Brief thoughts on '42'

I'm no critic and I don't aspire to be one. I don't have a technical eye. I don't go to movies looking for flaws, inconsistencies or mistakes. I've never walked out on a film because, if I've paid money to be there, I might as well get the full value from the pretty people and bright colors on the screen. So if you're looking for a review of "42," move along.

Simply as a fan -- of baseball, of movies, of Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers (I realized years ago that there's something about that team that would've drawn me to it -- I loved it. I loved the costumes and the cars, the reproduced uniforms (even if they got the Brooklyn caps wrong), the computer-generated ballparks from Florida to Jersey City to Brooklyn and Pittsburgh. I thought it was wonderfully acted, even if Harrison Ford seemed like a caricature. Chadwick Boseman was stellar and Nicole Beharie devine. I can only imagine what Rachel Robinson thought seeing a part of her life dramatized on screen.

But what I think I loved most were the baseball scenes. (I don't know who choreographed them or what former players, other than C.J. Nitkowski, may have suited up.) This may be the best, the most realistic baseball choreography I've ever seen on film. It's heavy on game action, and maybe once -- one swing -- out of all those recreations did I think it looked awkward. The first time Boseman steps into the batter's box as a Montreal Royal to face the Dodgers in a spring exhibition and the pitch comes in high and tight felt so real. It sounded just like when you're playing catch and you lift your glove to catch a hard one at your ear -- that sound of the air whooshing around the seams and then the smack of the ball into the glove: Fffffffffssss-THWACK!

Digital reproduction of real -- and long-gone -- places has advanced so much that scenes in the old ballparks looked more like they were filmed on location with a soft lens than with an actor in front of a green screen. Maybe it's me, but I thought some of the scenes at Ebbets Field or Forbes Field make "Titanic" look like it was filmed in a bathtub. The ballparks looked familiar, like I'd remembered them from visits even though they were all gone more than a decade before I was born. But I love to look at (and sometimes collect) photos of these long-gone cathedrals, and I've "played" a few games at Ebbets and Forbes and the Polo Grounds on various versions of Xbox and PS3 baseball games. The movie brought the pictures to live and put the video games to shame, even if they gave Forbes Field a wooden (?) green outfield wall -- not brick, and no ivy -- and put the flagpole behind the center-field fence instead of on the field of play.

  

I thought -- minor spoilers in this paragraph -- that limiting the setting to 1945 through the end of the '47 season provided the perfect window to squeeze Jackie's story into a manageable 128 minutes. There is little politicalization -- there's no dialogue about what Jackie's trailblazing will mean for society as a whole. Other than the voiceover intro and just a few off-field scenes of segregation and racism, nearly all of that discourse is presented in the context of a ballgame. We didn't need to see anything before 1945, and ending the film with a key home run may have been hokey, but it worked for me. I'll let that slide. And yes, I realize the Dodgers didn't clinch the 1947 NL pennant in Pittsburgh and that the game that day didn't play out as depicted, but I found that out only after coming home to look it up. I doubt anyone not alive that day to remember it didn't realize the artistic license until they got home and delved into baseball-reference.com, either.

The epilogue -- a few more spoilers -- captivated me. In typical biopic fashion, we're given updates on what happened to the real-life people after the timeframe of the film. The characters are shown one by one, with text on the screen listing their accomplishments. We see several actors, in scenes not shown earlier in the film, in action until the image freezes and the text appears. The splendid "Life Is A Ballgame" by Sister Wynona Carr plays, and after several actors in character have flashed by, up pops a black-and-white photo of Rachel and Jackie -- the people, not the actors. Jackie's accomplishments are displayed alongside photos of the man himself. It was actually a bit emotional and very well done. The slideshow then transitions into recent MLB footage of current players wearing No. 42, with text explaining how the number was retired throughout Major League Baseball and is worn by everyone on April 15 each year. And with that, events that happened nearly 70 years ago, to and by a man who died 40 years ago, are put into the context of today's game.

  

Whatever its flaws, "42" did it for me -- as a baseball movie, a biopic and a dramatization of historical events. There was even a moment in the film, when Branch Rickey tells Robinson that he saw a white boy in a sandlot pretending to be Jackie Robinson, that sounded a lot like what I wrote  in a short story for a college class in 1997. If I had ever tried to write a screenplay, this subject would've been one I wanted to write about and parts of this movie would've been how I wanted to write it. And that's when I know I've loved a film.

Sarandon on 'Bull Durham'

Cool stuff here from The New York Times in which Susan Sarandon talks about three of her roles, including Annie Savoy in Bull Durham.

The erosion of The Sandcastle

A mural at the entrance to the Sandcastle

Things are not looking good in Atlantic City. In some ways, that's true of many aspects of the Boardwalk Empire (great show, by the way), but it's especially true of the old ballpark where the Surf used to play.

Just two seasons after the club folded, The Sandcastle (I always preferred that moniker to its corporate-jeweler name) is fading fast. This great article (and video) in the Press of Atlantic City documents the stadium's heartbreaking decay, including graffiti on the murals (one of which is shown above) that line the main stairway. I'm amazed that the pictures of the park just 21 months into its hibernation are quite similar to those of Paterson's Hinchliffe Stadium. Perhaps the salt air accelerates the damage when the structure is not regularly maintained.

I visited The Sandcastle just once, in August 1999 during my "Summer of Dan" -- the eight weeks I spent visiting and reviewing minor league ballparks in New Jersey, Staten Island and Fayetteville, N.C., where I looked at the state of the Cape Fear Crocs, who had been sold and would become the Lakewood BlueClaws in 2001. The Sandcastle was my last stop, park eight of eight, and I loved ending the series with the southernmost team in the state after all my previous trips (other than North Carolina) had taken me north.

The series appeared in the paper I was working for at the time, and while some of the headlines on the columns were a little to heavy on the puns for my tastes, the one used for the Atlantic City column now seems rather apt: "Traveling to Atlantic City for baseball is worth the gamble." Even though the team didn't make it in the end, I think it was worth the gamble. Atlantic City, once a more family-friendly resort, is now an adult playground, the place for bachelor parties and senior-citizen day trips by the busload. The baseball team provided an option that allowed the kids to come along.

From 1998-2006, the Surf played in the Atlantic League, winning the circuit's inaugural championship. In 2007, they moved to the Can-Am League, in part because the shorter schedule -- which runs from Memorial Day to Labor Day -- would better fit the tourist season in A.C. (and would cut operating costs). Despite increased attendance and a playoff appearance in 2007 and Cecil Fielder managing the team in 2008, the organization ceased operations in March 2009, just two months before the start of the Can-Am season.

Perhaps baseball can't last in Atlantic City, despite overwhelming support for other clubs across the Garden State. Or maybe independent baseball was the problem. Unfortunately, the unaffiliated ranks are likely the only option for another go at it in the Jersey Shore's southern capital. Though I can't find a reliable source, I would presume that Atlantic City lies within the Phillies' territorial rights, so they would have to approve any affiliated team that moved into the region. The best fits among the affiliated ranks would be the South Atlantic League, with the BlueClaws as a rival, or the Eastern League, of which the Trenton Thunder are a part. But the Phillies already have affiliates in those leagues, in Lakewood itself and Reading, Pa., respectively, and they're not likely to change.

So Atlantic City's Sandcastle will likely continue to decay until the economy improves and some enterprising developer buys the ballpark and the land and turns it into a strip mall or go-cart track or some other attraction. And I'll have just that one night at the yard and the photos in the slideshow below, presented with the melodramatic crooning of Ol' Blue Eyes. A bit cheesy, yes, but it feels appropriate this time. Or you can just view the photos here.

People still come, Ray

What's out there

I've been to heaven. Twice, in fact.

I first learned you could go there on your own time during my junior year of college. A friend of mine from western Illinois, Joe, had a photo of himself with several friends, a few I knew, together on the ballfield in the cornfield in Dyersville, Iowa. Until that point, I don't think I knew that the Field of Dreams was still there, still a pilgrimage site for fans of the game and the movie, still a little piece of heaven in the Iowa corn.

I'd first read about it a few years earlier, while in high school, but my first trip didn't come until some years later, during my post-graduate cross-country sojurn. I put Dyersville on the map as one of my definite stops and made it there on a perfect Saturday afternoon:

The map took me to Dyersville, the AAA took me north, signs took me east, and my deep-rooted love of baseball took me to Don Lansing’s farm and the Field of Dreams. It sat there, just like in the movie, as everyone expects it to — a little piece of heaven cut out of the cornfield. Turning down the driveway, seeing cars parked by the house, it all just felt right. Like on this perfect, warm sunny Iowa August day, that we should all be here, out in the field, standing at the plate, walking in the corn. Fathers pitched to sons, daughters took their cuts, mothers watched with cameras in hand. Some had brought chairs and sat in the shade along right field — there for several hours, no doubt. Everyone, it seemed, was smiling. People did come, and it was as they’d remembered it — maybe not form childhood, but from the movie. Out on the field, the men talked, chatted, joked together — a group of them may have come together. But standing there in perfect Iowa afternoon, I had the feeling that maybe they hadn’t known each other. Then, stepping on that field, they began to look familiar; they realized they were all fans — all kids again. And they talked like old buddies.

Everything from the movie came to life — the people on the field in pure enjoyment; the crunch of the gravel and red-dirt infield; the chirp of the crickets and rush of the wind; and the coarse rustle of the corn stalks tickled by the wind or brushed aside by the curious visitors investigating “what’s out there.” Before leaving, I magically remembered I had brought along a baseball tape, and I found James Earl Jones’ “People will come” speech. I sat there listening to it in stereo, for all the background sounds existed on that perfect Iowa afternoon.

The second trip was 10 times cooler. For his bachelor party, my friend Brad had a long May weekend of bars, baseball and cigars lined up, beginning with a reserved room at Chicago's ESPNZone, then a Cubs-Brewers game the following day (a cold, rain-delayed experience, though we did meet up with some nice folks in the left-field bleachers who graciously saved us some space; we ended up chatting with them and pondered when the Cubs would call up the pitching prospect who was lighting up the minor leagues, Mark Prior). Following the ballgame, we got a late start west, deciding on dinner at a Hooter's before we'd left Chicagoland and arriving at a new Super 8 or Comfort Inn just off U.S. 20 in Dyersville late that night. The next morning, we warmed up by playing catch in the parking lot as the stragglers in the group packed up and then -- after a quick breakfast at McDonald's during which we discussed Brad's brother's former soccer teammate, DeMarcus Beasley, and his prospects for that summer's World Cup -- headed off to the Lansings' farm.

Brad's "other friend Dan," as he still refers to him (to me) to this day, had called ahead to arrange for us to meet with Becky Lansing before we took the field. As the website explains, the Lansings have continued to offer use of the field from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., every day, from April through November, politely explaining that they do not take reservations for groups, individuals or events. But if we arrived early -- on a Monday in May especially -- she had said, we'd likely have the field to ourselves for an hour or so.

Though Dan, as the best man, organized the trip, the idea had been Brad's. "What I liked about the game is that everybody could play, everybody could relate to it," he told me afterward for a potential story I'd hoped to write about our experience. I never did, but I kept my notes, so now I'm doing something with them.

"I had friends there from my dorm in college," Brad said, "from the college newspaper, from work, from law school, and I had a brother at the game, too. That’s five different circles of friends, five different times of my life represented. When you have so many different groups, getting them to meld together can be really hard, particularly when their paths will only cross for a weekend. The people are thrown together, and with only a couple days it’s hard for people to get to know the others, hard to get to know them any more than beyond the typical superficial questions -- where are you from, what do you do, et cetera.

"But when you get together to play baseball, everybody knows what to do. You don’t have to preface the game by explaining the rules to anyone. It’s baseball. And after the game is over, everybody has something in common with each other -- they played a game of baseball together."



Not only did we play a game, but we got some one-on-one (group) time with Becky Lansing. Before taking the field, we sat ourselves down on the bleachers -- the same set along the first-base line with "Ray loves Annie" etched into the top bench -- as Becky gave us some of the backstory to how her farm was chosen, what filming was like, and what the next 13 years had brought.

"The Dubuque Chamber of Commerce and the Iowa Film Board came by in late 1987," she said. "They were looking for a long lane with a two-story white house. They looked at 250 farms from Georgia to Canada."

The Lansings' farm, which has been in Don Lansing's family for 105 years now (97 when we visited in '02) was almost perfect. The house -- in which Don himself was born -- was showing its years and needed a little work.

"The front of the house is the east side, away from the field," Becky told us. "So they put in a new door, fixed up the porch and put in bay windows."

Filming took 15 weeks during the summer of 1988, and the field wasn't supposed to remain when they were finished.

"It took four days to build the ballfield," Becky said. "What you see in the movie is what is happening. It covers three and a half acres. To a young farm family, losing that much corn might make a difference. It’s $7,000-8,000 worth of crops here [in 2002].

"The original contract with the studio was to have them put everything back -- replant all the corn -- after filming was finished. Next door, they put all the corn back in left field the week the movie premiered. A year and a half later, they put the field back in."

"Next door" is the neighbors' property, including left field. I first learned of the movie site in an article discussing that corner of the field (I believe it was in Beckett Baseball Card Monthly) in the early '90s. While the diamond, backstop, bleachers and farmhouse from the movie all sit on Don and Becky Lansing's land, left field was in fact cut out of the neighbors' corn. Parallel to the Lansings' lane leading to the field and farmhouse is another driveway. Between the two are a series of telephone poles and power lines that mark the property line. Since then, there have been two sides to the Field of Dreams: Drive down the right driveway and you're on Don and Becky's farm; buy from their souvenir stand and the money goes to help maintain the field. Drive down the left driveway and you're on "left field" land. Buy from that stand and the money goes into the bank.

"We pay Universal Studios royalties, a portion of the proceeds from the shop," Becky explained. "The rest of the money goes back into maintenance. This is not a money-making opportunity.

"Left field was leased to private investors, but our intensions were to keep it small and simple. They wanted to build a corn maze in left field, but you can get lost in my corn for free!"

Of course, in mid-May, there was no corn in which we could get lost. We had to settle for our imaginations, but otherwise, visitors to the site feel like they're in the movie.

"We work three times as hard to keep it that way," Becky said. "Corporate America comes in every year, but we turn them away. People notice every single detail if it changes from the movie.

"Donny and I do all the field maintenance. We close at 6 p.m. because the field needs to rest and we need to rest."

When it was time to play ball, we divided up into our predetermined teams -- the Yankees (Brad's favorite team since his days growing up in the Bronx suburb of Fort Wayne, Ind.) vs. the Cubs (Brad's adopted National League team from his post-college years in Chicago) for a nine-inning pickup game. Because Dan had ordered numbered T-shirts for each of us that we'd be taking home, I requested to join him on the Cubs, even though Brad, our friend Matt and most of the other Notre Dame grads would be on the Yankees (the Cubs consisted of Brad's Chicago friends, those from his recently completed first year of law school, and the friends of his brothers invited along for this outing to help fill out the teams). I still have that Cubs T-shirt, but doubt that would be the case had it been a navy-blue NY shirt.

The warmth of the morning sun was nullified by the cold wind whipping across the barren cornfields, so many of us were bundled up under our team shirts. I found swinging and throwing to be restricted, but I still managed to attempt an athletic, off-balance throw on a dribbler down the third-base line (the runner was safe, if I recall), collect a couple of base hits and drive in a run with a respectably deep (read: deep enough that no infielders had a shot and the center fielder didn't have to sprint in from his position) fly ball.

What made the morning so special was that, like in the movie, we were two teams of former players getting one more chance to play baseball on a private field in an idylic setting, something we could never be sure we'd be able to do again. And now, eight years later, I still have yet to take a baseball field with a glove on my hand and spikes on my feet and play nine-on-nine with overhand pitching. The closest I've come is regular batting practice/shagging flies with some friends from work these past few years or the occassional softball game among friends, but never the combination of nine-on-nine (or more) and overhand pitching. As we enjoyed ourselves, Becky spent some time watching, standing behind the backstop or beside the bleachers as we laughed and ran and swung and threw.

"The only two things that weren’t perfect that day were the final score and the fact that mid-May is too early for six-foot-tall corn stalks," Brad told me. "The game was close until the sixth or seventh, but they [the Cubs] broke it open after that. I had a chance to close the gap when I batted with the bases loaded and two outs in the seventh (I think), but I grounded out. What a waste. And it would have been cool to have had the opportunity to knock a ball into the corn stalks and watch it disappear like James Earl Jones. But those are minor complaints. After all, I still went 2-for-5."

The Cubs won, 15-3, even after some in-game trading in an attempt to even out the squads. My final line was 2-for-6, with that RBI and a run scored. I batted sixth and played third base. We kept score, and afterward Dan sent around the box score with all our names and batting averages listed. The pack rat that I am -- both digitally and physically -- I dug up my old laptop and inserted the -- get this -- floppy disk to transfer the box score and the file with Brad's comments onto a flash drive and then onto my current laptop. I found Becky's comments in one of the dozen reporter's notebooks I still have packed away. I'd always toyed with the idea of crafting a first-person account of our trip for a potential submission, such as to the Notre Dame alumni magazine, but I never truly made the effort. Now, with the farm up for sale, I wanted to get it all down.

We finished our game just as the first visitors to follow us began to arrive, but we took our time packing our things. Becky opened up the souvenir shed to take our donations (on a cold May weekday, it seems the business hours of the stand were customized to when someone showed up) and then allowed us where most visitors aren't allowed to go: Onto the porch of the farmhouse for a group photo she took with our cameras, mine included.

Looking back, we could've asked for more -- a warmer morning, a later date so that the corn was growing -- but had we gotten either of those, we probably wouldn't have had the field to ourselves for so long, or had the chance to visit so long with Becky. If more visitors had been there as we were preparing to leave, we might not have been allowed onto the porch for a photo. I'm not sure I'd change a thing about that day; I'd only ask for the chance to do it again. Hopefully, the new owners keep things the way they are.

"My husband’s favorite actor from the movie was James Earl Jones," Becky said eight years ago. "He said to us, 'What do you want for the farm?'"

I wonder if he's still interested. If only Brad, Matt, myself and a few others had the resources to pull together $5.4 million -- and someone to live on the farm and continue maintenance so that we could all reconvene there once a year for another game.

"Playing a game of baseball, I thought, was a better event for a bachelor party than the typical events," Brad said, "because after you’ve been to a few bachelor parties, your memories of them can run together. Bars in Chicago look pretty similar to bars in New York (although they do look a lot better than bars in South Bend -- trust me.) But how many times does a bachelor party involve playing in a baseball game?

"The point is, I realized that the bachelor party was one of the few instances I’d ever have where 18 guys I know had to do what I wanted. And what I wanted to do was play baseball with my friends. As you get older, how many more chances do you have to do that?"

As we now know, none so far. Brad and his wife have two children and live in Virginia, outside Washington, D.C., where they work. Brad's National League allegiance has shifted from the Cubs to the Nationals -- and now, it's the Nats that seem to be the team on the rise out of those two. I'm married, living in northern New Jersey, and working in New York. Matt remains close friends with the two of us and, married himself, lives in South Jersey, working in Trenton. The three of us have managed to get together at least once a year since then and have included ballgames in many of those meetings, but for those we're drinking beer and cheering on the home team, not putting on gloves and swinging bats.

As great as Brad's idea and Dan's planning were, all the credit to such a memorable trip goes to Don and Becky Lansing, simply for keeping the field. They had a once-in-a-lifetime experience in having a movie filmed at their home, and they could've quickly gone back to the way life was afterward, but they didn't. And it all started with the first visitor.

"The first person to come was from New York," Becky told us in 2002. "We were sitting down here on a Saturday afternoon and he just drove up the lane. He said he just saw the movie and had to stop by. It’s a pretty amazing story -- art imitating life and life imitating art."

They kept coming from there: 7,000 in the first year, doubling each year until topping out at 55,000 annually. After 20 summers, Don and Becky Lansing have earned their retirement.

"We hope to keep the farm the way it was portrayed in the movie," Becky said eight years ago. "We can’t promise it will always be that way when we get up to our retirement years, but right now it’s really important.

"Sometimes, we lose sight of the wonder of it all. When we do get a chance to talk to people, we get a chance to relive it."

Thank you for that, Don and Becky.

The Cobb Field story

Cobb Field (top) by trimworksconst; Dehler Park via Baseballparks.com

I put the Golden Globes on the backburner last night to watch Cobb Field: A Day at the Ball Park on MLB Network. Part of the Reel Hardball series ("Movies Out of Left Field"), the documentary chronicled a game day at the home of the Billings Mustangs in Montana back in 2007, Cobb Field's final year after six decades of American Legion baseball and six decades minus six years as a minor league park. The production offered much in the way of history and insight to the field's contribution to the national pastime.

The Cobb name in baseball usually prompts thoughts of the Georgia Peach, but perhaps not for students of Hollywood history. The Cobb name on the Billings ballpark came from Bob Cobb, a Billings native better known as the Tinseltown-based owner of the famous Brown Derby and the inventor of the Cobb salad. He had baseball in L.A., too, as the owner of the Pacific Coast League's Hollywood Stars. To raise money for the ballpark in his hometown, Cobb turned to his Hollywood connections for investments, getting money from Bing Crosby, among others.

A ballpark built in the '40s, however, doesn't offer much for the 21st century. By 2007, Cobb Field was the only ballpark in the eight-team Pioneer League that had not been replaced or renovated. The visitors' clubhouse consisted of little more than a bench beneath a high shelf along three walls. The visiting manager's "office" was nothing more than a plywood table attached to a wall, the cramped shower room contained a mere six units and the bathroom consisted of one sink, one urinal and one toilet -- all for a team of 20-plus players, coaches and traveling staff.

The nature of the short-season circuit, which starts play near the end of June and finishes just over a week into September, allowed for a unique circumstance for the Mustangs. Cobb Field was demolished in one week in September 2007 and its replacement, Dehler Park, was ready for the 2008 season -- on the same spot. Those fans who had been coming to N. 27th St. in Billings to watch baseball as children will continue to come to the same spot with their kids and grandkids. There may be no easier snapshot of the great distance from short-season A-ball to the Major Leagues than this Cobb-to-Dehler transformation of that plot of land.

Dehler Park shows up at the end of the movie for a comparison. Fans and staff are asked their thoughts and some wide shots provide a chance to compare and contrast. The photos above are the best I could find that showed a similar vantage point. Dehler is visibly smaller than its predecessor. The grandstand doesn't rise as high as Cobb's did, and the press box (not visible) fits into the concourse behind the plate rather than sitting perched atop the roof over the fans. Dehler, though, spreads out more down the lines, including grass berm seating. While Cobb fit 4,200 on its bleachers, Dehler has 2,571 seats and 500 bleachers to go along with the berm seating.

Over the years, Billings has seen the likes of George Brett, Paul O'Neill and Trevor Hoffman, and the movie features Toms River's own Todd Frazier. The game featured in the film was actually Frazier's professional debut after he was drafted from Rutgers. He singled in a run in his first at-bat, helping the Mustangs on their way to a victory on the featured night.

For those of us who have never seen a game in Billings (or Batavia or Greensboro or any other number of low-minor league towns), the film's relevance is in the fans' relationship with the ballpark and its team. As historic and quaint Cobb Field was, Billings probably needed a new ballpark to remain viable (here's the oft-used comparison) in an age where digital movies, the internet and increasingly technical leisure-time pursuits provide a less interactive entertainment experience. Dehler Park gives Billings what Cobb Field couldn't, just as Lakewood, N.J., did for the BlueClaws, who before 2001 were playing on a community field (it could hardly be called a stadium) in Fayetteville, N.C., as the Cape Fear Crocs. Fayetteville wouldn't approve a new ballpark, Lakewood did, and new ownership bought the franchise and moved it north. Billings won't have to worry about that now.

--

Callan Films' Cobb Field: A Day at the Ball Park airs again this morning at 10:30 ET on MLB Network and Thursday at 2:30 a.m. It's also available for purchase.

Firing up the DVR for Cobb Field

Cobb Field by trimworksconst on Flickr

As I have shown with Tiger Stadium, I'm always a bit saddened when a historic ballpark becomes obsolete and the only viable option for teams that want to remain relevant in their communities is to replace it. This goes both for places I've visited and those I never got to see -- or even knew existed.

That is the case with Cobb Field, formerly of Billings, Mont. I never knew about the place, and from the looks of things, it was what you'd expect from a Depression-era field -- little more than a grandstand stretching from first to third base, a rickety press box perched on top. Tonight, the field (named for the owner who brought the Billings Mustangs to town in 1948) will be featured in a documentary on MLB Network (preview) that will give an inside look at a day in the life of the old ballyard in its final season, 2007.

There's always something that draws me to these little fields, often tucked into the community, sometimes merely across the street from people's homes -- only a long foul ball away from a thump on the roof or a cracked window. I've visited two of them: Dwyer Stadium, home of the Batavia Muckdogs in upstate New York, and World War Memorial Stadium, the former home of the Greensboro Bats in North Carolina. The latter, dedicated in 1926, memorializes the first World War and was used in both Bull Durham (the bus pulls up in front during a road trip) and Leatherheads. (Photos to come in a future Photo Friday post.) I guess it's the whole "humble roots" aspect of the game and the quaint image of minor league life in the middle of the 20th century -- you know, back when ballplayers juiced themselves on little more than liquor and greenies.

Perhaps they would've been the Manhattan Maulers

So this just occurred to me. Have you seen the opening montage of Woody Allen's Manhattan? It's a slideshow of scenes from around New York -- pretty much all of them in Manhattan -- with Woody's voiceover and Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue." And yet, there at the 2:51 mark is Yankee Stadium ... in the Bronx. Heck, it's even the still frame of the embedded video!

In a change for baseball, A-Rod says something

An article in The New Yorker this week (and last week, this being a well-deserved double issue) sorts out some misconceptions when it comes to famous quotations.

Sherlock Holmes never said “Elementary, my dear Watson.” Neither Ingrid Bergman nor anyone else in “Casablanca” says “Play it again, Sam”; Leo Durocher did not say “Nice guys finish last”; Vince Lombardi did say “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing” quite often, but he got the line from someone else. Patrick Henry almost certainly did not say “Give me liberty, or give me death!”; William Tecumseh Sherman never wrote the words “War is hell”; and there is no evidence that Horace Greeley said “Go west, young man.”

Yogi Berra is mentioned in the piece as well, quite amusingly, in fact: "... when Yogi Berra said 'I didn’t really say everything I said' he was correct."

But at least it's refreshing to think that athletes and coaches once said something of substance when interviewed. Talking to high school football players after a game can often be painful for a reporter, and the media coaching scene in Bull Durham was funny because it's true. Baseball America does us a service when it recaps the minor league season each September with some of the best quotations from some of the game's best prospects.

So it was news today when Alex Rodriguez spoke frankly about his relationship with Derek Jeter and how it is no longer as tight as it once was. I particularly liked when he spoke freely about his contract: "I love being the highest-paid player in the game. It's pretty cool. I like making that money."

Personally, I'm not sure if this Rodriguez-New York relationship can work, but I did admire the player before he joined The Empire, and I'd prefer not to hate him, even if I hate the Yankees. Sadly, he'll enter the Hall of Fame as a Yankee, but at least he'll reclaim the all-time home run crown and remove the stain that is sure to affix itself sometime this season when it's no longer held by Hank Aaron. And then, by the time Albert Pujols is done, it might be held by a Cardinal for the first time since Babe Ruth knocked Roger Connor down a notch.