Published Tuesday, April 29, 2008 9:46 AM
Updated Tuesday, April 29, 2008 9:51 AM

 

Finding Mudville 4/30/08

The Best Baseball Movie Ever


I’m not a real big fan of sports movies. My problem with sports movies is one thing: realism.

Guys like Tom Cruise act for a reason: they stink at sports.

For example, the big fight scenes in Rocky where Rocky and Apollo Creed go toe-to-toe for 16 rounds in the old Philadelphia Spectrum. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to notice that Sylvester Stallone and Carl Weathers are fighting in an empty arena.

The seats behind them are all empty.

And even though the fight choreography for the movie forever redefined the sports movie, you could still tell that punches were missing their mark by a good four inches.

John Goodman played a decent Babe Ruth in The Babe but he came off looking more like Fred Flintstone than the Sultan of Swat with all the makeup they caked on. Then there’s the whole hitting thing. Goodman is not a baseball player and he’s not left-handed either. This made the action sequences filmed in the old style 30s movie-reel format look Herman-Munsterish.

All I can say about baseball movies these days is thank God for technology.

And Kevin Costner.

Kevin gave us three of the best baseball flicks ever made: Bull Durham, Field of Dreams and For the Love of the Game. The great thing about Kevin Costner is, unlike Tom Cruise, he has a modicum of athletic ability.

The Natural did for baseball movies what Rocky did for boxing, but it was as much the music as Robert Redford knocking the cover off the ball or Glenn Close standing in the grandstands or the big lights-out home run at the end.

All these movies were great, but none hold a candle to Billy Crystal’s 61*, the story about Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris and their historic chase of Babe Ruth’s single season record of 60 home runs in the summer of 1961.

Thomas Jane plays Mickey Mantle and Barry Pepper plays Roger Maris. It is the best baseball movie I have ever seen.

First, while watching the movie, you actually believe you are watching Mantle and Maris playing in the old Yankee Stadium back in 1961.

Until Thomas Jane took the role of Mantle for the movie he’d never played the game of baseball before and knew absolutely nothing about it.

“I didn’t learn how to hit a baseball,” he said. “I just learned how to swing like Mickey Mantle.”

Jane mimicked everything about Mantle, his mannerisms, his nervous ticks as he approached the plate, and the way he squeezed the bat handle as he awaited the pitch.  

Barry Pepper matched Jane step for step in looking and acting like Roger Maris. In fact, Billy Crystal cast Pepper as Maris when he noticed the uncanny resemblance while Pepper was in Saving Private Ryan.

Jane and Crystal never hit a baseball on the set while filming 61*. They merely swung the bat. The baseball and the backdrop of Yankee Stadium were added later via CGI.

Fastballs looked like real fastballs and home runs looked like the majestic upper deck shots they’re supposed to be, not some extra throwing a baseball into the seats from leftfield.

That wasn’t the most amazing part of the movie, either.

Right-handed Anthony Michael Hall portrayed the left-handed Whitey Ford. All the scenes with Hall pitching were shot with the actor wearing reverse insignia and numbers, then the film was flipped so as to appear as if he pitched left-handed – like looking into a mirror.

This same trick was used with Gary Cooper when he played the left-handed Gehrig.

Billy Crystal’s movie wasn’t just a baseball movie, but a trip through the nostalgic times of our childhood.

I’ve said it before about my love for baseball and my memories of my first game and having my dad and my grandfather point out the famous baseball players on the field. The movie’s last scene is just that, a dad showing his son Mickey Mantle.

It is this scene that is the movie’s most poignant.

The dad just happens to be Mickey Mantle’s son, and the little boy, Mick’s real grandson.

If that won’t make you grab a Kleenex then my friend, you are the shallow insensitive automaton your wife accuses you of being.

It’s worth the rental. Better yet, buy it.

If you’re any kind of a baseball fan you won’t be sorry.