Bob’s Blog

There is one thing I ask for, first and foremost, in any movie about baseball. I want the actors playing the game to look like they know what they’re doing.

There’s nothing worse than a baseball movie in which the main characters look like they have never thrown a baseball.

One of the movies I have seen this summer is the re-make of The Bad News Bears. Now, I’m not sure a re-make was necessary; the original movie starring Walter Matthau and Tatum O’Neal was good enough for me. The newer version starred Billy Bob Thornton, who reprised Matthau’s role as Buttermaker, the coach of the band of talentless kids.

Thornton: Good actor, lousy thrower. In the movie, he is referred to as a someone who got a cup of coffee in the major leagues as a pitcher. So, you’d think he would like good when throwing the baseball. He didn’t. He had bad form.

Worse, the movie thumbed its nose at the most simple baseball rule _ a batting order is a batting order, it can’t be changed. Yet for dramatic affect late in the movie, the Bad News Bears’ batting order was altered. This just doesn’t happen, at any level.

There is a reason Kevin Costner has been involved in so many great baseball movies _ he looks like a player and, most important, he throws like a player. Costner was the real deal in Field of Dreams and Bull Durham. Watching those movies, you believed he was a baseball player.

I’m all for baseball movies. Some of my favorite movies have involved baseball. All I ask is that directors get it right. If a supposed major league player throws like a little old lady, you’ve lost me. And you don’t want to lose me.

My five favorite baseball movies:

1) Field of Dreams
2) Bull Durham
3) The Natural
4) 61
5) Pride of the Yankees