Category: Pop culture

3 Ninjas Kick Back

January 12, 2024

3 Ninjas Kick Back

3 Ninjas Kick Back is a 1994 American martial arts film that also happens to include a good dose of baseball.  It is a kids’ movie, a sequel to the film 3 Ninjas, which my younger brother and I watched repeatedly when we were kids.  Sequentially, 3 Ninjas Kick Back is the third series in the franchise, the second movie being 3 Ninjas Knuckle Up. 

These movies revolve around three brothers: Rocky, Colt, and Tum-Tum.  Like the other two movies in the series, 3 Ninjas Kick Back starts at the cabin of the boys’ grandfather, Mori, who is also their ninja instructor.  Mori plans a trip for the four of them to Japan, in order to take the boys to a martial arts tournament of which he was the champion fifty years ago.  He explains that he hopes to return a dagger awarded to him at the tournament when he defeated a boy named Koga, so that it may be presented to the new winner.  Additionally, Mori sees the trip as the logical next step to the boys’ ninja training, as they will be exposed to an even greater level of martial arts expertise. 

Before they can embark on the trip, however, the boys are to play in a championship baseball game.  The game goes terribly wrong, however, when Rocky seems too focused on a cute girl to pitch properly, Tum-Tum constantly leaves the field to get snacks, and Colt’s temper causes a fight to break out with the opposing team.  Appalled by the bench-clearing brawl, the umpire calls off the game until the following week. Not wanting to miss out on the chance to win the championship, the boys vote to stay and play baseball rather than go to Japan. 

Meanwhile, the boy whom Mori defeated in his youth, Koga, is determined to steal the dagger from his old nemesis.  The dagger, we learn, is one of the keys, along with a samurai sword, to opening a cave of gold — at least, according to legend.  In Japan, Mori gets rear ended by a trio of thugs sent by Koga, and the thugs take off with Mori’s bag while Mori ends up in the hospital.  From the hospital bed, Mori calls his grandsons to let them know what is going on, only to have the boys inform him that he accidentally took Tum-Tum’s bag to Japan by mistake, and the boys actually have Mori’s bag and the dagger.

Deciding that their grandfather is more important than baseball, the boys head to Japan.  There they meet a girl, Miya, whose ninja abilities far surpass theirs.  Miya also happens to enjoy baseball, though she struggles with catching the ball.  The boys offer to train Miya to become a better baseball player if she agrees to train them to become better ninjas. 

During their trip, Koga attempts to trap the boys to take the dagger, and Mori is kidnapped in the hospital.  After facing off against a number of bad guys, the boys, Miya, Mori, and Koga all end up at the location of the cave of gold.  Now in possession of both the dagger and the sword, Koga is able to open the entrance to the cave, and Mori is astonished to learn that the legend is true.  When Koga pulls a gun on the group, Colt throws a ninja ball (a small ball bearing) into the muzzle of the gun, causing it to backfire and start a cave-in. The group flees the cave, and Koga, now realizing the price of his greed, apologizes and leaves the group unharmed. Rocky realizes that since Japan is a day ahead of America, they can still make it home by the championship game. 

At the game, we learn that Miyo has accompanied the boys on their trip back to the States and has joined their baseball team.  Rocky, Colt, and Tum-Tum find themselves more capable to staying focused on the game, employing their newly-learned ninja skills on their way to victory.  

As mentioned, I’ve been a 3 Ninjas fan ever since the movies first came out while I was a kid.  As an adult, I realize now just how silly, cheesy, and ridiculous these movies are, but I still enjoy them.  They make for good, comedic family films, and in this installment, I love the depiction on how skills in martial arts can translate in a beneficial way to baseball, and vice versa.

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. 

“Thankful for Baseball and Babe Ruth,” Jim Yerman

November 21, 2023

American Thanksgiving is rapidly approaching, and I think it’s fair to say that many of us are thankful for the American National Pastime. This piece helps us to express and embrace that gratitude.

*

May we be blessed to acknowledge all the wonders in our life
that have, for us, thus far accrued…
and to begin each day with a word of thanks…
and thoughts of gratitude.

Today I’m thankful for baseball
and the wisdom of Babe Ruth…
(Many old-timers will remember his name)
He said, ‘never let the fear of striking out
keep you from playing the game.’

Quote of the day

November 14, 2023

OK, we won a game yesterday. If we win today, it’s called “two in a row”. And if we win again tomorrow, it’s called a “winning streak”… It has happened before!

~Lou Brown, Major League II

A Face in the Crowd, by Stephen King and Stewart O’Nan

October 10, 2023

A Face in the Crowd

A Face in the Crowd has been available as an ebook since 2012 and became available in a hardcover physical format just this year. The protagonist of this story/novella is Dean Evers, an elderly widower living in Florida, having moved there with his wife before her passing. Originally a Red Sox fan, Evers has “adopted” the Tampa Bay Devil Rays as his second team and now whiles away his evenings in front of the television watching Rays games.

One evening, Evers notices someone in the seats behind home plate — Young Dr. Young, as Evers’s mother used to call him — Evers’s dentist when he was a boy. But Evers is aware that Dr. Young had passed many years ago, so how could he now be attending a Rays game?

After convincing himself that he’s not going crazy, Evers flips on the television the next night for more baseball, only to see another face in the seats behind home plate. Once again, it is someone from Evers’s past whom he knows to be dead. And it is the same the next game he watches. And the next game.

These appearances understandably affect Evers’s sleep, and he resorts to a cocktail of ambien and scotch to fall asleep each night. Through the story and his reminiscences, we learn a bit about each of the individuals who Evers sees in the stands and, of course, a bit about Evers himself. Finally, a face appears in the stands that leads Evers to finally understand what is going on.

I won’t spoil the ending here, though anyone with a twisted enough imagination can easily deduce the conclusion of this tale. I enjoy Stephen King and, of course, I enjoy baseball, so it’s always a lot of fun when I get the opportunity to read a baseball story written by King. The story is short, only 58 pages in printed format, and it reads quickly. I knocked it out easily in one evening. It’s a worthwhile piece of brief entertainment if have an hour to fill sometime.

“Bad Umpire,” CJ Beatty

October 8, 2023

While I do have an appreciation for it, hip hop is not my preferred genre of music, so this is the first time I’ve come across this song. I find that I enjoy it quite a bit, and I find the video both disturbing and amusing simultaneously. We’ve all had umpires about which we’ve had these kinds of feelings, which makes this tune very relatable.