Category: Pop culture

Little Big League

June 26, 2023

Little Big League

I never watched Little Big League while I was growing up, and this weekend, I decided it was time to rectify this. Little Big League is a 1994 film that tells the story of Billy Heywood, a twelve-year-old baseball fan who inherits the Minnesota Twins from his grandfather, Thomas Heywood. Thomas’s will states that Billy is the sole owner of the team and that the team executives are to help him until he is old enough to run the team by himself. Billy loves baseball and knows a lot about the game and the players, but he soon realizes that being an owner is not as straightforward as he thought it might be. He clashes with the team manager, George O’Farrell, who tells Billy off, refusing to take orders from a kid. Billy fires O’Farrell, but he can’t find any other manager who is willing to work for someone so young. Seeing no other options, he appoints himself as the new manager, with the approval of his mother and the Commissioner of Baseball.

Unsurprisingly, things are not easy for Billy, especially in the beginning. He has to deal with the skepticism and resentment of the players, the media, and the fans. After a rough first week, Billy finds his stride and encourages the Twins players to have fun, which results in the team starting to win some ballgames. The excitement wears off as the season drags on, however.

Throughout the season, Billy finds himself facing tough decisions, such as trading or releasing players, setting lineups and strategies, and handling conflicts and injuries. He also has to balance his personal life, including his schoolwork and his friends, and he is more troubled than he is willing to admit by his mother’s romance with star first baseman, Lou Collins, who is also his idol and mentor. Billy feels jealous and betrayed by Lou, and he benches him for a minor batting slump. The team, feeling the effects of Billy’s moods, start to lose games and fall behind in the division race.

As things start to fall apart, Billy becomes increasingly agitated, resentful, and anxious. After some heart-to-heart talks with his mother, Billy realizes that he can’t do everything by himself and that he needs to trust and respect his players and coaches. He also realizes that he can’t control his mother’s love life and he decides instead to be happy for her and Lou. He reconciles with Lou and reinstates him as a starter. He also apologizes to his friends for neglecting them and invites them to join him in the dugout for the final game of the season.

The final game is against the Seattle Mariners, who are led by Ken Griffey Jr. (played by himself). The game is very close and exciting, with both teams scoring runs and making great plays. In extra innings, with two outs and two runners on base, Lou comes up to bat against Randy Johnson (also played by himself). Lou hits a deep fly ball to center field, where Griffey makes a spectacular catch at the wall, robbing Lou of a home run and ending the game. The Twins lose 6-5 and miss the playoffs by one game.

Billy is disappointed but proud of his team’s performance. He thanks his players and coaches for their hard work and dedication, but he also announces that he is quitting as manager after the season and that pitching coach Mac MacNally will take his place. He says that he wants to enjoy being a kid again and that he hopes to see them all again someday. The film ends with Billy getting called back out to the field by an appreciative crowd.

I thoroughly enjoyed watching this film. The plot was enjoyable, and Luke Edwards, who plays Billy, did an impressive job in the role. Even though the film as a whole is, of course, on the cheesy, sentimental side (it is a kids movie, after all), it also does a good job of showing how the pressures of adulthood can mount on a kid, especially a kid who takes on the responsibilities of running a Major League Baseball team. Definitely a worthwhile family movie.

“Birches,” by Robert Frost

June 9, 2023

This poem isn’t primarily about baseball, but the game is mentioned, and Robert Frost spoke about baseball on more than one occasion. And this reading of the piece is quite enjoyable. There’s always something about hearing out loud it from the author himself that adds something to a bit of writing.

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.
But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-coloured
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground,
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm,
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows-
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father’s trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It’s when I’m weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig’s having lashed across it open.
I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Jack Kerouac and baseball

May 31, 2023

I’ve known for some time that Beat generation writer Jack Kerouac was a baseball fan. This YouTube video talks a little bit more about Kerouac’s fascination with the sport and the fantasy game he created to play on his own time. The host of the video is a bit cheesy, but the information is interesting.

A little additional research led me to find a picture of the Kerouac bobblehead mentioned in the video:

Jack Kerouac bobble head (ebay.com)

I wasn’t able to find anything about the bobblehead on the Baseball Hall of Fame website, so I’m guessing the bobblehead is no longer a part of the museum. However, it does look like it definitely was there for a time. The bobblehead was created as a promotion by the minor league Lowell Spinners in 2003, in acknowledgement of Kerouac’s birth in the Massachusetts town.

Major League: Back to the Minors

May 1, 2023

major league back to the minors

Released in 1998, Major League: Back to the Minors is the third installment of the Major League series, and last night, I sat down to take in the show. I haven’t yet seen Major League II, so that’s on the list for future viewing, but Back to the Minors is a standalone installment, so it didn’t impact my understanding of things to skip to this one.

The movie stars Scott Bakula as Gus Cantrell, a veteran pitcher for a minor league team, the Fort Myers Miracle. After Gus gets ejected from a game for pulling the “frozen ball trick,” Roger Dorn, the owner of the Minnesota Twins, recruits Gus to be the manager of the Buzz, the Twins’ AAA minor league affiliate.

Much like the Cleveland Indians of Major League, the minor league Buzz is a team filled with dysfunctional players, including Lance “The Dance” Pere (a ballet dancer turned ballplayer), pitcher Hog Ellis, and pitcher Carlton “Doc” Windgate, a medical school graduate who throws a fastball so slow, it doesn’t even register on the radar gun. Even Pedro Cerrano, of Major League fame, now plays for the Buzz. The star of the team is home run hitter Billy “Downtown” Anderson, who suffers from supreme arrogance due to his success at the plate. Gus makes it his mission to help Downtown become a more well-rounded, and humbler, ballplayer.

Gus also has a rivalry with Leonard Huff, the arrogant manager of the Minnesota Twins. Huff challenges Gus to a game between the Buzz and the Twins, which ends in a tie after Huff turns off the stadium lights to prevent potential embarrassment. Huff then invites Downtown Anderson to play with the major league team, but Downtown fails against major league pitching and returns to the Buzz, admitting to Gus that he should’ve listened to him more.

Gus leads the Buzz to a division title and challenges Huff again, this time with his job on the line. The Buzz manage to defeat the Twins, and Gus is offered the opportunity to become manager of the Twins. Gus declines, however, opting to stay with the Buzz.

All in all, I enjoyed this flick. It’s not as good as the original Major League, but no sequel is ever as good as the original. It’s definitely not high art, but I didn’t expect it to be, and it makes for an amusing and relaxing evening.

“The Grand Central Hotel,” by Anonymous

April 10, 2023
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Grand Central Hotel (New York Public Library / public domain)

The publication date for this piece is unknown, but if I had to guess, I’d say it was written in the mid-to-late-1870s, around the time of the fall of the National Association and the beginnings of the National League. The poem is full of imagery and metaphor, speaking of “the collected debris of memories” and “New fortresses / Stretch their fledgling arms / And puncture the sky / With abbreviated zeal.” I can just imagine team owners clinking glasses to cheers of “Long live the National League!” as they concluded their meeting at the Grand Central Hotel.

*

No sun,
Now rubble,
The collected debris of memories
Echoes
An anguished ring through the corridors of Manhattan Canyons:

Where are we going?

From where
To where
Do we step?

December… a month… a day… a time
logged on the fresh pages of history…
the first and only real entry… a league
…a new league… a microscopic legion of
men bearing witness to the birth,
unfurling its colors on an industrial land to detract

from the former failure…

The National Association is dead,
Long live the National League!

From rubble to rubble,
From dust to dust,
New fortresses
Stretch their fledgling arms
And puncture the sky
With abbreviated zeal.

Like so many transients
Awaiting a derailed train,
The others come
And never go.

The American Association is dead
The Union Association is dead
The Players League is dead.
All gone,
All dead,

Long live the National League!

Hall of Fame Vodka

April 8, 2023

After purchasing a case of tonic water on my last grocery shopping trip, I naturally needed a reason to use it, so I stopped by the liquor store this morning to pick up a bottle of gin. Contrary to my plan, however, that did not end up being my only purchase of this trip, as this caught my attention:

I’ve never heard of Hall of Fame Vodka before today, but the marketing genius who put this stuff into baseball bat bottles clearly knows the way into the hearts of suckers like me, because I could not pass this up. When I brought my purchases to the pink-haired gal working the register, I asked when they had gotten these in. She responded, “Oh, I don’t know, a couple of weeks ago, I think?”

“Ah, just in time for baseball season, eh?”

But she gave me this what-the-hell-makes-you-think-I-know-anything-about-baseball look, so I shut up through the rest of the transaction and contented myself with being pleased with the find.

The headquarters for Hall of Fame Vodka appear to be located in Bardstown, Kentucky. Appropriately enough, Bardstown is a mere 45-minute drive from Louisville, home of the Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory. The company does not currently produce any other kind of spirits, but according to their FAQs, they do have a goal to expand their brand in the future.

To celebrate the Royals finally winning two in a row, I’ve decided to go ahead a try a bit of this stuff out this evening. Despite its position on the top shelf, this is hardly premium vodka. I imagine the positioning of the bottles had more to do with how ridiculously tall they are than anything else. But it’s not the cheapest of the cheap, either. I’d probably put it in the same league as Svedka or 360 vodka — not anything I’d want to drink straight, but perfectly decent when mixed in with something.

Cheers!

Quote of the day

March 4, 2023

Football has hitting, clipping, spearing, piling on, personal fouls, late hitting, and unnecessary roughness. Baseball has the sacrifice.

~George Carlin

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George Carlin, 1975 (public domain)

Moneyball (the movie)

February 19, 2023

Moneyball movie

I re-watched Moneyball this weekend, the movie based on the book by Michael Lewis with the same title. Moneyball tells the story of Billy Beane and Peter Brand during the 2002 season, and how they used a sabermetric approach to build a winning team on a limited budget.

Following the 2001 season, the Oakland A’s lost Johnny Damon, Jason Giambi and Jason Isringhausen to free agency, and general manager Billy Beane, played by Brad Pitt, finds himself needing to replace them. During a scouting trip to Cleveland, Beane meets Peter Brand (played by Jonah Hill), a Yale economics graduate who impresses Beane with his statistical analyses of ballplayers.

With Brand’s help, Beane built a low-budget team by focusing on players’ stats, such as on-base percentage. The start of the season was predictably rough, with the A’s finding themselves ten games back. Beane convinces team owner Stephen Schott to stick with the plan, and Beane then trades Giambi to the Phillies for John Mabry and Carlos Peña to the Tigers, leaving manager Art Howe no choice but to use the team Beane and Brand have designed. Three weeks later, the Athletics are only four games behind first.

The A’s launch into a winning streak that culminates in a dramatic victory over the Kansas City Royals, in which the A’s achieve a then record-breaking 20th consecutive win.  The team falls short in the playoffs, however, when they lose to the Minnesota Twins in the ALDS.

Recognizing that sabermetrics is the future of baseball, Boston Red Sox owner John Henry first hires Bill James to the organization, then offers Billy Beane a $12.5 million salary to join Boston as well. Peter Brand tries to persuade Beane that he is worth the offer, however, not wanting to leave his daughter behind, Beane ultimately turns it down to stay with Oakland.

As a movie, I enjoy Moneyball. It’s dramatic, emotional, and there’s lots and lots of baseball. It sheds light on the idea behind sabermetrics. Critics argue that the movie is not an entirely accurate depiction of real-life events, excluding key players and portraying various relationships in a slanted light. It seems to me that the transition from real-life-story-to-movie presents the same challenges as book-to-movie situations: there’s just no way to be 100% true to the original without creating an hours-long film. As with any movie based on real life (or on a book), it’s worth doing your own research on the side in addition to enjoying the cinematic experience.