by Michael Lyons
“[Baseball] breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall all alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.”
- A. Bartlett Giamatti, Former Commissioner of Major League Baseball
Never has such a sentiment summed up baseball so perfectly. It is back, just when we need it, right here in the middle of spring. This pastime means so much more to so many than a sport; it means we are heading into those days when it fills the "afternoons and evenings."
Hollywood has understood our special connection with baseball, and several popular baseball movies are celebrating anniversaries this year.
Here they are to make the season even more winning:
Field of Dreams (1989) - 35th Anniversary
If you've ever uttered, "If you build it, he will come," in a low whisper, you have been impacted by this ethereal film.
It is the story of a farmer, Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner), who plows under part of his cornfield in Iowa so that the ghosts of legendary baseball players can all come back to play the game again. He winds up not only connecting himself and others, including a reclusive author (James Earl Jones) and an aging doctor (Burt Lancaster), with the magic in life, not just in baseball.
In the film's emotional finale, Ray is also able to reconcile with his father.
Director Phil Alden Robinson's Field of Dreams has connected with audiences so much that the baseball field in Iowa that was used for the film still stands as a tourist destination to this day (and in 2021, MLB held a game on the field between the White Sox and the Yankees).
Thirty-five years later, Field of Dreams is a quiet, purposefully paced film that doesn't surface much anymore. One that goes beyond its subject matter to connect with all of us who yearn for a past that seems to have faded away like a ghost.
Major League (1989) - 35th Anniversary
When a former Vegas showgirl, Rachel Phelps (Margaret Whitton), inherits the (then) Cleveland Indians, she looks to move the struggling team to another city, and puts together the worst team ever.
She hires Jake Taylor (Tom Berenger), a washed-up catcher playing baseball in Mexico, Roger Dorn (Corbin Bernsen), a third baseman just looking to retire, and Ricky "Wild Thing" Vaughn (Charlie Sheen), an out-of-control pitcher with bad eyesight, among other ragtag recruits.
Of course, the opposite happens in director David S. Ward's raunchy underdog story, where the team winds up having a comeback season in a movie that speaks to baseball fans who stick by their teams, even in their most underdog moments.
Oh yes, the film features some great lines from real-life baseball player turned-actor Bob Uecker as a sarcastic sports broadcaster.
The Natural (1984) - 40th Anniversary
Baseball gets raised to mythological levels, and Barry Levinson's beautifully crafted classic adaptation of Bernard Malamud's novel celebrates that.
Robert Redford is Roy Hobbs, a past-his-prime rookie who comes out of nowhere to save the struggling fictional team, the New York Knights. This film is filled with elements of everything that range from fairy tales to superhero origin stories. The Natural boasts an impressive cast that includes Robert Duvall, Glenn Close, Kim Basinger, Wilford Brimley, Robert Prosky, Richard Farnsworth and Barbara Hershey.
With messages of second changes, fate, and hope, The Natural also features incredible cinematography from Caleb Deschanel that gives each scene the look of a painting and a majestic score by Randy Newman; this film never fails to fill one with a sense of wonder around baseball.
Three anniversaries, three baseball movies, each one of them different in their celebration of the game. But all of them are perfect for viewing this season before baseball leaves us when we "need it most."
Looking for something NEW to read? My brand-new book, Magic Moments: Stories, Lessons & Memories from a Twenty-Year Career at Walt Disney World, is now available on Amazon!
And for more of my writing and podcasts, and my first book, Drawn to Greatness: Disney's Animation Renaissance, head over to my website, Words From Lyons!
