Baseball references in non-baseball films

[chicagowhitesox1173]

Is'nt Billy Crystal a Yankees fan. I'm guessing he became a Mets fan when the Yankees were losing alot.

re edited I just read he chose a Mets cap because the Mets made a big donation towards his comic relief and the Yankees balked at the idea.

[chicagowhitesox1173]

I looked up the card which the kid traded for in the movie Mask and it was a 1955 Rube Walker card, he needed the card to complete his set for the 1955 Dodgers. Kinda strange they would choose Rube Walker and not one of the bigger stars the Dodgers had.

I bet he wishes ebay was around back then although the card was prob worth more in 1974 when the real life kid was alive. You can buy a Rube Walker 55 topps now for under 10 bucks.

[Captain Cold Nose]

I looked up the card which the kid traded for in the movie Mask and it was a 1955 Rube Walker card, he needed the card to complete his set for the 1955 Dodgers. Kinda strange they would choose Rube Walker and not one of the bigger stars the Dodgers had.

I bet he wishes ebay was around back then although the card was prob worth more in 1974 when the real life kid was alive. You can buy a Rube Walker 55 topps now for under 10 bucks.

Aren't those always the last ones to get, though, the hard to find non-stars? I think Rocky (that was the kid's name) went for the big names first. In 1974, none of those cards were worth too much. That was even before there were card conventions.

[TonyK]

In Each Dawn I Die, James Cagney is a reporter sentenced to prison for a crime he didn't do. There is a prison yard scene where Cagney and a buddy are walking toward a prison wall. The wall just happens to be the centerfield fence of a baseball game being played by other inmates. The batter smacks a long fly ball that goes over this centerfield fence. Some of the inmates laugh as this is an automatic out because they have no way of retrieving the ball.

This was another classic Cagney film with fine acting (George Raft is also excellent) and some snappy dialogue between the inmates.

[crzblue]

I came here for....I forget but as is often the case, I get sidetracked reading other threads. Thread caught my attention 'cause I did a post in my blog about movies where Vin Scully is shown in movies or heard. I came out with 10. There are all non-baseball movies with the exception of For the Love of the game & Game 6.. http://crzblue.mlblogs.com/2012/01/2...lly-in-movies/ One of the movies was mentioned "Experiment in terror". The others are:
Bachelor in Paradise with Bob Hope & Lana Turner. Zebra in the Kitchen, Fireball 500, The Party (1968) Peter Sellers, Gavin MacLeod & the most recent one The Buket list in 2007.
.
Also a TV show that was not mentioned is Mr Ed. Mr Ed calls Leo Durocher and offers batting tips to the Los Angeles Dodgers. OH and I just remembered The Munsters where Herman Munster is a rookie. The Munster episode also features Leo Durocher.
Emma

[chicagowhitesox1173]

I recently watched the movie The River with Sissy Spacek and Mel Gibson and one of the unemployed workers was wearing a Phillies hat and another was wearing a Pirates batting helmet.

I still find it strange that grown men would wear batting helmets as fashion statements. Didnt Wild Bill Hagy always have a Orioles helmet while he drank his beer at games? Thats the other strange thing every character i've seen in movies with those batting helmets always resembles Wild Bill Hagy.

[Captain Cold Nose]

In 1963's Soldier in the Rain, Steve McQueen and Jackie Gleason trick some of the men on the base to fix up a baseball diamond so it can be used later.
Until that time, Eustice. Until that time.

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Didnt Wild Bill Hagy always have a Orioles helmet while he drank his beer at games? Thats the other strange thing every character i've seen in movies with those batting helmets always resembles Wild Bill Hagy.

AFAIK, Hagy always wore a straw cowboy hat.

[abolishthedh]

According to the 'Search thread' option, no one has mentioned the movie version of John Steinbeck's Cannery Row. Nick Nolte plays a fictional pitcher who retires prematurely and mysteriously after beaning a player, who becomes his bum-bound friend. Touching story, and it has Debra Winger as the female lead. I rented it from Netflix, and the movie had its merits.

[chicagowhitesox1173]

According to the 'Search thread' option, no one has mentioned the movie version of John Steinbeck's Cannery Row. Nick Nolte plays a fictional pitcher who retires prematurely and mysteriously after beaning a player, who becomes his bum-bound friend. Touching story, and it has Debra Winger as the female lead. I rented it from Netflix, and the movie had its merits.

I'm deff gonna check that one out if it's on netflix.

[SteveJRogers]

Just realized this is now a 6 page thread and NO MENTION of this bit from a 1945 film called The Naughty Nineties?

[EdTarbusz]

Lou Grant on the Mary Tyler Moore show: 'My dream was to play center field for the New York Giants in the Polo Grounds. I'm not a center fielder. There's no more New York Giants. And in 1964 they tore down the Polo Grounds.'

[Captain Cold Nose]

I'm deff gonna check that one out if it's on netflix.

IIRC, they actually do play a game in the movie. The movie is much closer to the book's sequel, Sweet Thursday, than it is to the book that gave the movie its name. It wasn't bad.

[chicagowhitesox1173]

I was watching old Breaking Bad reruns to get ready for tomorrows premiere and one of the episodes has a cartel member who was nicknamed "turtle" he was under some sort of witness protection program and and he talked about getting Derek Jeter memorbilia. Great show probably the best series i've ever watched.

[EdTarbusz]

If you listen to the radio broadcast in this scene closely, the 'game' is Cubs v. Yankees in the World Series, which is a major blunder because neither the Cubs nor the Yanks played in the World Series that year and Dillinger was killed in July. SO.......

The game being broadcast is a Tigers/Yankees game from 1934.

[EdTarbusz]

In the first season of Boardwalk Empire Arnold Rothstein is hounded by rumors that he is going to be indicted because of his alledged role in fixing the 1919 World Series.

[BeatEmBucs]

In the television series "ER", they did a live episode on Sept. 25, 1997. In one scene, the television in the doctors' lounge was showing the Cubs/Astros game. I remember quickly switching over to WGN and they really did have the game on live. ("ER" did the episode again live three hours later for the west coast. I wonder if the game was still going on -- it was in Houston, where it was well after midnight by then. Otherwise, what would be seen on the lounge TV?

I remember that because the Astros clinched the Central that evening, and I was out-voted 7-1 in the student union to watch ER over that game.

Another baseball reference had to be Growing Pains, especially considering it was about the "Seaver" family, and there was an episode where Mike blew off family bowling league night for a date, and the "Seavers" were getting beat by the "Koosman's" until Mike returns in the last minute to save the day. The writers of Growing Pains must've been Mets fans.

[Tadasimha]

In the premiere episode of "Elementary" (an American based version of "Sherlock"), Lucy Liu's Watson insists Holmes watch the Mets-Reds game with her. I'm not sure from what year the game is but Brandon Phillips is the 2nd baseman and I believe the pitcher was Bronson Arroyo.

Holmes states he enjoys the game but proceeds to tell Watson exactly how the game will end based upon his observance of the field. Naturally, it turns out that way.

[TonyK]

In Good Morning Vietnam, Robin Williams and other soldiers play a game of baseball with the Vietnamese people. They use melons instead of baseballs. What caught my eye was Robin Williams threw righthanded, but batted lefthanded.

[ol' aches and pains]

I don't believe anybody's mentioned Band Of Brothers. In the final episode, the soldiers are playing baseball when they get the news that the war is over.

[Macker]

In the recently-released Jack Reacher, the title character, played by Tom Cruise, explains to someone that he uses Yankee second basemen as aliases. He first claims to be Jimmie Reese and later Aaron Ward.

[Patrick Murtha]

I am a new member of the board, and a film enthusiast. I have looked through this thread with great interest. There are a couple of films I can think of which I don't believe have been mentioned, unless I missed them (which is always possible).

There is a very brief Brooklyn Dodgers scene, really just a glimpse, right at the beginning of Frank Capra's Arsenic and Old Lace, which is set in Brooklyn.

More importantly, Akira Kurosawa's sensational 1949 film noir, Stray Dog, features a bravura stake-out sequence during a Yomiuri Giants vs. Nankai Hawks game, that utilizes actual game and Korakuen Stadium footage. The sequence begs comparison with the climactic sequence of Blake Edwards's Experiment in Terror (1962), already mentioned in the thread, set during an actual Giants-Dodgers game at Candlestick Park (August 18, 1961).

Henshu Techo of the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper wrote about the Stray Dog sequence in a June 15, 2004, column:

http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2...6-21660658_ITM

In one of the scenes from Akira Kurosawa's film "Nora-inu" (Stray Dog), two police detectives played by Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura chase a gunrunner into a packed Korakuen Stadium, the predecessor of Tokyo Dome.

At the time described in the movie, stars including Tetsuharu Kawakami and Shigeru Chiba were still playing pro baseball, impressing the spectators with their batting, running and fielding.

The game shot in the movie was between the Yomiuri Giants and Nankai Hawks. But this was not a game in the Japan Series, which features a contest between two league champions.

The movie premiered in October 1949. A month later, the Pacific League was established. With the formation of the Central League soon after, the two-league system of Japanese pro baseball was in place.

The scene in the movie is thus a priceless reminder of the sunset years of the single-league system...

The film's cameraman shot the vivid facial expressions of spectators as they were variously delighted and disappointed by the twists and turns of the game. The stadium depicted in the film is symbolic of the "blue skies" that emerged over a demoralized postwar Japan that was scarred by the devastation wrought in the war, crime and poverty.

As the columnist mentions, 1949 was the last year of the single major level Japanese Baseball League. Of the 8 teams that year, the Giants came in first (85-48-1) and the Hawks fourth (67-67-1). In 1950, the major level of Japanese professional baseball was re-organized into two leagues of 8 teams each, the Central and the Pacific, with the Giants in the former and the Hawks in the latter. The Japan Series between the winners of the two leagues was held for the first time that year, modeled after the American World Series (best of seven).

This web-page offers interesting then-and-later photographs of the Experiment in Terror sequence:

http://reelsf.com/experiment-in-terr...at-candlestick

[Captain Cold Nose]

That's one Kurosawa film I have not seen. I've only seen the obvious "period" pieces. 'll definitely have to check it out.

[Patrick Murtha]

That's one Kurosawa film I have not seen. I've only seen the obvious "period" pieces. 'll definitely have to check it out.

Kurosawa directed a number of contemporary pictures, of which four - Stray Dog, Drunken Angel (1948), The Bad Sleep Well (1960), and High and Low (1963) - are usually considered noir, and all four of those are terrific films. Scandal (1950), a "dramedy" about celebrities hounded by paparazzi, is very entertaining and, because of its subject matter, still thoroughly fresh and pertinent today. Kurosawa was an amazing director no matter what material he put his hand to.

[Phantom Dreamer]

In Safety Not Guaranteed, a woman's ex-husband is a ballplayer that was traded to the Marlins.