Reading and Watching

If I had to pick two baseball books to read right now (as opposed to, say, getting ready to reread a history of the Great Influenza), I’d pick James T. Farrell’s My Baseball Diary and Jim Bouton’s Ball Four.

 

Farrell published his Diary in 1957, which makes it both dated and timeless.  Among the best pieces is Farrell’s account of his grandmother—an Irish immigrant who came to the United States during the Civil War—going to games at Comiskey Park on Ladies Day; oh, how she loved to watch the players “lep.”  An added bonus for me is that White Sox great Billy Pierce autographed my copy of Baseball Diary.

 

Farrell is sublime, the eternal South Sider waiting for the day his heroes vanquish the despicable Yankees.  Bouton would be one of those New Yorkers, though more hilarious than hateful at his core.  A few years ago I started rereading Ball Four only to put it down because it was making me laugh so much.  It may be time to start reading and laughing again.

 

For some reason, I don’t look for baseball movies to make me laugh in the same way.  Clare does, which is one of the reasons she likes “Bull Durham” and “A League of Their Own” so much.  As a Tom Hanks’ groupie, I agree with her on the latter.  But Kevin Kostner I’m not sold on.

 

Don’t get me wrong, I love “Field of Dreams,” in large part because of all those Black Sox playing ball in an Iowa cornfield.  Just writing that makes me smile.  In fact, I probably like those scenes enough it doesn’t even bother me that much that Ray Liotta played Shoeless Joe Jackson as a right-handed batter.

 

Then again, Gary Cooper played Lou Gehrig as a rightie hitter; it was film technicians who figured out how to switch the image of Cooper cum Gehrig so that it looked like he was hitting left-handed.  Talk about movie magic, or pretend.  What I enjoy most about “Pride” is how Babe Ruth, Bill Dickey, Bob Meusel and Mark Koenig appear as themselves.  Cool.  Oh, and “the luckiest man on the face of the earth” speech.  It works for me.

 

And somehow so does “The Natural.”  I use the qualifier because I don’t particularly like Robert Redford or Glenn Close.  Oh, but that supporting case, with Robert Duvall; Wilford Brimley; Robert Prosky; Richard Farnsworth; and Darren McGavin.  Talk about a Murderers’ Row of acting talent.  Any scene with any combination of those people is worth watching.  My favorite may be Brimley and Farnsworth sitting in the dugout trying to guess the names of songs they’re humming.  Again, that works for me.

So does most if not all of “The Rookie.”  Dennis Quaid as a major-league pitcher—who knew?  But he makes it work, as does Rachel Griffiths in ways Glenn Close doesn’t.  There’s even a legend about nuns, which this Catholic boy would find hard to impossible not to believe.