Baseball Movies: Let's Discuss

Play Ball!!!

 Jenn McKinlay: Arizona, my home state, is the land of Spring Training. From the middle of February when pitchers and catchers report until Opening Day, it is baseball, baseball, baseball. I am not a super fan like the Hub, but I do enjoy an afternoon or evening spent at the ballpark enjoying hotdogs, peanuts, beer, popcorn, ice cream, you know the essentials to get through nine innings. I also appreciate that its slower pace gives you a chance to chat with your companions.

Diamondbacks Opening Day!

Recently, while enjoying a game, we got into a discussion of the best baseball movies. Now on this I do have an opinion. My fave baseball movie of all time is: FIELD OF DREAMS: 

Because it's the BEST! James Earl Jones will always be one of my favorite actors of all time and his portrayal of author Terrence Mann in this movie was FANTASTIC!

Hub's favorite is BULL DURHAM:

And Mom's favorite in LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN:

Of course, there are many honorable mentions, BAD NEWS BEARS, DAMN YANKEES, SAND LOT,  and MAJOR LEAGUE, to name just a few.

What about you, Reds and Readers, are you a baseball fan? Who's your team? And which movie is your fave (if you have one)?

Take you Out---or Take you Home?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  Are you a take-me-out-to-the ballgame? Or a take-me-home?

 Got to say, I  love baseball, sitting in the ball park ,with all the hilariously happy (sometimes) people, rooting for your team to win. And that moment, when it's one guy, the pitcher, against one guy, that batter, and everyone focused on the moment when everything could change. And how it's a team sport, and an individual sport, and ah. I love it.

Not so much the spitting (what is there to spit? I have NEVER spit.) Or the rowdy beer-throwing and whatever. And the hitching of pants. I have never hitched my pants.

But I love the families in the bleachers, and the cheering for success, and the sunny days and crackerjacks and hotdogs. Delicious hot dogs. And I don't even generally like beer, but you've gotta have at least a sip at the ball game.

And yes, the Red Sox often break our hearts. But there' s always next year. But this year..it could happen!

So how about you? Take you out to the ballgame? Or take you away it?  And if you were playing, would you want to be the batter when it's the last up of the last inning in a tie game and you could win it all?  I always think the world is divided into the "put-me-in" people and the "no way" people.

And who's your team?

RHYS BOWEN: Giants fan here, Hank. Love my Giants although they have started this season with the worst record since 1980 something. We usually go to spring training in Scottsdale which I find more fun than the real games in a cold and drafty stadium in San Francisco. A friend has season tickets and I snap up the ones she can't use. And they are in the friends and family section so we get to sit with players' families. You can tell the wives by the enormous rocks on their left hands!

Your question about whether I'd want to be that last batter... I know what I'd hate and that would be to be closing pitcher, last game of world series, being handed a one run lead in the ninth. I know, it happened to the Giants once and he blew it.

HALLIE EPHRON: We are blessed here in Boston with Fenway Park and the reliably unreliable Red Sox. I go to about one ball game a season (we're going in a few weeks to see them play the Minnesota Twins) and I love almost everything about it, especially when we win. My husband listens to all the games at home.

I was a terrible baseball player. Afraid of the ball. It's very hard, you know. And I never learned how to use a glove. But in my dreams I'm on second base, bases loaded, two outs in the final inning, Red Sox behind by one, and Big Papi hits a base-clearing homerun.

The worst thing about baseball is when your favorite players retire or go to different teams.

INGRID THOFT: I wouldn’t characterize myself as a baseball fan, but as Hank and Hallie know, when you live in Boston (or it’s your hometown,) you are a Red Sox  fan.  For life.  I’ve been to a handful of games over the years, and what I’ve enjoyed most is the atmosphere at Fenway Park.  A warm night, some snacks, the Green Monster, the traffic rushing by on the Mass Pike, all make for an iconic baseball experience.  Every New Englander should go at least once, if only to soak up the scene.

 I never played baseball or softball growing up, but I lean towards the “put me in, coach!” frame of mind, so I would rather be the last batter up than riding the bench. 

DEBORAH CROMBIE:  I didn't grow up watching baseball or going to games. Which is weird because my dad coached a corporate women's softball team before I was born, but somehow that didn't translate to professional baseball. But my daughter played softball all through elementary school, and we became big Texas Rangers fans. I loved going to the games and following the team. I still watch the games when I have a chance, and I was really rooting for the Rangers to make it to the World Series last year.

I haven't been to a game in years, though, because Rick doesn't like baseball, or any kind of organized sport.

JENN MCKINLAY: I grew up in Newyorkachusetts (i.e. Connecticut) in which baseball is pretty much divided by the Connecticut River. On one side it's all Yankees fans and on the other it's the Red Sox. I spent my middle school and teen years on the Red Sox side and am a member of Red Sox Nation in honor of my grandmother who was one of their most ardent fans. That being said, when the Diamondbacks came to AZ, I was all in. Hub and I had just started dating and his father had season tickets so much of our first year together was spent watching the Diamondbacks, which was a pretty awesome courtship but that could be because of the hotdogs, peanuts, Red Vines, beer, and gourmet popcorn.

Yes, I love the game but my favorite part of baseball is the food. Shocker, I know. "'Cause it's one, two, three strikes you're out at the old ball game!"

LUCY BURDETTE: We spent a couple years living outside Detroit when I was a kid, so we all became mad for the Tigers. When I lived in Gainesville Fl, the closest team was the Braves, but I never did get very attached to them. Now when we're in Connecticut, it's exactly as Jenn described--and we live right on the dividing line for Yankees versus Red Sox fans. I only get interested in baseball when the playoffs and World Series come around. Though I think I could become a Red Sox fan!

Ask me about UCONN women's basketball, however, and I can tell you anything and everything about the players, the coach, the competition...I love watching those girls play!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I married into New England, and so became a Red Sox fan, as one is required to do. (Ross and I have a good friend who grew up outside NYC and is an adamant Yankees fan, despite living in Portland for close to thirty years. It takes real guts to be a Yankees fan in Maine.)

For me, however, the best of baseball is our local AA team, the Portland Sea Dogs. They play in Hadlock Field, a perfect gem where there's not a bad seat to be found (and general seating is less than the price of a movie ticket!) In all the years we've been going, I've never seen or heard any altercation, beer-throwing or loud profanities. Instead, it always seems a festival gathering of Mainers grateful to be out under the blue sky, eating hot dogs and drinking local microbrews from the Shipyard Brew Pen. We've seen some amazing talent play there: Mookie Betts, Clay Buchholz, Dustin Pedroia and Hanley Ramirez all came up from the Sea Dogs. They have fireworks after the game on the 4th of July, and promotions like Dog of the Day (featuring adoptable dogs,) Superhero Day (come in costume,) and Pride Night (to coincide with Portland's Pride Day festivities.)

You can't beat it, which is why we have tickets for a double header this coming Friday!

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HANK: Whoo hoo! How about you, Reds readers? Baseball—yes, no? And who’s your team? 

photo credits and thank you to: C. Penier. Yobro,  Onyschenko, David Lee

March Madness

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: March means many things to many people. "In like a lion, out like a lamb." Lent. St. Patrick's Day (also my sister's birthday! Happy Birthday, Barb!) If you're a high school junior, SAT prep classes. If you're marrying in the summer, last chance to nail down those rentals. In my household, however, March means one thing and one thing only:

NCAA College Basketball Championships.

I did not grow up a devotee of March Madness. My father is one of those rare men who has no interest in sports. When in high school, I dated a basketball player, but I met him at District Choral competition. All my college boyfriends were artsy guys who took me to experimental theatre and foreign film festivals. I had a vague tribal loyalty to Syracuse hoops, but unless I was hanging out with friends who had the game on, I never followed the season.

Then I met Ross. A Georgetown grad, on our second date he took me to a GU-Arkansas game. "Our place" was a sports bar in Georgetown with five-inch-thick burgers and TVs on every wall. I learned terms like "Big East" and "three-pointer" and "zone defense." Ever the romantic, the first gift he bought me, as we walked back to my house on a chilly March evening, was a navy-and-gray scarf. With a picture of a bulldog on it.

Reader, I married him. Since then, I've learned to love Saturday afternoons in front of the television, roars of approval that frighten the cats, and family room decor that includes a giant polystyrene finger that reads HOYA SAXA - lovingly preserved for over twenty-five years. I've learned to never assume Ross will be available without first checking the game schedule. Fortunately -- or was it planning? -- none of the children were born this month. Given the choice between the delivery room and a Final Four game, I'm not sure Ross would have gone with the kid.

How about you, Reds? Are you fans? Married to fans? Waving fans?


HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Well, I'm from Indiana. There's that. And now live in Boston. There's that. And my husband is from New York. There's that. So no way to we escape sports. Once, dear Reds, I even watched a WHOLE hockey game, and enjoyed it.

And do I get to say: What the hell's a Hoya?

JULIA: It means "What Rocks" in Latin and Greek. Don't ask me why.

HANK: As for March Madness..let me just say Jonathan and I have dueling brackets. And I'm not gonna tell you who I picked. Even though I do it by "a bear could beat an eagle" type of decision-making, as of this instant, they are still contenders. By the end of Sunday, who knows. Crossing fingers.

LUCY BURDETTE: Oh we're crazy for March Madness--but in Connecticut we're basketball crazy all year. We follow UConn women's basketball coach Geno Auriemma's recruiting efforts and start mourning the graduation of our favorite stars when they begin their sophomore years. We couldn't get over how one of our future stars, a recruit from Delaware, bailed out of the UConn machine and went home to play for Delaware. (She's making news there now--traitor.)

One year not too long after John and I were married, I cut out a full-sized photo of Geno and taped it on the wall over our bed. Honestly it took him 2 days before he noticed it, but then we laughed for days. He could understand a crush like that--after all, Geno shapes our FAMILY every year!

(PS we like watching the guys too, with Coach Calhoun, but those players rotate off the team so quickly, it's hard to get too attached.)


HALLIE EPHRON: March Madness? Not so much. Basketball games make me nervous. Too much running back and forth too fast... to put a technical spin on it. I'm more a baseball fan. I watch the first two innings of every Red Sox game and sleep through the rest.

I do have a soft spot for college hockey. My husband and my first date was a semi-finals college hockey game between Cornell and I can't remember who in New York's Madison Square Garden. I went to see a pro game a few years later and it seemed like an entirely different sport.

What I REALLY can't understand is why anyone would watch a golf game. Playing golf I can just barely get my arms around. But watching one? Can someone 'splain me that? Lucy??

JAN BROGAN - My son was a high school basketball player, so I spent a LOT of time watching him and loving it. I've also been to a lot of Celtics games, especially in the 80s, but in March, my mind turns to spring training and my true obsessions, BASEBALL. I'm a die-hard Red Sox fan and that leaves precious little time for anything else. Except tennis, which I also love to watch. So just finished with the Indian Wells tournament and waiting for the French Open... And Hallie, I don't get the watching golf either. Or Monster Trucks, for that matter.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: My father watched golf, horse racing, and football, in that order. I stuck with the horse racing. I'm with Hallie on the golf... But my daughter played both girl's softball and soccer, and in the process I fell in love with baseball. (One of these days the Texas Rangers are gonna win the Series, they really are!) I like watching soccer but have trouble keeping up with who's who. Basketball totally confuses me. I don't think I've ever even been to a basketball game. All my friends, and my daughter, are basketball crazy, so I'm sure I must be missing out.

My husband, by the way, doesn't watch any sports at all. He likes camping videos on You Tube. Go figure.

I, however, to uphold my sporting reputation, will be watching the Summer Olympics obsessively.

And the Oxford/Cambridge Boat Race. (That's rowing, as you might have guessed:-))

JULIA: Camping videos? Camping videos? And I thought "What Rocks" was strange. How about you, dear readers? Have you filled out your bracket?

Are we sick yet?

HALLIE: Only one of us at JRW has come down with it, but we're all, to varying degrees, obsessing over H1N1.

At a recent ‘no handshake’ conference, hundreds of folks were bonking elbows, like we were doing a demented version of the chicken dance. Hugging and air kissing without inhaling. You could barely turn around without knocking over a bottle of hand sanitizer, and people were whipping them out of pockets and purses. We all heard about one of the organizers who came down with the flu on the first day of the conference, and I agonized over how long I’d stood chatting with her, envisioning the little H1N1 vermin-y creatures frolicking in the air between us.

The CDC does nothing to allay our fears. It says those who are infected “shed virus and may be able to infect others from 1 day before getting sick to 5 to 7 days after.” And yes, little balls of spit or perspiration from an infected person can survive on surfaces and remain infectious for 2 to 8 hours. It’s not just other people you have to worry about. Your pet ferret can infect you if he gets sick with H1N1.

How to prevent catching the virus if it’s on your hands? The CDC recommends that when you wash those hands -- with soap and warm water -- keep going for 15 to 20 seconds. This is roughly equivalent to singing Row, row, row your boat… all the way through twice. You could get arrested for hanging out in a rest room that long.

RHYS: On the West Coast we seem to have become blase about it. Last spring we were passing around hand sanitizer and not shaking hands as a sign of peace in church. Now we're back to hugging again. My two granddaughters were home last week with flu. Was it swine flu, do they think? I asked. Probably, my daughter replied. They weren't very sick and I suppose it's good news if lots of kids have it mildly and will then be immune, but there's no vaccine available. There isn't even regular flu vaccine available, so there's not much we can do.

I did hear a recommendation that one gargle with salt water regularly and put a little alcohol inside the nostrils. Personally I go to the sauna at my health club. That degree of heat should zap most viruses!

HANK: I carry little packets of hand sanitizer, and I'm always swabbing my desk and my phone. And the phone in the edit booth. I do shake hands, but I know I hesitate, and afterwards I do kind of think about hand sanitizer. We drove a pal to work the other day, and when he coughed, I freaked. But when a grape fell on the floor of my office, and I picked it up and ate it. So, I guess it depends. Luckily, (in so many ways),I don't have a pet ferret.

JAN: Back from the doctor who told I'm in recovery from the swine flu. It was one really, really bad day. One not so good day, and a killer cold afterward. But hey, I got steroids!! Which of course, means no major league baseball for me for at least six months! -- good thing its off season.

HALLIE: No baseball. No ferrets. What's life coming to?

How nutty have you gotten? Take the Jungle Red swine flu quiz and find out just how sick are we...

1. When you meet someone, do you:
a. Shake hands (0)
b. Shake hands and within minutes spritz with a hand sanitizer (1)
c. Bump elbows (2)
d. Wave and say hello through a surgical mask (3)

2. If your eye itches do you
a. Rub it with your hand (0)
b. Rub it with a tissue (1)
c. Squint and suffer (2)
d. Wipe it down with hand sanitizer (3)

3. Your good friend invites you to a party. Do you:
a. Go and have a good time, as always (0)
b. Go but bring your own dishes and food and drink (1)
c. Go wearing a gas mask with a hepafilter (2)
d. Stay home--feels like you're coming down with something. Besides, who needs parties? (3)

4. When you have to sign your credit card bill, do you:
a. Use the pen provided (0)
b. Use the pen provided and then spritz your hand (1)
c. Spritz the pen with hand sanitizer and then use it (2)
d. Eschew the communal pen and use your own (3)

5. When you walk up a staircase, do you:
a. Hold onto the railing (0)
b. Pull your sleeve down over your hand and hold the railing (1)
c. Pull out glove that you have for just this purpose, put it on and hold onto the railing (2)
c. You’re tough—who needs railings? (3)

6. If someone in the room with you sneezes or coughs, do you:
a. Cringe (0)
b. Stop inhaling (1)
c. Duck and cover (2)
d. Gargle with hand sanitizer (3)

7. How many times in the last month have you felt sick enough to check your own temp?
a. None (0)
b. Once (1)
c. Three times (2)
d. Several times a week, in fact, right now I don't feel so good (3)

8. Have you stopped eating (drinking):
a. Food that someone else coughed over (0)
b. Water from a drinking fountain (1)
c. Water from the tap (2)
d. Pork (3)

How much are you obsessing over the flu?
If your TOTAL score is 0-4
**Go check your temperature right now - you've probably come down with it.
If you scored 5-15
**Nice try - but like the rest of us you'll probably get it, too
If you scored 16-24
**Getting H1N1 is probably the least of your worries