Filmography

Filmography - Baseball in Film, 1898-2002

Stephen C. Wood & J. David Pincus

Head Scout: Robert “Skip” McAfee

This annotated filmography, some 10 years in the making, chronicles close to 400 films that depict baseball in varying ways, from a lot to a little. The bulk of entries are “non-baseball” movies that incorporate one or more elements of baseball in minor but important ways; identifying such bits and pieces usually buried within films is, to say the least, challenging. A filmography of “baseball” films is challenging enough and yields a much smaller number than included in this filmography. Stretching back to the early years of the 20^th century, this filmography lists all films of which we are aware and have been able to verify the use of baseball in some form—language, artifact, symbol, image, incident, reference—that has meaning to a film’s plot or character development.

As with all filmographies, this one is ever-dynamic, always changing—occasional deletions, but mostly additions based on “scouting reports” from friends, family and colleagues who stumble on new, though more often old, films that refer to baseball. In keeping with this process, we invite all who use the filmography to send us corrections (for undoubtedly there are errors), additions (for undoubtedly there are omissions), clarifications (for undoubtedly there are ambiguities), and suggestions for reclassifying a film based on our taxonomy (see below), developed with care but admittedly somewhat arbitrary. The filmography is maintained on this web site, allowing for new additions, corrections, etc. Readers are invited to submit materials to be included in the filmography.

We will not yield to the temptation to claim that the filmography is “complete.” We are convinced it can never be complete. However, we do believe it is comprehensive – that is, at least as comprehensive as any such specialty film inventory can be. For ease of access in locating films, titles and descriptions are arranged chronologically. Other film reference sources may have more detailed plot summaries or cast listings, but none we know about maintains our focus on precisely how baseball is used in a film’s story.

If anything, we have erred on the side of inclusion rather than exclusion. The film industry has evolved from screening only short films because of the constraints of the technology to altering length for use as part of a double feature. For example “streamliners” are movies, usually lasting about one hour, designed to be shown with longer full-length feature films to create a double feature. Today, movie audiences rarely have the opportunity to see either shorts or streamliners with a feature, although today’s film trailers or previews are often longer than many complete films from 100 years ago.

What if anything did we exclude? While some made for TV movies and stand-alone one-hour productions (i.e., Bang the Drum Slowly, 1956) are included, episodes of individual television shows with baseball themes (chronicled in Mote’s Everything Baseball) are excluded from this filmography. While many documentaries are included, we have excluded instructional baseball films (again, consult Mote). While many animated shorts are included in the filmography, those animated shorts that appear only on television are excluded. Further, while some independent films have found their way into the filmography, there are probably many independent films with baseball content that are not included. Finally, there are some films that have ended up on the cutting room floor because we have too little information. For example, in 1898, Edison produced a film in which a U.S. Cavalry unit plays baseball while training for the Spanish-American War. This film is not included (well, except right here) because we don’t even have a title.

Data collected to form this filmography came from myriad sources, from off-handed tips by colleagues and friends to culling existing reference sources. The International Movie DataBase (www.IMDB.com) proved to be the most useful web-based database on films (other good sites are listed below). Some of the basic plot summaries are from the IMDB database. Six books proved to be valuable resources in constructing the filmography: Rob Edelman’s Great Baseball Films, Hal Erickson’s Baseball in the Movies, Gary Dickerson’s The Cinema of Baseball, Howard Good’s Diamond in the Dark, Harvey Marc Zucker and Lawrence J. Babich’s Sports Films: A Complete Reference, and James Mote’s Everything Baseball. So, given the variety of sources from which we constructed the filmography, the descriptions vary in detail.

The basic taxonomy used to classify baseball films consists of three categories: primary, secondary and tertiary. A primary baseball film is fundamentally driven by a baseball theme, setting, actions and characters. A secondary baseball film incorporates one or more baseball elements (e.g., incident, image, language, or symbol) that is/are important, yet subsidiary to the story, theme, setting, or characters. A tertiary baseball film involves a brief, perhaps incidental, yet deliberate use of baseball that has a meaningful effect on the story, theme, setting, and/or character(s). Excluded from the filmography are movies whose use of baseball is fleeting and, in our judgment, inconsequential to the story, setting and/or characters.