Month: December 2023

Diving into the 1985 World Series

December 30, 2023
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George Brett, 1990 (public domain / Missouri State Archives)

I have recently started watching the 1985 World Series. It’s something I’ve meant to do for quite a long time and am finally getting around to. Currently, I am two games in, and the Cardinals are leading the Royals, 2-0.

I am fascinated. I have, of course, seen highlights and heard stories about the 1980s Royals, but there is something about sitting down and actually watching full games that is so much more visceral. Seeing guys like George Brett, Frank White, Ozzie Smith, and others in actual game action just makes it all so much more real, and I find myself wishing that full game footage like this existed from the Babe Ruth years.

What’s more, even knowing how this series is going to shake out in the end, I still find myself getting worked up over the events of each game. When the Royals scored first in Game One, I couldn’t help but get excited. When the Cardinals came back to take the lead in the next two innings, I became upset. That’s the power of baseball, I suppose.

1985 World Series

This day in baseball: Mark McGwire is Athlete of the Year

December 28, 2023

On December 28, 1998, Mark McGwire was picked as The Associated Press male athlete of the year for 1998 for breaking Roger Maris’s single season home run record and for helping save the game of baseball. His home run mark not only served to help the St. Louis Cardinals in their season, but also helped to win back fans for the whole sport following the 1994 players’ strike.

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Mark McGwire at bat, 1998 (Jon Gudorf Photography / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license)

This day in baseball: Blasingame hired to manage Hanshin Tigers

December 20, 2023

On December 20, 1978, Don Blasingame became the first American not of Japanese descent hired to manage a Japanese team. The former major league second baseman would lead the formerly last place Hanshin Tigers to a fourth-place finish the following season, compiling a managerial record of 180–208–28 during his four years managing Japanese teams.

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Don Blasingame (Jay Publishing / public domain)

The Final Season

December 17, 2023

The Final Season

The opening scenes of The Final Season immediately made me think of Field of Dreams, which makes sense given that both movies take place in Iowa. Despite this, and even though both are baseball movies, the two films are really quite different.

The Final Season is a 2007 movie based on the true story of the Norway High School baseball team in Iowa. The story takes place primarily during the 1991 season, and Norway High School is on the verge of being merged into a larger school district. The town is devastated and angry at the idea of losing the high school’s legendary baseball program, which has won nineteen state championships. While the town battles the state to try to prevent the merger, the school’s principal, who favors the merger, tries to facilitate a losing season for the baseball team in order to show the merger would be worthwhile.

The baseball team’s legendary baseball coach, Jim Van Scoyoc (played by Powers Boothe), is forced to sit out what is expected to be the team’s final season. In his place, the principal appoints Kent Stock (played by Sean Astin), who previously coached girls volleyball. The principal believes that this move will cause the baseball program to fail, not realizing that Stock had been a star player for his Division III college baseball team. 

At first, the players are resistant to playing for Stock, not believing he can fill Van Scoyoc’s shoes, but Stock manages to win them over. While his style is unsurprisingly different from the former coach, Stock finds ways to motivate the team amidst the ongoing battle over the merger. 

In May 1991, Norway does win its 20th state championship, but the victory is bittersweet as it proves to be the team’s last-ever season.

I enjoyed this movie, and I like how it is based on a true story. I really enjoyed how the town of Norway embraced its baseball team. High school baseball, in particular, hardly ever gets noticed in general, but for Norway, high school baseball was literally part of their way of life. The townspeople even attended the team’s practices, because it meant so much to them. School districts merging is a phenomenon that happens all the time, and this film shows that such moves always have repercussions that go beyond just the schools themselves. 

This day in baseball: DiMaggio given last rites

December 12, 2023

On December 12, 1998, former Yankees outfielder Joe DiMaggio was given last rites of the Catholic church, and his family was called to his bedside when his doctors believed the end was near. However, the Hall of Famer would then go on to make what appeared to be a miraculous recovery, and in January 1999, he was permitted to go home after a 99-day hospital stay. But DiMaggio would die at his home in Florida on March 8th, after a long battle with lung cancer.

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Joe DiMaggio’s plague at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York (public domain)

Uneven: College Baseball’s Scholarship Issue

December 2, 2023

NCAA sports as a whole is a fascinating, quirky, and often irrational world, and baseball is no exception. This documentary by Matt Wyatt delves into the financial background of NCAA baseball, and it’s honestly upsetting. Scholarship inequities are not just a baseball problem, for sure, and while this film focuses exclusively on this one sport, it certainly provides some insight into the bigger picture.