Clifford Green, Ellen Green, and Elizabeth Anderson. Produced by Larry Albucher and Keith Samples/Rysher Entertainment. Starring Patrick Swayze, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Joseph Mazzello, Seth Mumy, and David Marshall Grant.  Jack McCloud (Swayze) is a drifter and travels alone besides the companionship of his dog, Betty Jane. When Jack breaks his leg, Jeanne Holman (Mastrantonio) offers him a ride. Jeanne and her two sons invite Jack to stay with them until he is healed. Jack accepts and seems to become part of the family and teaches Tom (Mazello), who misses his father who was killed in Korea, how to play baseball.

 

1995 Unzipped  (Tertiary)  Directed by Douglas Keeve. Produced by Don Berinstein, David Peter, and Nina Santisi/Miramax Films. Starring Sandra Bernhard, Carla Bruni, Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, and Kate Moss.  A behind-the-scenes, documentary-style, look at the world of high fashion. During preparations for his upcoming show, Mizrahi is glimpsed sitting with Cindy Crawford while the ex-Mrs. Gere waxes rhapsodic about going to a Knicks game, about how it’s just amazing to see how big baseketball players are. This leads Mizrahi to launch into a tale about the first (and one imagines only) time he went to see a Mets game at Shea Stadium.  He says that he stood up and very excitedly began exclaiming about the colors on the field, the way the lights looked, the tones of the uniforms, when suddenly a voice from behind him yelled, “Hey, Nellie, sit the hell down!”  Was he embarrassed, upset?  No, he says—“At that moment, I suddenly remembered. . . I was at a baseball game!”

 

1996 Baseball Girls (Primary) Directed by Lois Siegel. Produced by the National Film Board of Canada. This documentary explores women in baseball. From 7-year-olds playing baseball, learning the rules of the game, to 60-year-olds playing slo-pitch softball, Baseball Girls explores the private and professional lives of women obsessed with the sport they love. Using animation, archival stills and live-action footage, this zany and affectionate feature documentary details the history of women's participation in the largely male-dominated world of baseball and softball.

 

1996  Beautiful Girls (Tertiary) Directed by Ted Demme. Written by Scott Rosenberg. Produced by Bob and Harvey Weinstein/Miramax Films. Starring Matt Dillon, Uma Thurman, Mira Sorvino, Annabeth Gish, and Timothy Hutton. In this romantic drama a group of high school buddies re-unite for their high school reunion in the small New-England town where they grew up. They deal with the life challenges of finding women to love and be loved by, committing to a relationship, and getting past their childhood dreams and desires to deal with reality and appreciate life. (Gustaf Molin) In one scene, Willie (Hutton) and Andera (Thurman) discuss spring training. Andera reveals an unexpected side of her character when she knows exactly how many days remained before "pitchers and catchers are to report".

 

1996 Ed (Primary) Directed by Bill Couturie. Written by Ken Richards and Janus Cercone. Produced by Rosealie Swedlin/Universal. Starring Matt LeBlanc, Gene Ross, Paul Hewitt, and Jack Warden. A film about a young pitching phenom, Jack Duece Cooper (LeBlanc) who is struggling to build his confidence. The team owner’s son buys a ball-playing chimpanzee to play third base. The film quickly becomes a very young children’s movie. A clear candidate for the worst baseball film ever made.

 

1996 Last Home Run, The (Primary) Directed by Bob Gosse. Written by Roger Flax and Ed Apfel. Produced by Horizons Productions. Starring Tom Guiry, Danielle Comerford, Jonathan Flax, and Jordi Vilaguso. About a senior citizen who gets a chance to do something he never had a shot at as a youth—playing baseball—even if for five days only. He is somehow spirited, not exactly back in time, but across this dimension, to a team of youngsters he had been watching play. He brings to the team, not a great talent, but a "wiseness" that teaches winning isn't the only thing. Along the way, he finds some of the childhood he had missed the first time around. (IMDB)

 

1996 Mirror Has Two Faces, The (Secondary) Directed by Barbra Streisand. Written by Andre Cayatte and Gerard Oury. Produced by Columbia Pictures. Starring Barbra Streisand and Jeff Bridges. Baseball appears several times throughout this movie about two Columbia professors—Greg (Bridges) and Rose (Streisand)—who fall in love. To relieve boredom, Rose watches the Yankees on TV, and screams encouragement to the players. Streisand and Bacall (playing her mother) argue over dinner while a baseball game is on TV; they keep flipping the game on and off. Greg doesn’t understand baseball, after all the players end up where they began. Rose, a vibrant teacher, suggests that Greg, a boring teacher, engage his math students with baseball math (batting averages, the rise of a fastball, etc.). After doing so, he finds that his students stay to the end of class. As a birthday present to Rose, Greg arranges a week at a baseball fantasy camp.

 

1996 Sleepers (Tertiary) Directed by Barry Levinson. Written by Lorenzo Carcaterra. Produced by 20th Century Fox. Starring Robert De Niro, Kevin Bacon, Dustin Hoffman, and Brad Pitt. Four boys growing up in Hell's Kitchen play a prank that leads to an old man getting hurt. Sentenced to no less than one year in the Wilkenson Center in upstate New York, the four friends are changed by the beating, humiliation and sexual abuse by the guards sworn to protect them. Ten years later and a chance meeting lead to a chance for revenge against the Wilkenson Center and the guards (Andrew Glass). This film has some vivid basketball and football scenes, but baseball also appears. New York City kids play stickball. Father Bobby (De Niro) talks about getting Yankee tickets and wears a Yankee cap while shooting baskets with the kids.

 

1996 Soul of the Game (TV, Primary) (a.k.a. Field of Honor) Directed by Kevin Rodney Sullivan. Written by Gary Hoffman and David Himmelstein. Produced by Gary Hoffman/HBO. Starring Delroy Lindo, Mykelti Williamson, Edward Hermann, and Blair Underwood. The story of Satchel Paige (Lindo) and Josh Givson (Williamson) competing to be chosen the first Black to play in the major leagues. The outspoken and young Jackie Robinson (Underwood) gets the nod from Dodgers General Manager Branch Rickey (Hermann), not the veterans.

 

1996 Tin Cup (Tertiary) Directed by Ron Shelton Written by John Norville and Ron Shelton. Produced by Aaron Milchan/Warner Bros. Starring Kevin Costner, Rene Russo, Don Johnson, Cheech Martin, and Linda Hart. The story of a down-on-his-luck golf pro, Roy “Tin Cup” McAvoy (Costner), who falls for a beautiful psychologist, Dr. Molly Griswold (Russo), who help him find his self-confidence and his way back onto the PGA tour. Two baseball moments are noteworthy: one when McAvoy uses a baseball bat to drive a golf ball on the fairway; and second, he received the name “Tin Cup” when, as a catcher in high school, a curveball struck his protective cup (sometimes made out of aluminum, but often called tin).

 

1997 A Thousand Acres (Tertiary) Directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse. Written by Jane Smiley and Laura Jones. Produced by Armyan Bernstein and Thomas Bliss/Touchstone Pictures. Starring Michelle Pfeiffer, Jessica Lange, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Colin Firth, and Keith Carradine. A drama about an American family who meets with tragedy on their land. It is the story of a father, his daughters, and their husbands, and their passion to subdue the history of their land and its stories. (Jason Englisbe) In the first third of the film, before the Iowa farm clan disintegrates, there is a peaceful, idyllic family pickup game. 

 

1997 Deconstructing Harry (Secondary) Directed and written by Woody Allen. Produced by J.E. Beaucaire and Charles Joffe/Jean Doumanian Productions/Sweetland Films. Starring Woody Allen, Caroline Allen, Kirstie Alley, Bob Balaban, Elisabeth Shue and Richard Benjamin.  Harry Block (Allen) is a well-regarded novelist whose tendency to thinly-veil his own experiences in his work, as well as his un-apologetic attitude and his proclivity for pills and whores, has left him with three ex-wives that hate him. As he is about to be honored for his writing by the college that expelled him, he faces writer's block and the impending marriage of his latest flame to a writer friend. As scenes from his stories and novels pass and interact with him, Harry faces the people whose lives he has affected - wives, lovers, his son, his sister. (Gary Dickerson) At the start of the movie, Ken (Benjamin) is watching a Yankees/Mariners game during a family barbeque; later Fay (Shue) gives Harry a 1951 Giants autographed baseball, at which he expostulates that the 1951 Giants' comeback proved to him the miraculous nature of life. Harry is asked if he likes sports, says that he likes baseball because it's got rules. After Shue leaves Harry,  he caresses the 1951 Giants ball longingly.

 

1997 Good Will Hunting (Secondary) Directed by Gus Van Sant. Written by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Produced by Bob Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein, and Sue Armstrong/Miramax Films. Starring Robin Williams, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Minnie Driver, Stellan Skarsgard. Will Hunting (Damon), a boy genius haunted by an abusive childhood and ongoing troubles with the law, is forced to see a gritty but understanding psychologist Sean Maguire (Williams) as part of a Boston court-required probation agreement.  As the relationship evolves from wariness and mistrust to mutual dependence, there comes a moment when Maguire seeks to make the central point of the film—that  you have to take chances to truly live life—by telling Will the story of the day he met his wife: October 21, 1975. The day Red Sox catcher Carlton Fisk smacked the dramatic 11th inning homerun to win the sixth game of the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds. Maguire had tickets for the game, but reveals that he gave them to friends, simply saying, "I gotta see about a girl."  Will can't believe it, but is touched nonetheless.  The film ends with Will deciding to leave his drab, unchallenging life and follow his girl friend Skylar (Driver) to California; as a final gesture, he leaves a note in Maguire’s mail box telling his friend/counselor, "I gotta see about a girl."  A smiling Maguire replies with the final words of the movie, "Son of a bitch, stole my line." In one scene, Chuckie (Affleck) and Will are at a batting cage joking, kidding, and challenging each other as Will pitches to Chuckie, increasingly pitching inside until he hits Chuckie and they begin tussle. There is also a brief scene where a group of friends watch a Little League game when they spot some old rivals with whom they later pick a fight.

 

1997 Joe Torre: Curveballs Along the Way (TV, Primary) Directed by Sturla Gunnarsson. Written by Philip Rosenberg. Produced by Hallmark/Showtime. Starring Paul Sorvino, Robert Loggia, Barbara Williams and Isaiah Washington. A critically panned film about Yankee manager Joe Torre (Sorvino) that focuses on his 1996 ordeal of living through his brother Frank’s (Loggia) heart transplant while leading the Yankees through the World Series.

 

1997 Liar Liar (Secondary) Directed by Tom Shadyac. Written by Paul Guay and Stephen Mazur. Produced by Michael Bostick and Hames Brubaker/Universal Pictures. Starring Jim Carey, Maura Tierney, Justin Cooper, Cary Elwes, and Anne Haney. Fletcher Reede (Carey) is a fast talking attorney and habitual liar. When his son Max (Cooper) blows out the candles on his fifth birthday cake, he has only one wish, 'that his dad would stop lying for 24 hours'. When Max's wish miraculously comes true, Fletcher discovers that his biggest asset (his mouth) has suddenly become his biggest liability. (Jon-Peter Sacko)  Fletcher and Max try for a father/son baseball connection; his secretary purchases baseball stuff for Fletcher to give Max on his birthday. Fletcher promises to play catch, but his ex-wife’s boyfriend seems better at filling that role. Fletcher realizes his failures as a father and he promises he will play catch with Max.

 

1997 My Best Friend’s Wedding (Tertiary) Directed by P.J. Hogan. Written by Ronald Bass. Produced by Gill Netter and Patricia Whitcher/Tri-Star. Starring Julia Roberts, Dermot Mulroney, Cameron Diaz, Rupert Everett, and Phillip Bosco.  When Julianne's best friend tells her that he met a woman and they are getting married in four days, she finds out that she loves him and wants him for herself. So, she sets out to break off the wedding, but things prove to be really difficult, since the bride seems to be "the perfect woman."  In this film Mulroney plays a sports writer and at one point in the film he and Roberts are seen watching a Cubs game. Also several scenes take place at Comiskey Park with a game in progress.  

 

1998 A Civil Action  (Secondary) Directed by Steven Zaillian. Written by Steven Zaillian and Jonathan Harr. Produced by Steven Zaillian and David Wisnievitz/Paramount Pictures/Touchstone Pictures/Buena Vista Pictures. Starring John Travolta, Robert Duvall, Tony Shalhoub, William Macy, and Zeljko Ivanek.  Jan Schlichtmann (Travolta), a tenacious lawyer, is addressed by a group of families. When investigating an industrial pollution case, he finds major environmental issues. A leather production company could be held responsible for several deadly cases of leukemia, but also is the main employer for the area. Schlichtmann and his three colleagues set out to have the company forced to decontaminate the affected areas, and of course to sue for a major compensation. But the lawyers of the leather company's mother company are not easy to get to, and soon Schlichtmann and his friends find themselves in a battle of survival. (Julian Reischl) The film has several references to the Boston Red Sox, mostly involving the Beatrice lawyer Jerome Facher (Duvall), “Roger Clemens is the answer to my prayers” (noting that the Sox were in first place) Schlichtmann joins in, “are the Red Sox in town?” he asks while waiting for Facher. Facher notes that you “Don’t change socks in the middle of a World Series.” And Facher has a revelation while at Fenway Park during the 7th inning.

 

1998 Babe Ruth (TV, Primary) Written by Steven Hilliard. Produced by Black Canyon/HBO. Liev Schreiber narrates this documentary on Babe Ruth.

 

1998 BASEketball (Secondary) Directed by David Zucker. Written by David Zucker, Robert Locash, Lewis Feedman, and Jeff Wright. Produced by Cleve Landsberg/ MCA Universal Pictures. Starring Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Diane Bachar, Yasmine Bleeth, and Jenny McCarthy.  Two guys invent a game that combines basketball and baseball. As the film opens, Reggie Jackson hits his 3rd homerun in a World Series game—the ball is caught by a youngster who later invents the new game.

 

1998 Life and Times of Hank Greenburg, The (Primary) Directed and written by Aviva Kempner. Produced by Aviva Kempner and Ari Daniel Pinchot/20th Century Fox. Starring Ira Berkow, Alan M. Dershowitz, Bob Feller, Charlie Gehringer, Hank Greenberg. The documentary story of Hall-of-Famer Hank Greenberg is told through archival film footage and interviews with Jewish and non-Jewish fans, former teammates, friends, and family. A great first baseman with the Detroit Tigers, Greenberg endured anti-semitism and became a hero and source of inspiration throughout the Jewish community, while leading the Tigers to prominence in the 1930s.

1998 Major League: Back to the Minors (Primary) Directed by John Warren. Written by David S. Ward and John Warren. Produced by Morgan Creek/Warner Bros. Starring Scott Bakula, Corbin Bernsen, Dennis Haysbert and Takaaki Ishibashi. Minor league baseball team South Carolina Buzz consisting of likable misfits is preparing for the match with the arrogant champions the Minnesota Twins. The last, or at least the latest, in the Major League films that began in 1989.

 

1998 Something About Mary (Tertiary) Directed by Bob Farrelly and Peter Farrelly. Written by Ed Deeter, John Strauss, Bob Farrelly, and Peter Farrelly. Produced by Bob Farrelly and Peter Farrelly/20th Century Fox. Starring Cameron Diaz, Matt Dillon, Ben Stiller, Lee Evans, and Chris Elliot. Ted was a geek in high school, who was going to go to the prom with one of the most popular girls in school, Mary. The prom date never happened, because Ted had a very unusual accident. Thirteen years later he realizes he is still in love with Mary, so he hires a private investigator to track her down. That investigator discovers he too may be in love with Mary, so he gives Ted some false information to keep him away from her. But soon Ted finds himself back into Mary's life. (Justin Sharp) Several baseball references are included in this film, starting with Mary’s brother looking for his lost baseball and Ben Stiller’s character bringing him a new baseball.

 

1998 Winchell (TV, Tertiary) Directed by Paul Mazursky. Written by Scott Abbott and Herman Klunfeld. Produced by Stan Wlodkowski/Fried Films/HBO. Starring Glenne Headly, Paul Giamatti, Stanley Tucci, Christopher Plummer, and Xander Berkeley.  Biography of 1950s gossip columnist and radio show announcer Walter Winchell (Tucci) who wrote in a very unorthodox style, but grabbed the public's attention with his dirt on public figures. However, as shown, he lived far from a clean life himself. He lived out of a hotel room away from his family where he fraternized with a known prostitute (Headly) who was, of course, seeking to make her break in show business. (John Sacksteder) Baseball occurs at least three times in the movie as television background to the action. At the beginning of the movie, we see a batter rounding the bases after hitting a homerun. In another scene, the Winchell character turns on the TV in the living room and we see Ed Sullivan introducing Yankees relief pitcher Joe Page who is in the studio audience. In a third baseball scene, three guys sitting at a bar watch Mickey Mantle get a hit.

 

1998 Wrongfully Accused (Tertiary) Directed and written by Pat Proft. Produced by Morgan Creek/Warner Bros. Starring Leslie Nielsen, Richard Crenna and Kelly LeBrock. Ryan Harrison (Neilsen), a violin god, superstar and sex symbol does not want to cheat on Hibbing Goodhue (York) by sleeping with his sexy wife  Lauren (LeBrock). Hibbing is found murdered and Ryan suddenly is the main suspect. All the world is after him as he stumbles from one unfortunate incident to the next in order to find the real murderer (Reischl). In one scene, a parody of Field of Dreams, baseball players walk into a cornfield.

 

1999 For Love of the Game (Primary) Directed by Sam Raimi. Written by Michael Shaara and Dana Stevens. Produced by Marc Abraham and Ronald Bozman/MCA Universal Pictures. Starring Kevin Costner, Kelly Preston, John Reilly, Jena Malone, and Piper Cochrane. Adapted from Michael Shaara’s book of the same title, this is the story of baseball legend Billy Chapel (Costner) who, while pitching a perfect game for the Tigers against the Yankees, reflects on his career, the woman he loves (Preston), and the choices he must make.

 

1999 Wood, The (Tertiary) Directed by Rick Famuyiwa. Written by Rick Famuyiwa and Tod Boyd. Produced by Van Toffler and Albert Berger. Starring Elayn Taylor, Omar Epps, Richard T. Jones, Sean Nelson, and Duane Finley.  Roland is supposed to get married, but right before his wedding he is missing.  As his best friends try to find him and bring him to his senses, they talk about their past. The Wood chronicles the close friendship of three boys in Englewood, California (Mike, Roland and Slim) through a series of flashbacks on Harold’s wedding day. One flashback, early in the film is of Mike’s first day in a new school. He is observing a beautiful girl, Tanya, and gets an erection just as he is asked to come to the front of the room “where everyone can see you” so he can introduce himself to the class. He prays his erection will go down and he says to himself, “think of baseball, . . . first base . . . second base . . . Oh, I’d like to hit a home run with her.”  During this short scene, the broadcast of a real game is in the background as the announcer calls a homerun and the fans cheer. (For an interesting parallel, see Naked Gun, From the Files of Police Squad! (1988) with Leslie Neilsen )

 

2000 Fastpitch (Primary) Directed and written by Jeremy Spears. Produced by Artist License.  Starring Ken Billingley, Tony Hunloff, Shane Hunuhunu, and Lila Leiter. With bat in one hand and digital camera in the other, documentary filmmaker Jeremy Spears moves from the art world of New York to the dusty fields of Small Town, USA, for this valentine to the little-known game of fastpitch softball. Joining a diverse team that struggles to win a game—while the sport itself struggles against extinction and big-money sponsorship—Spears  covers many bases here, so many, in fact, that he only scratches the surface of his colorful subjects. Without deeply engaging us with the passionate underdogs, as, say, American Movie so effectively does, the film has the lasting effect of an extended sports-news piece. It's a labor of love, sure, but Fastpitch bunts when we're hoping for a home run. ( E! Online) The studio taglines for this film are: “Chasing glory on the backroads of America” and “It's baseball... with bigger balls.”

 

2000 Finding Buck McHenry (TV, Primary) Directed by Charles Burnett. Written by Alfred Slote. Produced by Showtime. Starring Michael Schiffman, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, and Ernie Banks. When an 11-year-old Jason (Schiffman) gets cut from his Little League baseball team, he sets out to form his own team. He persuades a school custodian Buck (Davis) to be the coach. As the new coach starts working with the team, his knowledge leads the boy to suspect that the man is really an ex-Negro League legend who disappeared from sight years ago. The kid sets out to find out the truth about the man's background. Former Chicago Cubs star, Ernie Banks, also appears as a Negro league star. (John Sacksteder)

 

2000 First of May, The (Tertiary) Directed by Paul Sirmons. Written by Gary Rogers. Produced by Paul Sirmons and Gary Rogers/SHO Entertainment. A story of an unwanted boy (Cory) and a forgotten old lady find running away to join the circus is really coming home. Features a short scene that is Joe DiMaggio’s last film appearance as he gives batting advice and a boost of confidence to young Cory after a dismal performance in Little League.

 

2000 Frankie & Hazel (TV, Tertiary) Directed by JoBeth Williams. Written by Jenny Bogart and Mia Certic. Produced by Hallmark/Showtime. A story of the friendship of two young girls. Frankie is a ballet student who wants to play on the boy’s baseball team while Hazel wants to run for mayor.

 

2000 Frequency (Secondary) Directed by Gregory Hoblit. Written by Toby Emmerich. Produced by Richard Saperstein and Robert Shay/New Line Cinema. Starring Dennis Quaid, James Caviezel, Shawn Doyle, Elizabeth Mitchell, and Andre Braugher. A rare atmospheric phenomenon in 1969 allows a New York City firefighter, who is a diehard NY Mets fan, to communicate with his son 30 years in the future via short-wave radio. The son, who once shared his father's enthusiasm for baseball and the Mets but doesn't any longer, uses this opportunity—made believable by shared references to the miracle Mets unbelievable world championship season—to warn the father of his impending death in a warehouse fire, and manages to save his life. However, what he does not realize is that changing history has triggered a new set of tragic events, including the murder of his mother. The two men must now work together, 30 years apart and aided by specific recall of pivotal moments (Tommy Agee's famous catch, Al Weis' unlikely homerun during the Mets-Orioles World Series), to find the murderer before he strikes so that they can change history—again.

 

 

2000 Major League Baseball: All Century Team (Video Release, Primary). USA Films. In this documentary, the 30 greatest players of the 20th century are featured.  Two million fans voted for the top 25 and a panel of experts selected the additional 5 players to round out the 30 selected for the “All Century Team.”

 

 

2000 Men of Honor (Tertiary) Directed by George Tillman, Jr. Written by Scott Marshall Smith. Produced by 20th Century Fox. Starring Cuba Gooding and Robert DeNiro. The true story of Carl Brashear (Gooding) who is determined to be the first African American Navy Diver in a time where racism is strife. Leslie Sunday (DeNiro) is his embittered training officer, determined to see him fail. Ultimately, Brashear succeeds and Sunday becomes an advocate for him. A home-made radio, built for Carl by his father, is usually tuned to baseball games. It is a symbol of the father-son relationship. Sunday breaks the radio as he tries to break Brashear’s spirit. Eventually, as he begins to respect Barshear, Sunday reassembles the radio forging a vicarious link of mentor/mentee while restoring the father-son link. As Carl is listening to his radio in 1952, he hears a baseball score of a game between the Milwaukee Braves and Brooklyn Dodgers (the Boston Braves did not move to Milwaukee until 1953).

 

2000 My Dog Skip (Secondary) Directed by Jay Russell. Written by Willie Morris and Gail Gilchreist. Produced by Marty Ewing and Jay Russell/Alcon Entertainment/Warner Bros. Starring Luke Wilson, Kevin Bacon, Diane Lane, Frankie Muniz, John Sullivan.  Based on the best-selling Mississippi memoir by the late Willie Morris, this film tells the story of a shy boy Willie (Muniz) who has difficulty making friends in Yazoo City, Mississippi in 1942. The gift of a puppy on his ninth birthday changes his life. Skip the dog, becomes well known and loved throughout the community and enriches the life of the boy, as he grows into manhood. Baseball is used to help define characters in the film. The opening montage of the boy’s room reveals many artifacts related to baseball. In the opening scene, Willie is worries about his older friend Dink Jenkins (Luke Wilson) leaving for the war asks, “Who will teach me how to pitch a curve ball?” A few scenes later, as the Dink is leaving, he says to a worried Willie, “Don’t worry, I’ll be back and teach you how to throw that curve ball.” Many scenes later, Willie receives a letter from Dink who assures him he’ll be home in time to play ball with him. However, Dink returns from the war a recluse. In the spring Willie gets his first baseball uniform and asks Dink to come to the opening game. Willie wears #8 and Dink says out of ear-shot of Willie, “Thanks for picking my number.” Later the boys on the team tease him for wearing Dink’s number. The coach gets angry that Skip the dog is at the ball game and tells Willie to get him out because “this is not a game, you know!” It turns out that Willie can’t hit and can’t field, but Skip can disrupt the game just fine. The film’s closing monologue includes the boys going to a Black baseball game to see the legendary player Waldo in action in order to drive home the lessons learned during the course of the story. The closing montage returns to many of the baseball images from the opening scenes.

 

2000 Traffic (Tertiary) Directed by Steven Soderbergh. Written by Simon Moore and Stephen Gagen. Produced by Cameron Jones and Graham King/USA Films. Starring Michael Douglas, Don Cheadle, Bernico Del Torro, Dennis Quaid, Luis Guzman, Steven Bauer and Catherine Zeta Jones. Intertwining vignettes frame this tale of America's escalating War on Drugs. Ohio Supreme Court judge Robert Wakefield (Douglas) has been appointed the nation's Drug Czar, his new position made more daunting by the discovery that his teenage daughter is a heroin addict. Meanwhile, DEA agents Montel Gordon (Cheadle) and Ray Castro (Guzman) are pursuing Helena Ayala (Jones), wife of jailed kingpin Carlos Ayala (Bauer), as she seeks to the control of her husband’s business. Baseball’s role in this story is small but meaningful. Castro is asked what he wants in return for helping the DEA. He responds with a vague reference to kids and baseball. The closing scene shows him watching kids play ball at a new field—the payoff for helping. Castro believes that the hope within baseball will replace the lure of drugs for some kids—the symbol of hope in a very dark film.

 

2001 A Little Inside (Primary) Directed and written by Kara Harshbarger. Produced by Gregory Dunigan/Little Inside Productions. Starring Kathy Baker, Amanda Detmer and Wayne Duvall. A short (14 min.) about a professional baseball player who tries to single-handedly raise his young daughter while pursuing his own dreams.

 

 

2001 Band of Brothers (TV mini-series,Tertiary) Directed by David Frankel, Tom Hanks and others. Written by Stephen Ambrose, Tom Hanks, Erik Jendresen and others. Produced by HBO/20th Century Fox/Dreamworks and others. Miniseries based on renowned WWII historian Stephen Ambrose's nonfiction book about Easy Company, the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division that parachuted into France on D-Day. In the concluding episode, the remaining members of the rifle company played baseball. The scene was used to bring the series to an end (episode 10) through voice-overs about the fate of each survivor as the camera panned on them playing baseball. Baseball provided an appropriate metaphor for a returning to normal, a metaphor for what is right with America, and a metaphor for optimism for the future. The game itself is irrelevant, but the playing of the game by war-tested soldiers is relevant.

 

2001 Bleacher Bums (TV, Primary) Directed by Saul Rubinek. Written by Joe Mantegna and Roberta Custer. Starring Sarain Boylan, Maury Chaykin, Matt Craven, and Charles Durning. A remake of the 1978 PBS tele-play by the same name.

2001 Hardball (Primary/Secondary). Directed by Brian Robbins. Written by Daniel Coyle (book) and John Gatins. Produced by Tina Nides, Brian Robbins, and Michael Tollin/Paramount Pictures. Starring Keanu Reeves, Diane Lane, and John Hawks. The story of Conor O’Neill (Reeves), an inveterate gambler/hustler, who is constantly trying to find ways out of his sport gambling debts. He gets stuck coaching an inner-city Little League team. Despite the fact that Reeves imparts no baseball knowledge to the boys, they begin to win and ultimately win over the disinterested, scheming O’Neill.

2001 Hearts in Atlantis (Secondary) Directed by Scott Hicks. Written by Stephen King and William Goldman. Produced by Kerry Heysen/Castle Rock/Warner Bros. Starring  Anthony Hopkins, Hope Davis and David Morse. A Stephen King story of the summer a young Connecticut boy turns 11 and the pivotal events of that time in his life. Baseball threads through the entire story beginning when Bobby (Morse), as an adult, receives his friends baseball glove in the mail. The summer they had turned eleven, he said he would leave his glove for Bobby in his will. Several times during the flashbacks, which comprise most of the film, the baseball glove is present. A bat also plays a role, but in a darker way. While the glove represents what was good about their youth, the bat represents what was bad. The town bully always carries a bat and uses it to exert control over Bobby and his friends. He dislocates Bobby’s girl friends shoulder, but ultimately Bobby turns the bat against the bully. Also, Bobby keeps his money in a tobacco can that has a baseball theme printed on it.

 

2001 Pearl Harbor  (Tertiary) Directed by Michael Bay. Written by Randall Wallace. Produced by Chad Oman and Bruce Hendricks/Touchstone Pictures/Buena Vista Pictures. Starring Ben Affleck, Josh Harnett, Alec Baldwin, Cuba Gooding Jr., and Kate Beckinsale. Set during the time of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, two friends (Affleck and  Hartnett) are caught up in the events that draw the United States into World War II. One of them enlists with the U.S. Army Air Corps and the other flies for the British Royal Air Force, but they both find themselves in love with the same woman (Beckinsale). Baseball plays a small (in terms of screen time), but symbolically significant part in the film. In a 10 second scene, young boys stop playing baseball to watch the Japanese Zeros fly overhead—a juxtaposition of two important symbols of the time.

 

2001 Princess Diaries, The (Tertiary) Directed by Garry Marshall. Written by Meg Cabot and Gena Wendkos. Produced by Disney. Starring Julie Andrews, Anne Hathaway, Hector Elizondo, and Heather Matarazzo. Mia (Hathaway) is a socially awkward, but very bright, 15-year-old girl being raised by a single mom. Mia discovers that she is the princess of a small European country because of the recent death of her long-absent father, who, unknown to her, was the crown prince of Genovia. She must make a choice between continuing her teen-age in San Francisco teen or stepping up to the throne. While Mia makes up her mind, she's pressed into taking princess lessons from her grandmother. The film uses baseball (softball, actually) as a vehicle to demonstrate the young girl's growth and maturity—in an early scene, before she learns of her royalty status, she appears completely inept at the game, unable to catch a ball or throw straight; later, as she blossoms, we see her again on the diamond, this time the batter, who is being made fun of by her schoolmates (in particular the high school "stud" she swooned over but has since learned he's a jerk), who smacks a line drive that she determinedly parlays into a home run with an adroit slide across the plate.  The symbolism is unmistakable that this represents her crossing the threshold from teenage bumpkin to princess-to-be, a pivotal moment in the plot.

 

2001 61* (TV, Primary) Directed by Billy Crystal. Written by Hank Steinberg. Produced by HBO. Starring  Barry Pepper and Thomas Jane. Summer, 1961: Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle are on pace to break the most hallowed record in U.S. sports, Babe Ruth's single-season 60 home runs. The film highlights the pressures faced by them, their friendship, and Commissioner Ford Frick’s controversial decision to add an asterisk to any record set beyond the 154 game schedule Ruth had played under.

 

2001 Score, The (Tertiary) Directed by Frank Oz. Written by Daneille E. Taylor and Kario Salem. Produced by Paramount Pictures. Starring Robert DeNiro, Edward Norton and Marlon Brando. Nick Wells (DeNiro), a professional criminal, decides to leave the business for good, since he nearly got caught on his last job. Max (Brando), his some-time friend and financial partner in the illegal affairs, comes along with an offer Nick can't refuse: an historical and priceless French scepter is sitting in the Montreal Customs House just waiting to be stolen. Max dispatches a thug with a baseball bat to persuade Nick to take on the job. Nick turns the table on the bat swinging heavy. Eventually, Nick benignly returns the bat to Max as a sign that he not to be threatened.

 

2001 Summer Catch (Primary)  Directed by Michael Tollin. Written by Kevin Falls. Produced by Brian Robbins, Michael Tollin, and Sam Weisman/Warner Bros. Starring Freddie Prinze, Jr., Jessica Biel, Fred Ward, Corey Pearson and Bruce Davison.  This summer couldn't be more crucial for Ryan Dunne (Prinze), a blue-collar kid with aspirations to become a major league baseball player. Every summer, the hottest college ball players descend upon Cape Cod to pursue their baseball dreams during the day and blow off steam in town at night. The first local boy in years to earn a slot in the team, Ryan finally got his shot...but the temptations off-field are getting in the way of his commitment to the game. Soon, a beautiful young woman who summers in the town with her family distracts Ryan. As the friction builds between his loyal townie friends and his cocky teammates, Ryan's rivalry with hot-shot teammate Eric (Pearson) comes to a head. When a major league scout comes along, however, he tries to push the pangs of romance and player rivalry aside, because his sports talent may be his only ticket out of the small industrial town. (Sujit R. Varma)

 

2002 Complete & Accurate History of Canadian Baseball, The (TV, Primary) Directed and produced by Colin Brunton. This documentary is scheduled for release on August 1, 2002.

 

2002 Mickey (Primary) Directed by Hugh Wilson. Written by John Grisham. Produced by Hugh Wilson and John Grisham. Starring Harry Connick, Jr. and Shawn Salinas. Scheduled for release in the summer of 2002. Glen, the recently-widowed father (Connick) of Mickey Ryan (Salinas), a 12-year-old boy who loves playing Little League baseball, has to run away with his son to Las Vegas when he becomes the focus of an intensive IRS investigation. Once there, his son again joins Little League, but the national attention his unusual baseball talent attracts puts these fugitives at risk of being found. (upcomingmovies.com)

 

2002 Rookie, The (Primary) Directed by John Lee Hancock. Written by Mike Rich. Walt Disney Production. Starring Dennis Quaid, Rachel Griffith, Brian Cox and Beth Grant. Scheduled for release in the spring of 2002. The true story of high school science teacher and baseball coach Jim Morris (Quaid), who tries out for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays at the age of 35, becoming the oldest major league rookie in nearly 30 years. Morris has also written a book about his experience, The Oldest Rookie. Morris has since retired. Unconfirmed, but this film may feature a fictional baseball team, rather than the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Morris is a Texas high school baseball coach who makes a deal with his team: if they make the playoffs, he'll try out as a pitcher with a professional team. The big surprise is that Morris makes the team, fulfilling his lifelong dream and showing his players that some dreams do come true if you work hard enough and believe in yourself (upcomingmovies.com).