Why bother wasting time watching Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, Bang the Drum Slowly – or Joe E. Brown cavorting in Fireman, Save My Child, Elmer the Great, and Alibi Ike? Instead, you could turn on the tube and take in a baseball game – ANY baseball game, even one between two second-division nines in the dog days of August.

Granted, these queries are exaggerations. But they only are slight ones. In truth, some baseball fan-atics see no purpose in savoring motion pictures with ballyard settings or references. Their argument is that baseball-on-screen has nothing whatsoever to do with real baseball. These detractors will emphasize only the factual errors in the screenplay, as if all baseball films are scripted by writers who neither understand nor care about the game. This simply is not so.

Conversely, some movie buffs become panic-stricken at the thought of appreciating sports in general, and baseball in particular. They contend that baseball is boring, is sleep-inducing. A film like Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla is far more intoxicating. But if you’ve ever stumbled upon a screening of Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla, you will see that this too simply is not so.

The book that you are about to peruse brings together these two separate yet inexorably connected domains: the sport of baseball and the art and creativity of film, television, and other forms of entertainment. Undeniably, for well over a century, acting onscreen and swatting horsehides have been interwoven – and innumerable real-life ballplayers have appeared in the movies, on Broadway, in vaudeville, and, eventually, on television.

Some baseball folk have had extensive careers in the performing arts. Such a list begins with Mike Donlin, Chuck Connors, Bob Uecker, Edgar “Blue” Washington, Jim Thorpe, Pat Flaherty, Greg Goossen, Art Passarella, John Beradino (whose surname while he played baseball was Berardino), and Bernie Williams. Show biz-luminaries who never played in the majors – they include Gene Autry, Ron Shelton, Thomas Tull, DeWolf Hopper, Digby Bell, Joe E. Brown, Buster Keaton, and Happy Felton – are among the celebs with major baseball connections. In the research for Meet the Mertzes, a double biography of I Love Lucy’s Vivian Vance and super-baseball-fan William Frawley, more of Frawley’s baseball buddies were tracked down and interviewed than his Hollywood colleagues. In 2014, in a brief chat with Bill Murray at the Toronto International Film Festival, I queried this ardent Chicago Cubs aficionado as to when his team would cop the World Series. His ever-so-optimistic response was: two years. Wouldn’t you know that Mr. Murray was spot-on in his prediction!

Other big-name players or managers occasionally have appeared onscreen, often as themselves, in starring or featured roles – or, in some cases, a single starring or featured role. Among them are John McGraw, Jackie Robinson, Lou Gehrig, Ty Cobb, and Babe Ruth. In particular, The Bambino’s larger-than-life, overgrown teddy-bear personality registers well onscreen. If he had not been a ballplayer, he might have made an effective sidekick or foil for any number of screen comedians. One can imagine The Three Stooges being rechristened The Four Stooges, with Moe, Larry, and Curly being joined by The Babe as they gleefully hurl pies at one another, tweak each other’s noses, and knock each other with mallets.

Occasionally, an unlikely personage even pops up onscreen and references the sport. Back in 2016, My X-Girlfriend’s Wedding Reception, an obscure low-budget comedy from 1999, became a hot ticket. The reason: In its cast is none other than Bernie Sanders, presidential contender. He is billed as “Congressman Bernie Sanders,” and he plays a rabbi by the name of “Manny Shevitz.” (Now remember, this is a comedy.) At one point, Rabbi Manny is addressing the wedding guests. He begins by observing: “Today we celebrate life, a very sacred part of life.” That’s fair enough coming from a religious leader, but then Rabbi Manny, after declaring that he, like the man who plays him, was born and raised in Brooklyn, immediately goes on a riff about the tragedy of the Dodgers leaving the Borough of Churches. Then, as if he is addressing a convention of sports fans rather than a wedding party, he segues into a criticism of baseball free agency.

Clusters of big-league nines also have been featured in movies: the Cleveland Indians in The Kid From Cleveland (1949); the Los Angeles Dodgers in The Geisha Boy (1958); the New York Yankees in Safe at Home! (1962); the Dodgers and San Francisco Giants in Experiment in Terror (1962). Countless hitters and hurlers from Joe DiMaggio and Satchel Paige to the two Wallys – Hebert and Hood – have made token cameo appearances. Consequently, for researching this book and selecting its content, make no mistake: If we had set out to offer bios of every ballplayer who ever made even a single appearance in a single motion picture, the result would be a mini-encyclopedia. The purpose here is to offer a general survey of the connection between baseball and entertainment along with a range of select topics, from baseball on television shows and in Coca-Cola commercials to Jim Bouton’s Ball Four TV series.

Anecdotes connecting ballplayers and movies are endless. Back in 2011, a piece on The Jackie Robinson Story (1950) and how it is a reflection of its era was published in NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture.1 While preparing the article, I scrutinized its credits on the Internet Movie Database and there, on this particular cast list, was a familiar name: Dick Williams, who is listed as “Jersey City Pitcher/Second Baseman (uncredited).” Was this the Dick Williams, who now is a Baseball Hall of Famer? Perhaps it might be because Williams started out in the Brooklyn Dodgers organization, which was involved in the film’s production. Plus, upon a replay of The Jackie Robinson Story on DVD, that “uncredited” actor certainly resembled a young Dick Williams. But where was the proof? How did Williams become connected to the film? Well, it just so happened that the Hall of Fame Classic was momentarily being played in Cooperstown. Dick Williams was in attendance, and he was cornered and asked about the film. Even though The Jackie Robinson Story had been made over six decades earlier, Williams recalled it vividly and was quoted in the piece.

Additionally, beyond Williams’s participation in The Jackie Robinson Story, and beyond the entertainment quotient in this or any film, motion pictures serve as reflections of history and the culture from which they emerged. And The Jackie Robinson Story is not the lone film that connects baseball and mid-twentieth-century America. Far from it. One of innumerable examples: Attitudes relating to US involvement in World War II at different moments in time are mirrored in the baseball sequences in Woman of the Year (1942), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), and Three Stripes in the Sun (1955). Films can also serve as valuable educational tools: A League of Their Own (1992) almost singlehandedly revived interest in the long-extinct All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.

However, the essence of this book is the link between the real and the reel. And most tellingly, real-world baseball personalities occasionally offer knowing winks to savvy viewers. In Big Leaguer (1953), Carl Hubbell (playing “Carl Hubbell”) arrives in spring training to evaluate New York Giants prospects. In the climactic game, with the Giants behind 7-4 in the ninth inning, King Carl perceptively notes: “The game’s now getting interesting.” In Three Stripes in the Sun, Chuck Connors appears as a GI stationed in postwar Japan who pitches in a game between the Americans and Japanese. Before the contest, as per custom, the Japanese players remove their caps and bow; they are followed by the umpires, and then the Americans. After the ritual, Connors’s character comments: “What would Durocher say if he saw this?”

Some are intentionally funny: In a 1985 TV version of Casey at the Bat, Joe (Bob Uecker, he of the lifetime .200 batting average), an announcer, asks Casey (Elliott Gould) what it feels like to hit a baseball. Ernie (Howard Cosell), a fellow broadcaster, quips: “That’s something Joe never experienced in his life.” Others are unintentionally sad and ironic: In Rawhide, a 1938 sagebrush saga, Lou Gehrig stars as himself; at the outset, he catches a train at Grand Central Station and tells reporters: “I’m gonna wallow in peace and quiet for the rest of my life. I’m gonna hang up my spikes for a swell old pair of carpet slippers.”

If you take pleasure in everything from privileged peeks at the post-World War II Cleveland Indians and newly-minted Los Angeles Dodgers to Don Drysdale cast as “Don Drysdale” on TV’s The Donna Reed Show, Leave It to Beaver, and The Brady Bunch, you surely will savor watching and relishing baseball on the big and small screens. And you certainly will find much to enjoy, and much to discover, as you pore over this book.  

ROB EDELMAN is the author of Great Baseball Films and Baseball on the Web (which Amazon.com cited as a Top 10 Internet book), and is a frequent contributor to Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game. He offers film commentary on WAMC Northeast Public Radio and is a longtime Contributing Editor of Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide and other Maltin publications. With his wife, Audrey Kupferberg, he has coauthored Meet the Mertzes, a double biography of Vivian Vance and super-baseball fan William Frawley, and Matthau: A Life. His byline has appeared in Total Baseball, The Total Baseball Catalog, Baseball and American Culture: Across the Diamond, NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture, The National Pastime: A Review of Baseball History, The Baseball Research Journal, and histories of the 1918 Boston Red Sox, 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers, 1947 New York Yankees, and 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates. He is the author of a baseball film essay for the Kino International DVD Reel Baseball: Baseball Films from the Silent Era, 1899- 1926; is an interviewee on several documentaries on the director’s cut DVD of The Natural; was the keynote speaker at the 23rd Annual NINE Spring Training Conference; and teaches film history courses at the University at Albany (SUNY).

• Read more: Find all essays in From Spring Training to Screen Test in the SABR Research Collection online
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Notes

1 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/469498/pdf

For indeed, baseball on the small screen transcends game broadcasts and recaps on the evening news. Take, for example, ballplayers appearing in commercials. Back in the 1950s and ’60s, the inimitable Yogi Berra peddled the Yoo-Hoo chocolate drink (“Who says Yoo-Hoo’s just for kids?”); more recently before his death, he advertised AFLAC, the supplemental insurance provider. (“And they give you cash, which is just as good as money.”) Ballplayers have been associated with a rainbow of products, from Mr. Coffee (Joe DiMaggio) to Advil (Nolan Ryan) to Nike (Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Ken Griffey Jr., Don Mattingly, Bo Jackson …). An iconic but long-retired athlete even can win new fame among the emerging generations by appearing in a popular television ad. Such is the case with Joe D. He first became the Mr. Coffee spokesperson in 1974, 23 years after ending his playing career and six years after Simon and Garfunkel asked, in the lyrics of the chart-topping song “Mrs. Robinson,” “Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?” To many of those growing up in the 1970s, Joltin’ Joe was more identified as the pitchman for Mr. Coffee than as the New York Yankees Hall of Famer who fashioned a 56-game hitting streak, or even as Marilyn Monroe’s ex-husband.

Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays in a 1980 Blue Bonnet margarine commercial posed wearing bonnets eating corn with a tub a margarine in the foreground. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)

The list of ballplayers hawking products on TV is endless. In one comical ad, bonnet-clad, corn-chomping Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays harmonize the lyrics “Everything’s better with Blue Bonnet on it.” In another, Billy Martin and George Steinbrenner argue the merits of Lite Beer from Miller, with the manager claiming that the product is “less filling” and the owner overriding him with the opinion that it “tastes great.” In one ad, Don Drysdale hypes a series of baseball cards, found on Post cereal boxes, which feature the likenesses of 200 star players; in another, he shells for Poolsaver, a motorized swimming-pool cover. A veritable all-star team covering the generations – CC Sabathia, Evan Longoria, Jim Thome, Carlton Fisk, Lou Piniella, Rickey Henderson, Rollie Fingers, Randy Johnson, Ozzie Smith – join up for a Field of Dreams-inspired Pepsi ad. And so on …

In recent decades, the latest World Series hero or MLB icon will strut across a stage and heartily grasp hands with a late-night TV host. One of countless examples: In a piece penned in 2014, when David Letterman announced his retirement from late-night television, ESPN’s Jim Caple surveyed his baseball connection. Back in 1986, Letterman spent an entire show paying homage to Harmon Killebrew. Ted Williams was a guest in 1993; Hank Aaron appeared on several occasions; Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, and Andy Pettitte celebrated their World Series triumph in 2009; and Bud Selig and David Ortiz were on the show in 2013. Various Letterman “Top 10 Lists” highlighted the sport. In one, Curt Schilling recited the “Top 10 Secrets Behind the Red Sox 2004 Comeback”; topping the list was “We got Babe Ruth’s ghost a hooker and now everything’s cool.” Regarding the “Top 10 Good Things About a Possible Baseball Strike,” Letterman quipped, “Fun to think with each passing day Alex Rodriguez is out another 85 grand”; one of the “Top 10 Things Going Through A-Rod’s Mind” after he was hit by a 3-and-0 pitch in his left bicep was, “Hey, that’s my injection arm.” But the host not only spotlighted baseball celebs. On one 1985 show, he referred to Terry Forster as a “fat tub of goo” – and the chunky relief pitcher eventually came on the show. He arrived onstage chomping on a “David Letterman sandwich,” which he described as a delicacy with “a lot of tongue on it.” Forster admitted that while in the bullpen he would exchange autographed baseballs for hot dogs with fans; his favorite ballyard was “Houston,” where “big tubs of beer” could be purchased for “a buck seventy-five.”1

These days, the home-run derby has become a staple of the All Star Game TV lineup; back in 1960, Home Run Derby was a TV series that featured sluggers from Hank Aaron and Bob Allison to Wally Post and Willie Mays battling each other in home run-hitting contests filmed at Los Angeles’ Wrigley Field, a conveniently located venue employed in endless baseball films and TV shows. Conversely, in the medium’s earliest years, so many shows were broadcast live from New York City-based studios – and quite a few New York Yankees, New York Giants, and Brooklyn Dodgers made appearances. One even was the first-ever “mystery guest” on What’s My Line? (1950-1967), the popular prime-time CBS game show. He was Phil Rizzuto, the beloved Bronx Bomber “Scooter,” and the date was February 2, 1950. Years before he morphed into an aging self-caricature on Yankees broadcasts whose “holy cannoli” banter was at once cherished and lampooned, Rizzuto was quiet and serious-minded in this and his other What’s My Line? appearances. And he was far from the lone big leaguer to be seen on the show; before the end of 1950, on June 21 and August 16, Dizzy Dean and Jackie Robinson were “mystery guests.” During the show’s early years, a lengthy roster of the ballplayers guesting on What’s My Line? were affiliated with the New York nines. If non-New York players appeared – on June 24, 1956, 11 Cincinnati Reds comprised the “mystery guest” – it was because they were passing through town. On that date, the Reds had battled the Dodgers in an Ebbets Field twin bill.2

Since the medium’s earliest years, baseball has had a presence in a range of TV series episodes. Some showcase top Tinseltown talent. In 1956 – almost two decades before its screen version – “Bang the Drum Slowly” was presented “live from New York” as a segment of The United States Steel Hour (1953-1963). Paul Newman, then a budding Hollywood superstar, plays Henry Wiggen, “left-hand pitcher for the New York Mammoths” who won 26 games in ’52, while Albert Salmi and George Peppard are cast as Bruce Pearson and Piney Woods.3 The year before, the legendary John Ford helmed “Rookie of the Year,” broadcast on Screen Directors Playhouse (1955-1956); the teleplay involves Mike Cronin (John Wayne), a cynical small-town sportswriter who determines that a hot young New York Yankee rookie is the son of an ex-star who was thrown out of baseball for taking a bribe.4Then in 1962, Ford directed “Flashing Spikes,” an episode of Alcoa Premiere (1961-1963), which features James Stewart as Slim Conway, an ex-big leaguer wrongly banned from baseball for taking a bribe and accused of corrupting a young phenom. The program is “Presented by Fred Astaire,” who also narrates. Joining Stewart in the cast are Don Drysdale, playing a pitcher named Gomer – rest assured that his surname is not Pyle; Vin Scully as “The Announcer”; Art Passarella as “The Series Umpire”; Vern Stephens as “The 1st Baseball Player”; John Wayne’s son, Pat; and The Duke himself, billed as “Michael Morrison” and cast as “The Marine Sergeant.” (Wayne’s birthname was Marion Morrison.)5

“Flashing Spikes” is not the only teleplay in which real-life baseball personalities mix with actors. One example is “High Pitch,” an original mini-musical a là Damn Yankees that was broadcast in 1955 on Shower of Stars (1954-1958). I Love Lucy’s William Frawley, himself a famed baseball fan-atic, plays Gabby Mullins, manager of the Brooklyn Hooligans, a perennial last-place nine. Vivian Vance, who was Ethel to Frawley’s Fred Mertz, is Mullins’s wife. In the opening scene, a ballgame is being broadcast on television. Mel Allen, the show’s “special guest,” is the announcer. Coming to the plate is Ted Warren (Tony Martin), described by Allen as “the big slugger of the Spartans who once played for the Hooligans.” Warren promptly homers, and Mel promptly interviews Mullins.6

(Frawley brings his love of the sport to Fred Mertz, his I Love Lucy character. In “Lucy Is Enceinte,” the classic 1952 episode in which Lucy tells Ricky she is pregnant, Fred enters with a ball, bat, glove, and New York Yankees cap. He hands the latter three to Lucy, “for my godson.” Regarding the baseball, he adds: “And wait’ll you see the name on this. That’s the name of the best ballplayer the Yankees ever had.” “Uh, Spalding,” Lucy blurts out, after glancing at it. “C’mon, honey, turn it around,” Fred instructs. “Oh, Joe DiMaggio,” Lucy declares. “You betcha,” Fred responds, taking a mock batting stance. “Ol’ Joltin’ Joe himself.” Indeed, Frawley might have suggested this dialogue, as he and the Yankee Clipper were close friends.)7

The Pride of the Yankees (1942), starring Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig, is perhaps the most beloved baseball film of its era. But it is not the lone Hollywood property to spotlight Gehrig, his wife, Eleanor, and the disease that doomed him. Over two decades before A Love Affair: The Eleanor and Lou Gehrig Story (1977), a made-for-TV movie, another Gehrig teleplay – “The Lou Gehrig Story” – was an episode of Climax! (1954-1958). The program, which dates from 1956, bookends footage of the real Gehrig on July 4, 1939, the day in which he was honored at Yankee Stadium, with images of him at bat and in the field. Wendell Corey plays Gehrig, Jean Hagen is Eleanor, and the story spotlights their deep affection. “I just can’t hit anymore,” the perplexed Yankee tells his worried wife. “If I can’t play ball anymore … I’ll learn to do something else.” Ellie tells him, “You’re it. You’re the works…,” adding that it “hasn’t got anything to do with your batting average. …” But Lou is obsessed with breaking out of his slump and endlessly watches footage of him homering off Dizzy Dean. A hardnosed – and fictional – young Yankee named Rusty (Russell Johnson) lambastes him for his play, insisting that “the great Gehrig” be benched, while Bill Dickey (Harry Carey Jr.), his best friend and teammate, steadfastly supports him. However, after not feeling pain after accidentally pouring hot coffee over his hand and then tripping and falling, it is clear that Gehrig is battling more than a batting slump.8

One of the more intriguing early baseball episodes – this one featuring no ballplaying celebrity guests – is “The Mighty Casey,” a 1960 segment of The Twilight Zone (1959-1964). “The Mighty Casey” is the story of the lowly Hoboken Zephyrs, a once-upon-a-time major-league nine whose ballyard, as host-narrator Rod Serling explains, has become a “mausoleum of memories.” “We’re back in time now,” he adds, and the setting is tryout day in Hoboken, New Jersey, where one of the wannabes is Casey, a left-handed hurler. What makes Casey special is that he is not human; he is a robot who, as his creator notes, has “only been in existence three weeks.” Casey is signed by the Zephyrs and promptly fans 18 batters and pitches a three-hit shutout. But upon his being beaned, a doctor determines that he has no heart. In order to qualify as a pro, Casey is operated on and given one. But with a heart, he no longer is mighty: He is just another ordinary athlete who has difficulty fanning opposing hitters. Despite its fantasy element, “The Mighty Casey” features references to real baseball stars. Casey is not intimidated by Joe DiMaggio because he has never heard of Joe D. The robot is described as having the talent of “three Bob Fellers.” The baseball commissioner declares that Zephyrs opponents will be angered by Casey’s origin, noting that “the other clubs ’er gonna scream bloody murder. I could just hear Durocher now.”9

The episode was tinged by tragedy. Paul Douglas originally played “Mouth” McGarry, the Zephyrs skipper who is described by his general manager as possessing the “widest mouth in either league.” Elements of “The Mighty Casey” are reminiscent of Douglas’s two baseball films: It Happens Every Spring (1949), involving a college professor-turned pitcher (played by Ray Milland) whose Casey-like hurling wins ballgames; and the original Angels in the Outfield (1951), in which Douglas plays a McGarry-like manager. However, right after filming the show, Douglas died of a heart attack. He looked perpetually haggard in his scenes and, as Serling stated, “We were watching him literally die in front of us.” So the episode was reshot, with Jack Warden replacing Douglas.10

A couple of years before the filming of “The Mighty Casey,” the Brooklyn Dodgers had relocated to Los Angeles – and the team now was a stone’s throw from California’s then-burgeoning television production. Granted, non-Dodger names kept popping up on TV shows: Mickey Mantle, for example, appeared as himself in “Second Base Steele,” a 1984 episode of Remington Steele (1982-1987), and “The Field,” a 1989 episode of the Bob Uecker sitcom Mr. Belvedere (1985-1990); and in 1971 even guested on Hee Haw (1969-1997), the country-oriented comedy-variety show. And Jason Giambi played a New York cabdriver in The Bronx Is Burning (2007), an eight-episode ESPN miniseries depicting the 1977 New York Yankees season. But given the opening of the West to big-league baseball, a host of Los Angeles Dodgers began popping up on TV series. (Dodgers players en masse are seen in a number of films, including 1958’s The Geisha Boy, a Jerry Lewis comedy, and 1962’s Experiment in Terror, a thriller. The Geisha Boy features an exhibition game between the Dodgers and a Japanese nine, with Pee Wee Reese, Charlie Neal, Jim Gilliam, Gil Hodges, Gino Cimoli, Carl Furillo, Duke Snider, Carl Erskine, and Johnny Roseboro appearing in brief color clips. The finale of Experiment in Terror is set in Candlestick Park, where the Dodgers are battling the San Francisco Giants. During the game there are expressive close-ups of Don Drysdale taking signs from his catcher, nodding, winding up, and pitching. Giant Harvey Kuenn is seen cracking a double; he is followed to the plate by Felipe Alou. Dodger Wally Moon appears in close-up as he clutches a bat. He beats out an infield hit to shortstop Jose Pagan and Vin Scully describes the ensuring rhubarb, whose participants include Giants Mike McCormick, Ed Bailey, Willie McCovey, and Joe Amalfitano.)

Among the biggest Dodgers names to appear on the small screen is the aforementioned Don Drysdale. Not all his TV appearances were in acting roles. He and his then-bride Ginger (whom he divorced in 1982) are seen in a February 26, 1959, episode of You Bet Your Life (1950-1961). “In case there may be some isolated listener who has never heard of Don Drysdale, he just happens to be one of the greatest pitchers in the world today and he happens to be playing for the Los Angeles Dodgers” was how George Fenneman, the show’s announcer, introduced the 22-year-old pitcher to host Groucho Marx. As the newlyweds kibitz with Groucho, Ginger recalls first meeting Don and how they were engaged 17 days later.11

That November Drysdale and two “impostors” were guests on To Tell the Truth (1956-1968). “One of these men is a pitcher for the world champion Los Angeles Dodgers,” an announcer informs the audience; in this pre-mass-media era, it was logical that none but the most diehard baseball fan would immediately recognize the ballplayer. But Don Ameche, one of the four panelists, did, and disqualified himself. The others – Monique Van Vooren, Kitty Carlisle, and Tom Poston – all correctly selected the real Drysdale, with Carlisle (who admitted that she never had seen a baseball game) explaining her pick by declaring that he somehow “has that baseball look.”12

On occasion Drysdale was joined by Dodgers teammates. Five of them – Ron Perranoski, Tommy Davis, Willie Davis, Frank Howard, and Moose Skowron – appeared with him in a 1964 broadcast of The Joey Bishop Show (1961-1965). The ballplayers harmonize as they perform a Sammy Cahn-written parody of Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen’s “High Hopes,” with Drysdale singing lead. He begins, “When they all said that the Dodgers was dead, that’s when we came to life…” And the words “high hopes” are replaced first by “Koufax” and then by “Drysdale.”13 (The previous year Drysdale even recorded a pair of ballads for Reprise records. Their titles were “Give Her Love” and “One Love.”)

Indeed, in the early 1960s, Drysdale was being primed for show-biz stardom. He was good-looking, with a fine screen presence. At the time, Eddie Cantor was featured on a radio program, appropriately titled, Ask Eddie Cantor, in which he answered questions submitted by listeners. One of them, on the June 14, 1961, broadcast, was: “Is Don Drysdale the best-looking Dodger?”14The pitcher began appearing on TV series, particularly in such westerns as Lawman (1958-1962), in a 1960 episode titled “The Hardcase”; The Rifleman (1958-1963), which starred ex-ballplayer-turned actor Chuck Connors, in “Skull,” a 1962 episode; and Cowboy in Africa (1967-1968), also featuring Connors, in a 1968 episode titled “Search and Destroy.” In “Millionaire Larry Maxwell,” a 1960 episode of The Millionaire (1955-1960), Drysdale’s character is named Eddie Cano; in “The Spitball Kid,” a baseball-related 1969 episode of Then Came Bronson (1969-1970), he is Art Gilroy, a scout; in “The Big Game,” a 1969 episode of The Flying Nun (1967-1970) that involved a convent baseball team, Drysdale is billed as “The Umpire” while Willie Davis is “The Manager.”

Most prominently, Drysdale guest-starred as himself in a host of baseball-linked scenarios, from “Who’s on First,” a 1963 episode of Our Man Higgins (1962-1963), to “The Two-Hundred-Mile-an-Hour Fast Ball,” a 1981 episode of The Greatest American Hero (1981-1983). Between 1962 and 1964, he made four appearances on The Donna Reed Show (1958-1966), with three featuring baseball-themed titles: “The Man in the Mask”; “My Son the Catcher” (with Willie Mays); and “Play Ball”; the fourth is titled “All These Dreams.” “Play Ball,” which also features Mays and Leo Durocher, involves autographed baseballs to be sold for charity and a ballgame between hospital personnel and a college freshman nine. Along the way, Durocher gets to comically trash umpires. Beyond its nostalgia quotient, “Play Ball” is a mirror of its era. Here, adult males – even doctors – are collectively out of shape; exercise and ballplaying only are reserved for the young. Meanwhile, women are collectively baseball-illiterate.15

In a Leave It to Beaver (1957-1963) episode from 1962 titled “Long Distance Call,” the Mayfield Press headline is “Don Drysdale’s Homer Beats Giants”; this inspires The Beaver (Jerry Mathers) and a couple of his pals to place – what else? –a long-distance phone call to Drysdale, “their favorite baseball player,” at Dodger Stadium. They pool their pocket change, and are convinced that the cost only will be a dollar, but a mini-crisis results as the total mounts. But The Beaver does get to ask Drysdale to autograph his glove. It’s a Warren Spahn model, but the ever-amenable Dodger tells him, “Well, I’ll autograph it anyway.”16Then in “The Dropout,” a 1970 episode of The Brady Bunch (1969-1974), Mike Brady (Robert Reed) is designing Drysdale’s new house. “You know, baseball’s been real good to me,” the pitcher observes. Mike invites the ballplayer home to meet his boys, resulting in son Greg (Barry Williams) becoming convinced that his future is as a big-league hurler.17

Coming in a strong second to Drysdale as a TV guest star is Leo Durocher, who coached the Dodgers between 1961 and 1964. In “The Clampetts and the Dodgers,” a 1963 episode of The Beverly Hillbillies (1962-1971), bank president Milburn Drysdale – who is no relation to Don, but the name of one of the show’s supporting characters – sets up a golf game in which Jed (Buddy Ebsen) and Jethro (Max Baer Jr.) will play with Durocher (whose surname the Clampetts constantly pronounce as “Doooorocher”). But of course, the boys think they are going hunting, where they will be “shooting golfs” and “dodging golfs.” Jethro declares, of Durocher, “Miss Jane says he’s a famous dodger.” Adds Elly May (Donna Douglas), “He’s so good, he coaches all other dodgers.” Leo then is seen at Dodger Stadium mentoring real ballplayers during batting practice, and a pitching prospect confuses bank president Drysdale with pitching star Drysdale. Eventually Jed and Jethro meet Durocher at the Wilshire Country Club, where they are mistaken for caddies. But Jethro’s talent for tossing a baseball (which he thinks is “another one of them big eggs”) convinces Leo that he has stumbled upon a legitimate prospect, whom he describes as “a one-man pitching staff” who possesses “the greatest arm since Satchel Paige.” Actor Wally Cassell appears as Dodgers general manager Buzzy Bavasi; when Jethro declares that he wants no money for throwing baseballs, the GM responds, “O’Malley will love you.” But Jethro never will make the majors: In order to throw a baseball at a lightning-fast speed, he must smear his hand with possum fat.18

Sandy Koufax with Alan Young, the star of TV ’s Mr. Ed, and Mister Ed himself. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)

“Leo Durocher Meets Mister Ed,” a 1963 episode of Mister Ed (1958-1966), opens with the title character, a talking horse, wearing a Los Angeles Dodgers cap; plus, his stable is crammed with team memorabilia. A Dodgers game, announced by Vin Scully, is on television, and the nine is in a terrible slump. “Those bums should have stayed in Brooklyn,” a flustered Mister Ed declares. Wilbur (Alan Young), Mister Ed’s owner, is convinced that Leo the Lip is “going to want some tips on how to help his players,” and the horse is all too willing to offer them. How did Mister Ed come to be such an expert? Well, it is revealed that, once upon a time, he “played in the Pony League.” Wilbur and Mister Ed end up at Dodger Stadium, where they meet Willie Davis, John Roseboro, Moose Skowron, and “the old strikeout king, Sandy Koufax.” And of course, there is Leo Durocher. Upon being introduced to the horse, Leo quips, “For a minute, I thought it was Casey Stengel.” Sandy then pitches batting practice to Davis and Roseboro, with Mister Ed offering his expertise. Plus, with bat in mouth, the horse hits against Koufax and, via some crafty editing, smashes a homer. Mister Ed asks Wilbur if the Dodgers might sign him as a player. “A horse on the Dodgers!” is his incredulous response. “Well, why not,” Mister Ed quips. “They already got a Moose.”19

Then in “Herman the Rookie,” a 1965 episode of The Munsters (1964-1966), Herman Munster (Fred Gwynne) hits fungoes in a park while mentoring Eddie, his young son. One travels eight blocks and lands on the head of Durocher just after he observes, “If we can come up with a power hitter, I mean a guy (who) can hit the long ball, I think my old club is a cinch to win the pennant.” Durocher seeks out Herman, who excitedly shows up for a Dodgers tryout. The balls he belts are lightning-fast and lightning-far and, in a then-topical reference, Durocher notes, “I don’t know whether to sign him with the Dodgers or send him to Vietnam.” However, while in the field, Herman crashes through a fence and throws a ball so hard that it explodes – and he is not signed because, as he explains, “Mr. O’Malley said it would cost him $75,000 to put the Dodger Stadium back in shape every time I played. … And they said the insurance companies wouldn’t allow the players on the same field with me.”20

Featured in “Herman the Rookie” is a reference to the Dodgers’ former home city. Upon entering the Munsters’ creepy abode, Durocher quips, “I’ve never seen a place like this in my whole life. Not even in Brooklyn.”21 Briefly appearing as a catcher is Ken Hunt, the stepfather of series regular Butch Patrick, who plays Eddie. Between 1959 and 1964, Hunt appeared in 310 major-league games with the Yankees, Angels, and Senators. None were with the Dodgers.

As the decades passed, the Drysdales and Durochers of the sport need not have guested on a sitcom for there to be a baseball motif. In “Bang the Drum, Stanley,” a 1988 episode of The Golden Girls (1985-1992), Dorothy Zbornak (Beatrice Arthur) is visited by Stanley (Herb Edelman), her lying, cheating ex-husband. “I was out taking a drive listening to the Dodgers on the radio and I got a sudden urge to see a ballgame,” he tells Dorothy. And he adds, “Dorothy, I was thinking about us. Good old days back in Brooklyn. Ebbets Field. Those long summer nights sitting in the bleachers eating hot dogs, rooting for the Dodgers and kissing passionately between innings.” But Dorothy reminds Stanley that they never were together at Ebbets Field. Stanley’s faux reminiscing is a plot to sweet-talk Dorothy into lending him some money.22

Then in “Where’s Charlie,” a 1991 episode, bawdy Blanche Devereaux (Rue McClanahan) begins dating – and coaching – Stevie (Tim Thomerson), a professional ballplayer. ”Oh, you got Blanche’s number from the wall in the dugout,” quips Sophia (Estelle Getty), who is Dorothy’s mother and queen of the one-liners. Blanche then equates baseball with sex. “Now look, you have to discover the sensuality of baseball,” she tells Stevie. “(There are) many, many, many similarities between baseball and making love. The mental preparation. The rush of adrenaline. The unspecified duration of the game.” Sophia chimes in, “And you should hear the cheers coming from Blanche’s room on Old Timers Day!” This is followed by a Bull Durham reference.23

Across the decades, the central characters on hit TV series have been lawyers, doctors, cops … rarely have they been ballplayers. And when baseball has been featured, the shows usually are flops. The Bad News Bears and A League of Their Own, both hit movies, were short-lived TV series (in 1979-1980 and 1993 respectively). The one-episode presence of Johnny Bench in Bears and Doug Harvey and Ken Brett in League had no impact on the ratings.

How many viewers remember Hardball (1994), spotlighting the Pioneers, an inept ballclub? A cameo appearance by Barry Bonds couldn’t save this one. Or A Whole New Ballgame (1995), with Corbin Bernsen as a ballplayer-turned-sportscaster? Or Clubhouse (2004-2005), about a 16-year-old New York Empires batboy? Ron Darling’s one-episode presence as an announcer was no ratings boost. More successful was HBO’s Eastbound & Dawn (2009-2013), featuring Danny McBride as Kenny Powers, a burned-out ex-big leaguer-turned physical-education teacher. One promising entry is Pitch, which premiered in 2016 and spotlights Genevieve “Ginny” Baker (Kylie Bunbury), the first woman to make the majors, hurling for the San Diego Padres. However, two failed shows that remain worthy of scrutiny are Ball Four (1976), inspired by Jim Bouton’s landmark book, with Bouton himself starring as Jim Barton, ballplayer-turned-Sports Illustrated writer; and Bay City Blues (1983), centering on the Bluebirds, a fictional minor-league nine from Bay City, California, that was created by Steven Bochko and Jeffrey Lewis, of Hill Street Blues fame.

Nonetheless, baseball-on-the-small-screen occasionally has resonated with viewers. One obvious example is Cheers (1982-1993), the iconic sitcom featuring Ted Danson as Sam Malone, ex-Red Sox reliever whose career was wrecked by drink. The sitcom primarily is set not in the Fenway environs but in the Boston bar that Sam had purchased; Ernie Pantusso (Nicholas Colasanto), Malone’s bartender, was his former coach. Still, baseball sporadically made its way into Cheers storylines. In “Breaking In Is Hard to Do,” from 1990, arbiter Doug Aducci (Clive Rosengren) enters Cheers. Sam calls him “one of the best damn umpires in the American League,” but the two immediately immerse themselves in an on-field-style brawl as the ex-hurler recalls a game between the Red Sox and Yankees. It is the ninth inning. The Sox are down by a run. Malone is on the mound, and he angrily declares that Aducci “calls ball four on Munson. Next guy up is Chambliss, knocks one right out of the park.”24And in “Pitch It Again, Sam,” a 1991 episode, New York Yankee Dutch Kincaid (Michael Fairman) beseeches Sam to pitch to him on the team’s “Dutch Kincaid Day.” His reasoning: He belted a homer on practically every occasion in which he faced Sam, and he was hoping for a repeat performance.25

On occasion real Massachusetts celebrities appear on Cheers as themselves, from John Kerry and Michael Dukakis to Kevin McHale. Two are Boston Red Sox. In 1983’s “Now Pitching, Sam Malone” – a title with a double meaning – Luis Tiant is seen in a TV ad hawking a beer but flubs the tagline “You don’t feel full with Fields, you just feel fine.”26Then in “Bar Wars,” from 1988, Wade Boggs walks into Cheers and introduces himself. “Yeah, pal, and I’m Babe Ruth,” responds disbelieving bar regular Norm (George Wendt). “And I’m Dizzy Dean,” quips Cliff (John Ratzenberger). But the punchline belongs to Woody (Woody Harrelson), the ever-clueless bartender, when he chimes in, “I’m Woody Boyd.”27

The Simpsons (1989- ) occasionally has spotlighted the sport. In “Homer at the Bat,” broadcast in 1992, Homer leads the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant softball nine into the league finals. Mr. Burns, a Steinbrenner-like tyrant, rids the team of its employee-players; his ringer-substitutes, who all recorded their own voices, are Darryl Strawberry, Roger Clemens, Don Mattingly, Ozzie Smith, Wade Boggs, Ken Griffey Jr., Jose Canseco, Steve Sax, and Mike Scioscia.28

Another sitcom with knowing baseball references is Seinfeld (1989-1998), in which George Costanza (Jason Alexander) spends several seasons as a Yankees employee and comically tussles with “Big Stein,” otherwise known as George Steinbrenner (voiced by Larry David). In “The Opposite,” a 1994 episode, job applicant Costanza first mixes with potential employer Steinbrenner and The Boss politely declares, “Nice to meet you.” Costanza tells him, with the Yankee Stadium field seen through a window, “Well, I wish I could say the same, but I must say, with all due respect, I find it very hard to see the logic behind some of the moves you have made with this fine organization. In the past 20 years, you have caused myself and the city of New York a good deal of distress as we have watched you take our beloved Yankees and reduced them to a laughingstock, all for the glorification of your massive ego.” To which Steinbrenner responds, “Hire this man!”29

Jerry Seinfeld is a noted New York Mets fan; in “The New Friend,” a two-part episode also called “The Boyfriend, Part 1” and “The Boyfriend, Part 2” that aired in 1992, his character meets and befriends Keith Hernandez, the ex-Met first sacker. Jerry and his pals are in awe of Keith, but complications arise when Hernandez begins dating Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). She tells Jerry, “I’ve never seen you jealous before.” And Jerry responds, “Well, you’re not even a fan. I was at Game Six – you didn’t even watch it.”30

An alleged “spitting incident” also plays a role in the scenario. The date was June 14, 1987, and Newman (Wayne Knight) recalls that he and Kramer (Michael Richards) were “enjoying a beautiful afternoon in the right-field stands when a crucial Hernandez error (led) to a five-run Phillies ninth. Cost the Mets the game.” Kramer chimes in, “Our day was ruined. There was a lot of people, you know, they were waiting by the players’ parking lot. Now we’re coming down the ramp. … Newman was in front of me. Keith was coming toward us (and) as he passes Newman turns and says, ‘Nice game pretty boy.’ Keith continued past us up the ramp.” And Newman continues, “A second later, something happened that changed us in a deep and profound way from that day forward.” “What was it?” Elaine wonders. Kramer answers her: “He spit on us … and I screamed out, ‘I’m hit!’” Newman adds, “Then I turned and the spit (ricocheted off) him and it hit me.” But Jerry is a nonbeliever, explaining that “the immutable laws of physics contradict the whole premise of your account.” Eventually, it is revealed that Mets reliever Roger McDowell was the culprit.31 Hernandez and George Steinbrenner also reappear in the show’s final episode; they attend the trial of Jerry, Costanza, Kramer, and Elaine, who are accused of cracking jokes about and filming an overweight robbery victim. The “baseball insider” references continue, as Frank Costanza (Jerry Stiller), George’s father, asks Steinbrenner, “How could you give $12 million to Hideki Irabu?”32

In terms of popularity, The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961-1966) is the Seinfeld of its era. Dick Van Dyke, Mary Tyler Moore, Rose Marie, Morey Amsterdam, and Larry Mathews play Rob and Laura Petrie, Sally Rogers, Buddy Sorrell, and Ritchie Petrie. Carl Reiner, the show’s creator, occasionally appears as Alan Brady, the egomaniacal TV star who employs Rob, Sally, and Buddy as comedy writers. However, the show’s unsold 1959 pilot, titled Head of the Family, features a completely different cast. Reiner himself is Rob (whose surname is pronounced “Peetrie”); Barbara Britton, Sylvia Miles, Morty Gunty, and Gary Morgan play Laura, Sally, Buddy, and Ritchie, while the Brady character is named “Alan Sturdy.” And the storyline is New York baseball-centric. There are casual references to Casey Stengel and Hank Bauer, and the plot centers on 6-year-old Ritchie’s complaining to Laura that “daddy never plays baseball with me…” He follows up with a question: “Why couldn’t you marry Mickey Mantle? … Well, I love Mickey. Don’t you love Mickey?” (Toronto fans might chuckle over the name of the street on which the Petries’ suburban abode is located. It is neither Lou Gehrig Lane nor Bronx Bomber Byway but Blue Jay Blvd.!) 33

And finally, a show that is not baseball-centric still might offer a knowing peek into the pressures and realities of ballplayers, not to mention the essence of the sport. In an episode on Lou Grant (1977-1982) titled “Catch” – surely, a name with a double meaning – Los Angeles Tribune reporter Billie Newman (Linda Kelsey) meets and falls for Ted McCovey (Cliff Potts), who is introduced as a Los Angeles Dodgers “catcher who was third-string until they traded him to the Bay Area last winter.” Ted also has been playing for “14 years, 10 in the majors.” Not surprisingly, the first time he is mentioned, he is mistaken for Willie McCovey. Soon enough, Ted is put on irrevocable waivers by the Giants. “Kid they called up to replace me was battin’ .385 in Triple A,” he explains, adding, “You know what baseball done for me? Treated me like a kid the past 14 years and now suddenly they’re tellin’ me I’m an old man.” But there is a happy ending here, as Ted takes a job as a Dodgers scout.34

“Catch” and “Wedding,” its follow-up episode, both aired in 1981 – and both feature references that place the storyline in the proper timeframe. In “Wedding,” Ted is about to propose to an unsuspecting Billie. Before he can do so, she asks him, “Does it have something to do with baseball? Did you find another Valenzuela?” Billie also thinks that ERA stands for “Equal Rights Amendment,” which she hopes will pass, and not “Earned Run Average.” Both episodes are peppered with baseball links. Ted is convinced that marriage to Billie will be fruitful because of his “catcher’s instinct.” And the preacher who marries them is an ex-ballplayer who traded “the horsehide for the cloth.”35

The “Catch” teleplay also offers a potent explanation of why baseball matters. As they spend time together, Billie – who is no baseball fan – complains that the game is “so slow.” “It’s like saying your life is slow,” Ted responds. “What does that mean? There’s so much going on (in baseball). Every pitch is another decision. Where to play the hitter. What to throw him. (What happens) if the runner goes on the pitch. Who’s on deck? You take a chance (or) you play the percentages. There’s a thousand decisions in a game. … Probabilities. Statistics. … The mutations are infinite. A game could go on forever. … I’ve played 5,500 games, give or take, since Little League. I’ve watched a couple thousand more. Never played the same game twice. And every one, a situation comes up (that) I’d ever seen before.”36

ROB EDELMAN is the author of Great Baseball Films and Baseball on the Web (which Amazon.com cited as a Top 10 Internet book), and is a frequent contributor to Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game. He offers film commentary on WAMC Northeast Public Radio and is a longtime Contributing Editor of Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide and other Maltin publications. With his wife, Audrey Kupferberg, he has coauthored Meet the Mertzes, a double biography of Vivian Vance and super-baseball fan William Frawley, and Matthau: A Life. His byline has appeared in Total Baseball, The Total Baseball Catalog, Baseball and American Culture: Across the Diamond, NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture, The National Pastime: A Review of Baseball History, The Baseball Research Journal, and histories of the 1918 Boston Red Sox, 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers, 1947 New York Yankees, and 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates. He is the author of a baseball film essay for the Kino International DVD Reel Baseball: Baseball Films from the Silent Era, 1899- 1926; is an interviewee on several documentaries on the director’s cut DVD of The Natural; was the keynote speaker at the 23rd Annual NINE Spring Training Conference; and teaches film history courses at the University at Albany (SUNY).

Notes

1 espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/10731028/mlb-baseball-miss-david-letterman.

2 Rob Edelman. “What’s My Line? and Baseball,” The Baseball Research Journal, Fall 2014: 36.

3 youtube.com/watch?v=rPc9keZ1cl0.

4 free-classic-tv-shows.com/Drama/Screen-Directors-Playhouse/1955-12-07-s1-ep10-Rookie-of-the-Year/index.php.

5 youtube.com/watch?v=Xmzknb3hWAQ.

6 Rob Edelman and Audrey Kupferberg, Meet the Mertzes (Los Angeles: Renaissance Books, 1999), 149, 153.

7 Edelman and Kupferberg, 173.

8 youtube.com/watch?v=fsuwx8xVpuU.

9 youtube.com/watch?v=N1Qs24BfR5I.

10 twilightzonevortex.blogspot.com/2012/07/mighty-casey.html.

11 youtube.com/watch?v=qzhVOKqlIDc.

12 youtube.com/watch?v=rKld2Z_X-C0.

13 youtube.com/watch?v=8nwCYqkoDeM.

14 youtube.com/watch?v=iApcQ2zerc4.

15 youtube.com/watch?v=YaDLOtLoFuc.

16 youtube.com/watch?v=srLiKccFFRw.

17 hulu.com/watch/633526.

18 youtube.com/watch?v=-288A4pp6VI.

19 youtube.com/watch?v=uAY58hsMVnI.

20 youtube.com/watch?v=cR9HDJW9Jmk.

21 Ibid.

22 youtube.com/watch?v=Uy-AkWsUqVw.

23 youtube.com/watch?v=YMBgWl1rgY8.

24 youtube.com/watch?v=idBHtrs-Xy4.

25 imdb.com/title/tt0539831/.

26  avclub.com/tvclub/cheers-now-pitching-sam-malonelet-me-count-the-way-67192.

27 youtube.com/watch?v=979ArlkjFck.

28 See the SABR book Nuclear-Powered Baseball (Phoenix: SABR, 2016).

29 youtube.com/watch?v=vWCGs27_xPI.

30 seinfeldscripts.com/TheBoyfriend1.htm.

31 Marissa Payne, “And the Best Sports of All Time on ‘Seinfeld’ Was…,” Washington Post, July 3, 2014.

32 youtube.com/watch?v=dzeuvZc1KI8.

33 youtube.com/watch?v=Ll22fkwOhH4; youtube.com/watch?v=wvdzwsTj9_4.

34 youtube.com/watch?v=ozeeyoJyOmo.

35 youtube.com/watch?v=CoZC5rvqHRc.

36 youtube.com/watch?v=ozeeyoJyOmo.

Jim Bouton (right) and John Thorn, Major League Baseball’s Official Historian, sharing the stage at SABR’s 47th annual convention in New York City in 2017. (Photo: Jacob Pomrenke)

In the fall of 1976, CBS Television premiered the television series Ball Four, based upon the 1970 book by former major-league pitcher Jim Bouton, a best-seller that took the form of a baseball diary of the 1969 season. That year Bouton pitched for the expansion Seattle Pilots before being traded to the Houston Astros, with whom he ended the season. Bouton was also a beneficiary of editorial guidance from sportswriter Leonard Schecter, and the influential Ball Four was selected by the New York Public Library as one of the hundred most important books of the twentieth century.1 Bouton’s book was reflective of the national mood in the late 1960s and early 1970s in which established institutions like major-league baseball were questioned by a new generation and rising counterculture. In Ball Four, Bouton departed from the hero-worshipping tradition of baseball and sport literature, presenting a more realistic depiction of athletes, among them Mickey Mantle of the New York Yankees, as men who struggled with issues of drinking and marital fidelity. In addition, Bouton exposed the degree of hypocrisy present in the national game at its highest level with evidence of sexism, racism, and drug abuse. The baseball establishment led by Commissioner Bowie Kuhn slammed the book, as did many of Bouton’s former teammates. The general public, however, loved the book, which changed the nature of sport journalism.

Thus, it is not surprising that CBS was intrigued with the idea of a television series based on the book and developed by Bouton. Although he was a relatively inexperienced actor, CBS also decided that Bouton would play the lead as pitcher Jim Barton of the Washington Americans who was compiling a baseball diary for Sports Illustrated. It was difficult, however, for the television scripts to reflect the brutal honesty of Bouton’s book because CBS scheduled the show for 8:30 P.M. Eastern Standard Time. This brought Ball Four into conflict with network censors as the show was broadcast during the Federal Communications Commission-mandated hour of early evening “family friendly” viewing. The more adult themes of the book were overshadowed by juvenile humor, and the television series failed to develop an audience. Ball Four was canceled after only five episodes. While some critics insist that the show failed to reach its promise due to censorship issues, Bouton concedes that he lacked television experience and there were quality issues with Ball Four. In addition, baseball-themed shows have not done well on the small screen, but Bouton speculates that in the less restrictive atmosphere of cable television Ball Four might work today.2 Such discussion, however, tends to ignore the fact that the television series lacked the antiestablishment political punch that made Bouton’s book so appealing.

Bouton’s background offers little indication that he would emerge as an antiestablishment figure on the national baseball scene. He was born on March 8, 1939, in Newark, New Jersey, to a middle-class family. When Jim was 16, his business-executive father moved the family to Chicago Heights, Illinois, where Jim enjoyed some success as a high-school and American Legion pitcher. After earning a scholarship to Western Michigan University in 1958, Bouton was signed to a contract by the New York Yankees. After working his way through the minor-league chain, Bouton joined the Yankees for the 1962 season. The following year he became an All-Star, winning 21 games with a 2.53 earned-run average. A fierce competitor, Bouton threw so hard that he knocked off his cap with many deliveries. In 1964, Bouton enjoyed another excellent season with a record of 18 wins and 13 losses accompanied by a 3.02 earned-run average. In addition to his fine pitching, Bouton earned the reputation as a ballplayer who was willing to challenge Yankee management and speak his mind with the press.3

During the 1969 season, Bouton appeared in 73 games with the Pilots and Astros, winning two games with an earned-run average of 3.96. He was beginning to establish some mastery of the knuckleball, but the hoopla surrounding the publication of Ball Four derailed his career in Houston. After being demoted to Oklahoma City in the summer of 1970, Bouton announced his retirement from the game. However, the publicity surrounding the publication of Ball Four made Bouton a household name.

Commissioner Bowie Kuhn was appalled by Ball Four, and he did not consider its publication to be in the best interests of baseball. He summoned Bouton to his office and was rather shocked when the pitcher arrived accompanied by Marvin Miller and Dick Moss from the players union. If Kuhn expected an apology from Bouton, the commissioner and baseball establishment certainly failed to receive one. Kuhn issued a statement asserting his displeasure with Ball Four but indicated that his office would not be taking any action against Bouton. In his memoir Hardball, Kuhn maintained that he confronted Bouton because he simply did not believe the stories put forth in the book, but in hindsight the commissioner regretted providing Bouton with the publicity to sell more books.5

Although earlier player memoirs such as Jim Brosnan’s The Long Season and Pennant Race drew the ire of the baseball establishment and were denounced for violating the sanctity of the locker room, the reaction to Brosnan was less vitriolic as his approach was more intellectual and detached.6 Bouton, on the other hand, described the sexual and drinking escapades of baseball icon Mickey Mantle, who claimed that he never read Ball Four. Mantle was championed by Yankee teammates such as Tony Kubek and Elston Howard, who was Bouton’s catcher during the pitcher’s tenure with the New York club. Howard described Bouton as “a very self-centered and selfish man” who was angry with the Yankees for trading him after the right-hander became a losing pitcher. Rather than being a heroic chronicler of the truth, Howard depicted Bouton as a loner who was selling out his former teammates for 30 pieces of silver.7

For many readers, Bouton was an intellectual athlete who could place baseball within the larger historical and cultural changes that were taking place in the United States and world during the late 1960s and early 1970s. For example, Bouton relates a trip that he and teammate Gary Bell took to Berkeley while the Seattle club was playing in Oakland. They encountered numerous student activists who were protesting the Vietnam War, racism, and poverty. Bouton concluded that perhaps the real problem in America was that there were too many people like himself and Bell when more advocates for social change were needed. Bouton wrote, “Gary and I are really the crazy ones. I mean, we’re concerned about getting the Oakland Athletics out. We’re concerned about making money in real estate, and about ourselves and our families. These kids, though, are genuinely concerned about what’s going on around them. They’re concerned about Vietnam, poor people, black people. They’re concerned about the way things are and they’re trying to change them.”10 Upon learning that a member of his fan club was dispatched to Vietnam, Bouton quipped, “It just doesn’t seem right that a member of my fan club should be fighting in Vietnam. Or that anybody should.”11And Bouton also believed that protest could bring about change. In Ball Four, he observed that tennis officials in South Africa were discussing the possibility of an integrated Davis Cup team; however, South African leaders were quick to assert that these conversations were not in response to planned protests and boycotts of the apartheid nation. Bouton retorted, “And the increase in the number of swimming pools in Harlem has nothing to do with the riots and the troops withdrawals have nothing to do with the protest movement and the baseball owners broadened our pension coverage not because of any strike but out of an innate sense of fair play. Yeah, surrre.”12

Bouton was also critical of hypocrisy in American society as well as the baseball establishment. He commented upon baseball owners who espoused support for the free-enterprise system while exercising monopoly control over players through the reserve system. He poked fun at the anti-intellectualism and sexism of players and management who did not know how to respond to Bouton’s Seattle teammate Steve “Orbit” Hovley, who grew his hair long and was an avid reader. Bouton also had little patience for those who attributed their on-the-field success to God as if the Deity was a baseball fan. The pitcher confessed, “I’ve been tempted sometimes to say into a microphone that I feel I won tonight because I don’t believe in God. I mean, just for the sake of balance, to let the kids know that a belief in a deity or ‘Pitching for the Master’ is not one of the criteria for major-league success. But I guess I never will.” The iconoclast, however, did criticize evangelist Billy Graham for seeking to discount racial urban unrest by suggesting that communists were behind the civil-rights movement. Speaking of Graham, Bouton wrote, “When a man of his power, a man with such a following makes a statement like that, he is diverting attention from the real causes of riots in the ghettoes. As a result he delays solutions to those real problems, and this is dangerous. My heavens, you’d think I had insulted Ronald Reagan.”13 Bouton also disturbed more conservative parents by responding to a question about young men with long hair by asserting, “The thing that disturbs me about long hair is not the fact that suddenly a whole lot of kids in this country decided to let their hair grow, but that a whole nation of adults would let it disturb them to the point where they were ready to expel otherwise excellent students from school simply because of their long hair.”14 Bouton, however, adopted a   less critical tone when in Ball Four he described the way many ballplayers with too much time on their hands objectified women and poked fun of gays.

But it was the sexual hijinks along with the stories of alcohol abuse and amphetamine use that most angered traditionalist sportswriters. Bouton had betrayed the sanctity of the locker room, and sportswriter Dick Young demanded that Commissioner Kuhn and the Players Association take action to censure Bouton. Joe Falls denounced Bouton for revealing privileged information, concluding, “This business of telling-it-like-it-is is strictly the bunk. It’s a nice, catchy phrase that has a very idealistic sound to it, but nobody ever really tells it how it is, nor is anyone expected to.” An even more strident tone was taken by Wells Twombly, who dismissed Ball Four as “an impudent betrayal of trust, good old rotten Hollywood-style keyhole reporting.”15

Other reviews of Ball Four attempted to place Bouton’s reporting within a broader cultural context. Writing for the New York Times Book Review, Rex Lardner acknowledged that for some traditionalists Ball Four was an anathema, but he concluded, “In an era of sophisticated reappraisal, it is a gem of honest, good-naturedly biased reporting.” In a similar vein, Roger Angell argued that Bouton’s book “never settles into the sportswriting clichés of debunking and anecdotage. What he has given us, rather, is a rare view of a highly complex public profession seen from the innermost inside view of an ironic and courageous mind.” In Christian Century, George G. Hill encouraged readers to carefully examine Ball Four as it constituted “a positive contribution to the needed moral reordering of America.” Striking a more literary note, Cleveland Amory observed that Ball Four was no mere baseball book, “any more than Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi is about riverboats.” Picking up on these literary themes, David Halberstam observed that both Bouton and his critics agreed that baseball was “the great American game, a reflection of what we are and who we are.” But rather than the virtuous institution described by many establishment sportswriters, Bouton found baseball to be a manifestation of American culture that was “more often than not run by selfish, stupid owners, men who deal with their ballplayers in a somewhat sophisticated form of slavery, that despite the reputation of a melting pot, baseball dugouts reek of the same racial and social tensions and decisions that scar the rest of the country, that the underlying social common denominator is fairly crude and reminiscent of nothing so much as one’s high-school locker room.”16

While Ball Four was praised by literary critics and resonated with the growing antiestablishment views of many American readers whose faith in American institutions was soon to be further tested with the Watergate scandal, the baseball establishment had little use for Bouton. Increasingly unable to control his knuckleball, Bouton was out of baseball before the conclusion of the 1970 season. With strong earnings from Ball Four, Bouton decided that he wanted to spend more time with his family, accepting a position as an evening sports reporter with an ABC Television New York City affiliate. Continuing to march to his own drummer, Bouton reported primarily upon high-school and local sports rather than the major-league New York City franchises. He also broadened the exposure of his audience by participating in such activities as roller derby. Baseball historian Mark Armour concludes, “Bouton’s broadcasts were popular with the public, though the local professional teams were unhappy that he had no interest in simply promoting their business as television had been doing for years.” In response to his many baseball critics such as Pete Rose who limited his literary review of Ball Four to “Fuck you, Shakespeare,” Bouton and his editor Schecter penned I’m Glad You Didn’t Take It Personally.”17

Meanwhile, Bouton had not succeeded in getting baseball out of his system as he suggested in his final line from Ball Four, “You see, you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.”18 He continued to play baseball with amateur clubs in suburban New Jersey. In addition, he spent a few weeks in 1975 with the Single-A Portland (Oregon) Mavericks of the Northwest League. He had regained control of his knuckleball and pitched well in five games with Portland, winning four games while posting an impressive 2.20 earned-run average. Any thoughts of a baseball comeback, however, were placed on hold when an opportunity arose to produce a television series based upon Ball Four. According to Bouton, the series was an outgrowth of ideas generated at the Lion’s Head Bar in Greenwich Village while drinking with his friends Newsday television critic Marvin Kitman and New York Post sportswriter Vic Ziegel. Bouton described the show’s creation as somewhat of a lark, commenting, “We just thought it might be a good thing to do. It certainly was fun to listen to all these characters. So why couldn’t a sitcom be just as funny as the real players, the real guys.” After submitting the project to CBS Television, Bouton asserts, he and his friends were rather surprised when the network gave a green light to the series with the proviso that the creators remain as the chief writers for the program. The network hoped that Ball Four might resonate with audiences that made such ensemble situation comedies as Barney Miller, Welcome Back Kotter, and M*A*S*H major hits during the 1970s.19

Bouton did not find the television creative process as satisfying as he originally anticipated, observing, “Our plan was sit around and write in the daytime, but since it took so long to come up with anything, we’d still be writing stuff at two in the morning.”20 The slow pace of the writing worried CBS executives who often visited the writers to make suggestions, but Bouton and his friends were often contemptuous of the television people who demonstrated little understanding of baseball and its culture. After all, it was under the ownership of CBS from 1964 to 1973 that the New York Yankees struggled at the box office and in the field, finishing last in 1966 and drawing below one million fans in 1973.21

But most of the conflict between the show’s creators and CBS executives was over the show’s unfortunate scheduling during the Federal Communications Commission-mandated family hour programing. Part of the appeal of Bouton’s book was colorful and profane language employed by such baseball characters as Seattle Pilots manager Joe Schultz. There was no way in 1976 that viewers on network television were going to hear Schultz’s exclamation of “shitfuck.” Bouton, however, was frustrated that considerable time was wasted with rather arbitrary decisions such as approving “horse-crock” rather than “horseshit.” CBS censors had a reputation for closely monitoring the content of its programing as was evident during the late 1960s with the controversy arising from network executives attempting to censor the popular Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. Thus, the CBS Standards and Practices Department nixed “any spitting, burping, chewing of tobacco, popping of ‘greenies,’ or any other potential offensive behavior from the show’s characters.” Apparently this directive also included any affirmation that rookie pitcher Bell Westlake (David James Carroll) was gay, but it was all right to make fun of his feminine characteristics. Westlake was one of the first gay characters on network television, but CBS was not prepared to acknowledge this. And perhaps American audiences in 1976 were no more ready than baseball locker rooms for an openly gay character. Today television viewers are more open, but Major League Baseball still often struggles with the acceptance of gay athletes. Summing up his arguments with the censors, Bouton lamented, “We were not allowed to put any of the grittiness of life in the majors on the screen.”22

In addition, the show included little baseball action. Most of Ball Four’s scenes were staged in the locker room or hotel rooms of the players rather than on the baseball diamond. Thus, most of the show was filmed on stage in New York City before a live television audience. Ball Four seemed artificial, and Bouton assigned the censors primary responsibility for its failure, leading some to conclude that the Ball Four television series was ahead of its time. However, baseball in general has not fared well on television. Even shows based on popular films such as A League of Their Own and The Bad News Bears failed to resonate with television viewers, and Steven Bochco, who created such police drama hits as Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue, could not entice an audience for his baseball production Bay City Blues. An exception to this history of baseball on the small screen is Eastbound & Down, which aired from 2009 to 2013 on HBO. Cable television provided greater freedom for the show’s creators and focused upon a politically incorrect former major-league pitcher, perhaps based on the exploits of John Rocker, who returns to his hometown and becomes a substitute teacher. Thus, Bouton acknowledges that perhaps his television series was ahead of its time and might fare much better today with the more permissive environment of cable television.23

Another problem for the series was the decision to cast Bouton in the lead as journal-writing pitcher Jim Barton. Bouton had some acting experience, having portrayed villain Terry Lennox in the 1973 Robert Altman production of The Long Goodbye featuring Elliott Gould as private detective Philip Marlowe. However, he had no experience with comedy, which most performers acknowledge as being more difficult than drama. While Bouton quipped that CBS signed him for the lead because he was willing to work cheap, baseball historian Peter Golenbock was quite critical of the network for overextending Bouton. Golenbock observed, “I think too much of it was placed on Jim’s shoulders. He was a ballplayer, and he was an author, and he was a fabulous sportscaster, but he didn’t have a great deal of experience in show business. And my sense was that he didn’t get the help that he could have had, either as a TV writer or an actor. But I give the guy a tremendous amount of credit for having the balls to go out there and be the lead in a TV show. A lot of people would have said, ‘I can’t do this.’”24

While the ensemble cast also included black and Latino players, Bouton’s character Barton bonded primarily with his catcher Rhino Rhinelander, played by former professional football player Ben Davidson. Best known for his All-Star play with the Oakland Raiders, the 6-foot-8-inch defensive end also played with the Green Bay Packers and Washington Redskins. After retiring from football, Davidson tried his hand at acting, appearing in such films as M*A*S*H and Conan the Barbarian in addition to Ball Four. However, perhaps Davidson was best known by television viewers for his Miller Lite commercials. Bouton loved working with Davidson, whose physical improvisations, such as hanging one of the actors from a clubhouse clothes hook by the back of his shirt, were not appreciated by CBS executives. The rapport between Bouton and Davidson, nevertheless, tended to make the show a white buddy project quite a bit different from the more multicultural themes of the book.25

Reviews and rating for Ball Four were poor. Sports Illustrated was disappointed by the show’s “mediocrity,” while the series faced strong network completion in its time slot from The Bionic Woman on ABC and Little House on the Prairie on NBC. Ball Four was sandwiched between the two popular CBS situation comedies Good Times and All in the Family, and when ratings indicated that Ball Four was having a negative impact on viewership for these two programs, the baseball series was canceled after airing only five episodes. Rather than expressing anger over the rapid cancellation of the program, Bouton seemed to be more relieved, commenting, “Ohhh, thank you! Now we can live our lives – we can sleep, we can have weekends, we can have friends over. We can be real people again! God, please don’t let me write any more scripts.”26 Pulling the plug on Ball Four also allowed Bouton, at age 38, to pursue his dream of returning to major-league baseball. In September 1978 he was called up by the Atlanta Braves after pitching well for the team’s Savannah farm club in the Southern League. Bouton appeared in five games with the Braves while compiling a record of 1-3 and a 4.97 earned-run average. Having achieved his goal, Bouton retired from the game he loved, although with his writing and activism such as preserving Wahconah Park in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, he hardly faded from the public eye.27

In retrospect, Bouton has few regrets regarding his brief career in television programing. He did not bemoan the fact that Ball Four was canceled so quickly by CBS, which demonstrated little faith in the project and gave the series precious little time to foster a following. Employing hindsight, Bouton recognizes the failures of the show and expresses relief that Ball Four’s episodes are unavailable today with the exception of the show’s opening credits featuring a theme song from popular folk/rock artist Harry Chapin. Of his Ball Four television experience, Bouton concludes, “I never think about it as a negative in my life. It’s not like, ‘Oh boy, we really screwed that up,’ or, ‘That was terrible!’ It was so much fun just to sit there and fail at a very high level.”

Yet, Bouton offers little insight into the actual content of the show and how Ball Four may have contributed to its own demise. An important aspect of Bouton’s book is the author’s commentary on the larger culture and the changes taking place within American society. Thus, Bouton’s observations on topics such as the Vietnam War, race relations, youth culture, campus protest, and fashion such as long hair for males are essential elements of the book’s appeal to many younger baseball fans. In a similar fashion, the commercial success of The Bad News Bears as a film in 1976 was due to how the picture reflected changing views of American society and sport. According to historian David Zang, The Bad News Bears was “the most subversive sports film ever made” as it challenged the traditional interpretation of sport as building character. Instead, Zang argues, “From their beer-guzzling coach to their foulmouthed shortstop to their juvenile delinquent hitting star, the Bears were heroes that only a society that had lost its sense of moral infallibility could love.”28A female pitching star along with Latino and African-American players also made the Bears representative of a more inclusive society. And Bouton’s book seemed to capture this sense of cultural change. Peter Golenbock insists that Ball Four “absolutely changed sportswriting. When I started writing, the idea was that I wanted to write books with the same honesty as Ball Four.” Accordingly, Golenbock asserts that he would not have been able to write The Bronx Zoo, an account of the Yankees and George Steinbrenner in the late 1970s, without Bouton’s example and courage in taking on the baseball establishment.29

Bouton initially seemed to recognize that his television project required the same broad cultural focus as his book. He hoped that the show would antagonize Commissioner Kuhn and provide an antidote for the Game of the Week, but Bouton recognized that the series would need to attract a wide range of viewers, especially women. Bouton insisted, “The book had appeal to women because it told them interesting things about people. The reason women are turned off by sports on television is the way it is presented. It comes from a statistical point of view and that’s boring. Women’s participation is healthier than men’s. Men may appreciate statistics – not women.” The series, accordingly, would not concentrate exclusively on baseball. Bouton concluded, “Most of the story lines will be about ordinary people, facing ordinary people, facing ordinary situations – love, life, overweight problems, politics.”30

There is little indication that Bouton followed his own advice in developing the television series. From reviews and the opening credits of the show Ball Four appears primarily focused upon the sexual escapades and locker-room antics of its protagonists. For example, the opening credits feature the players leaning out of a hotel-room window and employing binoculars to leer at women, while there are no major female characters in the production. There is some effort to create diversity with black and Latino teammates, as well as a gay player, but the emphasis is upon the antics of pitcher Barton (Bouton) and catcher Rhinelander (Davidson), making the show more of a traditional white buddy story. In summarizing the series for the 20th anniversary edition of Ball Four, Bouton emphasized the male comradery of the locker room while eschewing the political commentary that characterized the book and its cultural impact. Bouton wrote, “A locker room is a freewheeling place where anything goes, offering more flexibility than a living room or a classroom. It’s like an army barracks where people expect put-down humor, ethnic jokes, gross sarcasm, and insults. The partial nudity with male cheesecake potential should attract a large female audience. Players from every ethnic group, economic level, and educational background are thrown together naturally in an occupation which causes constant tension. And, the best part of all, if an actor demands a bigger contract, he can simply be traded.”31 These limitations were also noted by Melissa Ludtke in her review of Ball Four for Sports Illustrated. Ludtke argued, “The mediocrity of the opening show is particularly unfortunate because Bouton had hoped to give a true portrayal of his baseball experience in the series. Pill-popping, religion and women sports-writers in the locker room and homosexuality are some of the issues that he would like to cover. With fewer than one-third of this season’s new prime-time shows likely to survive until spring, the odds seem slim that ‘Ball Four’ will last long enough to fully explore baseball’s other side.”32

The book also included male bonding and the objectification of women, but the fact that such sexual escapades by well-known athletes could be publicly acknowledged provided an opportunity to question the larger society that was seemingly missing from the television series. Bouton’s Ball Four shocked many in the baseball establishment by speaking openly of sexual liaisons between players and baseball groupies or Annies. Similar tales were told regarding Babe Ruth and so-called baseball Daisies in the 1920s, but post-World War II baseball endeavored to produce a sanitized version of the game and its heroes. Bouton’s exposé blew the lid off baseball’s ostensible allegiance to family and consensus values. In an essay on gender and baseball, historian David Voigt found positive possibilities in baseball’s shift from paternal to maternal values, arguing, “It is fair to say that Bouton learned that freedom to talk about sex is directly related to freedom to criticize other institutions. Which is after all the essence of the matrist trend – that matrism is laden with opportunities for expanded personal freedom provided that enough Americans are willing to exercise the right.”33 Nevertheless, the freedom celebrated by Bouton often provided opportunities for men to sexually exploit women in the gendered renditions of “studs” and “sluts” rather that offering a sexually egalitarian playing field.

Female baseball fans in the 1970s, however, refused to accept male-defined roles. During the decade, women moved beyond the role of the “other”; filing lawsuits to open up the baseball training ground of Little League to girls and lobbying for passage of Title IX, which sought to provide equality of opportunity for women in the nation’s schools and universities.

Tilla Vahanian, a New York City psychiatrist, told the New York Times that competitive play enhanced the self-esteem of women. According to Vahanian, “The old stereotype was that sport was a purely masculine endeavor, and women did not attend sports events for fear of losing their femininity. But now we find that a great comradeship exists between men and women when they can share roles.” Another woman told TV Guide, “Guys have this obsession that girls who like baseball are groupies. I mean, if a guy likes one of the Pittsburgh Pirates does that mean he is after him sexually.”34 This kind of commentary challenging the male hegemony in baseball is what Voigt had in mind when he suggested that sexual freedom could bring greater equality to American society as well as the sport of baseball. Thus, perhaps one of the major reasons for the failure of Ball Four as a television series is not that Bouton’s project was ahead of its time, but rather that in regard to gender roles it was behind the changing times.

Notes

1 Jim Bouton with Leonard Schecter, Ball Four: Twentieth Anniversary Edition (New York: Wiley Publishing, 1990; originally published 1970); and The New York Public Library’s Books of the Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).

2 Dan Epstein, “Ball Four, You’re Out: How a Classic Baseball Book Became a Failed Baseball Sitcom,” Vice Sports, September 22, 2016 <sportsvice.com/en_us/article/ball-four-book-became-a-failed-baseball-sitcom> (accessed March 1, 2017).

3 For background information on Jim Bouton see Mark Armour, “Jim Bouton,” SABR BioProject (accessed July 5, 2016); and Leonard Schecter, “Jim Bouton –  Everything in Its Place,” Sport (March 1964): 71-73.

4 Jim Bouton, “A Mission to Mexico City,” Sport (August 1969): 30.

5 For the meeting between Bouton and Kuhn see Jim Bouton with Leonard Schecter, I’m Glad You Didn’t Take It Personally (New York: William Morrow & Company, 1971), 68-79; Lowell Reidenbaugh, “Author Bouton Hits Jackpot – With Bowie’s Assist,” The Sporting News, August 8, 1970; and Bowie Kuhn, Hardball: The Education of a Baseball Commissioner (New York: Basic Books, 1987): 72-73.

6 Jim Brosnan, The Long Season: An Inside Chronicle of the Baseball Year as Seen by a Major League Pitcher (New York: Harper & Row, 1960); and Brosnan, Pennant Race: The Classic Game-by-Game Account of a Championship Season, 1961 (New York: Harper Paperbacks, 2017; originally published 1962).

7 Joseph Durso, “Elston Howard Replies,” New York Times, August 8, 1970.

8 Reidenbaugh, “Author Bouton Hits Jackpot.”

9 Arlene Howard with Ralph Wimbish, Elston and Me: The Story of the First Black Yankee (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001), 164-165.

10 Bouton, Ball Four, 145.

11 Ibid., 119.

12 Ibid., 194.

13 Ibid., 168-169 and 214.

14 Ibid., 215.

15 Dick Young, “Young Ideas,” The Sporting News, June 8, 1970; Joe Falls, “A Blast at Bouton Brand of Realism,” The Sporting News, June 20, 1970; Wells Twombly, “Beware of Snoopy Colleagues,” The Sporting News, June 20, 1970.

16 Rex Lardner, “The Oddball With a Knuckleball,” New York Times Book Review, July 26, 1970; Roger Angell, “Ball Four,” New Yorker, 46 (July 25, 1970): 79; George G. Hill, “Down in the Dugout,” Christian Century, 87 (September 23, 1970); 1126; Cleveland Amory, “Trade Winds,” Saturday Review, 53 (August 1, 1970): 10-11; and David Halberstam, “Baseball and the National Mythology,” Harper’s Magazine, 241 (September 1970): 22-25.

17 Armour, SABR BioProject, and Bouton, I’m Glad You Didn’t Take It Personally.

18 Bouton, Ball Four, 398.

19 Epstein, “Ball Four,” Vice Sports.

20 Ibid.

21 Marty Appel, Pinstripe Empire: The New York Yankees From Before the Babe to After the Boss (New York: Bloomsbury, 2012).

22 Epstein, “Ball Four,” Vice Sports; David Biancalli, Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of the “Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” (New York: Touchstone, 2010); Billy Bean with Chris Bull, Going the Other Way: An Intimate Memoir of Life In and Out of Major League Baseball (New York: Marlowe & Company, 2005); and Glenn Burke with Erik Sherman, Out at Home: The True Story of Glenn Burke, Baseball’s First Openly Gay Player (New York: Berkley Books, 2015).

23 John Fester, “Baseball-themed TV Series Have Been Few and Short Lived,” Sporting News, September 21, 2016 <sportingnews.com/mlb/news> (accessed February 15, 2017).

24 Rob Neyer, “Ball Four Changed Sports and Books,” ESPN, June 15, 2000.<espn.go.com/mlb/ballfour/neyer.html> (accessed May 9, 2004).

25 Lisa Dillman, “Ben Davidson Dies at 72; Oakland Raider, Fixture in Beer Commercials,” Los Angeles Times, July 4, 2012.

26 Epstein, “Ball Four,” Vice Sports; and Melissa Ludtke, “Two Strikes on ‘Ball Four,’” Sports Illustrated, September 27, 1976: 38.

27 See the book Jim Bouton, Foul Ball (North Egremont, Massachusetts: Bulldog Publishing, 2010).

28 David W. Zang, Sports Wars: Athletes in the Age of Aquarius (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2001), 141-142.

29 Peter Golenbock quoted in Neyer, “Ball Four Changed Sports and Books”; and Sparky Lyle with Peter Golenbock, The Bronx Zoo: The Astonishing Inside Story of the 1978 World Champion New York Yankees (New York: Crown, 1979).

30 Jay Sharbutt, “Bouton Stars in Series Created From His Book,” Sarasota Journal, September 22, 1976.

31 Bouton, Ball Four, 419.

32 Ludtke, “Two Strikes on ‘Ball Four,’” 38.

33 David Voigt, “Sex in Baseball: Reflections of Changing Taboos,” Journal of Popular Culture, 12:3 (December 1978): 402.

34 Gerald Eskenazi, “In the Stands, Many Cheers Have a Higher Pitch,” New York Times, June 6, 1977; and Grace Lichtenstein, “They’d Rather Break a Date Than Miss a Game; Women Sports Fans Are Coming Out of the Closet,” TV Guide (March 6, 1976), 8-11.

If the most iconic sports-related Coca-Cola television ad features a child offering a Coke to an injured football star—Mean Joe Greene, the Pittsburgh Steelers Hall of Famer—countless hurlers and hitters have hawked the product across the decades. The Greene spot first aired in 1979; however, starting in the early 1950s, the Coca-Cola Company has produced scores of TV ads employing baseball imagery.

Brooks Robinson is the star of a 1964 Coca-Cola spot, filmed in glorious black-and-white. He is shown hitting an inside-the-park home run. Then, he drinks a Coke while talking about the hit and revealing his thought processes while rounding the bases. A 1966 ad includes a montage of split-second views of sports stars in action. One of them is Willie Mays. Variations exist of a second 1966 Mays spot featuring the Say Hey Kid in the outfield, racing after a ball just as it is hit and making a running one-handed catch. Then he is shown in the dugout and locker room—and in close-up, drinking a Coke. A 1987 ad, designed for the Spanish-speaking market, spotlights Fernando Valenzuela, then coming off his lone 20-win season. El Toro is shown at a Little League game and in the stands, wearing a baseball cap with a Coke logo. A 1984 Diet Coke spot features a montage of celebrities, including Chuck Yeager, Christie Brinkley, and forever-dieting Tommy Lasorda.

Some Coke ads were produced for local markets. In 1966, the Milwaukee Braves relocated to Atlanta, the corporate headquarters of Coca-Cola. Bobby Bragan, the team’s manager, starred in a spot titled “Stadium Tour.” The ad includes vintage black-and-white images of the interiors and exteriors of Atlanta Stadium, the team’s home through 1996. (In the mid-1970s, Atlanta Stadium became known as Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium.) Bragan is the narrator, and he emphasizes that Coke will be available in the newly-christened big league ball yard. Other Coca-Cola ads have been linked to local teams and regions. A series of 1989 spots, collectively titled “Under the Sun,” feature brief clips of Houston Astros, Texas Rangers, and Los Angeles Dodgers batters at home plate.

A majority of baseball-related Coke ads do not highlight big-league teams and celebrity endorsers. These spots underscore the sport as an integral part of the fabric of America, with shots of ballplayers mixed in with those of cute little children, older ones graduating from school, Americans in the military, or American astronauts. A typical spot, from 1973, consists of a montage of summer scenes: friends walking up a hill with a sunset in the background; a surfer atop a wave; fireworks; and a baseball glove. One from 1991 emphasizes “family”: an elderly couple; women and children; and a boy holding a bat and enjoying a Coke. 

Some ads feature actors playing athletes or fans. A 1952 ad, titled “Baseball Boy,” depicts an adolescent who is obsessed with the game. A girl he apparently likes is unimpressed with his pitching motion. The ad jumps ahead in time, with the boy now a college player. The girl has altered her view of his athletic abilities, and the two savor a Coke. “The Big Pitch,” a 1958 ad, features a hurler throwing a game’s first pitch. Afterward, he enjoys a Coke. A 1967 ad, titled “Baseball,” consists of photos of ballplayers in competition, edited together to simulate movement. A batter stands at the plate. A pitcher hurls the ball. The batter hits the ball, and slides into a base. A 1985 ad, titled “Fly Ball,” features an outfielder running backwards and making a leaping catch, with his glove right in front of a boy in the stands. The ballplayer then tosses the ball to the youngster. Other ads mirror changes in American society. In “The Curve Ball,” a 1991 ad, a young black man demonstrates his ability to throw a curveball while his white friend tosses a fastball. The two men share a camaraderie, and drink Coke. One hardly can imagine this ad airing on television in the 1950s. 

During the late 1960s, the modern-era feminist revolution was making its first rumblings. However, one forward-thinking Coke ad, which aired back in 1962, features a female pitcher playing softball. She pitches—and drinks Coke. The point of the ad is that the product gives you “Zing!” The Establishment conservatism in the face of feminism is reflected in one 1968 spot featuring a little girl attempting to pitch in a game in which her teammates and opponents are boys. A batter hits a ball right into her glove, but she does not know what to do with it—much to the annoyance of her teammates. Her cap falls off her head. She picks up the cap, instead of throwing the ball. Predictably, she is chastised because she “plays like a girl.” 

As equal opportunity for women became more generally accepted within the American mainstream, the tone of ads featuring girl ballplayers also changed. Several variations exist of a 1976 spot featuring a baseball coach talking about his team and explaining how he serves them Coke — particularly from new, two-liter plastic bottles. The ad’s “punchline” is that his players are girls, and he is depicted as being proud of them and happy to be their coach. A 1980 ad for Sprite, a Coca-Cola Company product, begins with a girl swinging at a pitch and missing. She perseveres and, at the end, swings her bat and hits the ball. 

In all these ads, an attempt is made to visually and verbally link Coca-Cola with youth, vitality, and good feelings, to make the product synonymous with all that is upbeat about America. It is no surprise, then, that baseball has been so much a part of Coca-Cola advertising. 

ROB EDELMAN is the author of Great Baseball Films and Baseball on the Web (which Amazon.com cited as a Top 10 Internet book), and is a frequent contributor to Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game. He offers film commentary on WAMC Northeast Public Radio and is a longtime Contributing Editor of Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide and other Maltin publications. With his wife, Audrey Kupferberg, he has coauthored Meet the Mertzes, a double biography of Vivian Vance and super-baseball fan William Frawley, and Matthau: A Life. His byline has appeared in Total Baseball, The Total Baseball Catalog, Baseball and American Culture: Across the Diamond, NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture, The National Pastime: A Review of Baseball History, The Baseball Research Journal, and histories of the 1918 Boston Red Sox, 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers, 1947 New York Yankees, and 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates. He is the author of a baseball film essay for the Kino International DVD Reel Baseball: Baseball Films from the Silent Era, 1899- 1926; is an interviewee on several documentaries on the director’s cut DVD of The Natural; was the keynote speaker at the 23rd Annual NINE Spring Training Conference; and teaches film history courses at the University at Albany (SUNY).

Notes

All of the ads described here were viewed compliments of The Coca-Cola Archives. For further information, go to: https://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ccmphtml/colahome.html.

This actor-baseball connection is no twentieth-century phenomenon. It dates from the last decades of the nineteenth century, prior to the dawn of the motion picture (not to mention the popularity of radio and television). Back then, the best-known American actors were New York-centric stage stars: They may have toured the provinces, but they always came home to Manhattan. And more than a few were fervent sports fans. “Many actors are fond of athletic enjoyments,” observed the New York Dramatic Mirror in 1889. “The natural game has no stauncher worshippers than those of its devotees that are connected with the stage.”1

Two such fan-atics were De Wolf Hopper and Digby Bell. Not only were they best pals and acclaimed entertainers: They also predated Tallulah Bankhead as fervent New York Giants devotees. The duo regularly attended Giants games; they and other late-nineteenth-century notables were members in good standing of “The High and Mighty Order of Baseball Cranks of Gotham,” a group that inhabited their own section in the Polo Grounds grandstand. Indeed, in his 1927 memoir, Hopper noted that “Digby Bell had converted me to baseball. … We were at the Polo Grounds every free afternoon.”2 They also followed the team on road trips and palled around with players. One of endless examples: On April 21, 1889, the New York Times reported that, on the previous day, Edward “Ned” Williamson, “the popular short stop of the Chicago Club,” arrived in New York and was feted at a supper by restaurateur Nick Engel. Among those present were Hopper, Bell, and a blend of baseball folk, entertainers, and civic figures.3

Hopper and Bell also were acknowledged baseball experts. In a review of A Ball Player’s Career, a reminiscence penned by Cap Anson in 1900, an unnamed writer began his critique by noting, “Joy untold will burst into the hearts of thousands of lovers of the National game when they learn that ‘Pop’ Anson has written a book. Who knows more about baseball than he? Why, not even Digby Bell or De Wolf Hopper.”4 Thirty-eight years later, New York Times columnist John Kieran dubbed the duo “as rabid a pair of fans as ever rooted home a run or roasted an umpire.”5

Legend has it that Hopper and Bell were even partially responsible for dubbing the team the Giants. Some sources claim that the name caught on in June 1885 when Jim Mutrie, the team’s manager, referred to his players as “My big fellows! My Giants!” after an extra-inning triumph over the Philadelphia Phillies. Others note that Mutrie might have employed the name earlier that season. However, in 1936, Horace C. Stoneham, the team’s president, declared that the nickname was directly related to Hopper and Bell. An “editorial note” printed in the New York Times claimed that, upon arriving home from a successful road trip in 1883, the actors were among a group of fans who told Mutrie that the team had played “like giants.”6

*****

The lives of Digby Bell and De Wolf Hopper reflect on both the American theater and the baseball world during the last two decades of the nineteenth century. Bell was born in Milwaukee in 1849 and died in Miss Alston’s Sanitarium on West 61st Street in Manhattan 68 years later. He won fame as an actor-comedian who, as noted in his New York Times obituary, was “one of the best known of American light opera singers. Some of his best known roles were in the operas of Gilbert and Sullivan.”7 But baseball was never far from his thoughts. On September 12, 1888, the Times reported that Bell was in excellent spirits. Boccaccio, an opera featuring the actor, had just opened at Wallack’s Theatre and was a “pronounced success.” The paper noted that Bell “was thinking how pleasant it was not to have anything new to study, no rehearsals, and nothing more serious to worry about than an occasional defeat of the Giants, for he is a baseball crank of the first magnitude. …”8

The year before, Bell had traveled with the team to Boston. Upon returning, he observed, “I never saw the boys play better in my life. They hit the ball hard, ran the bases like sprinters, and their fielding – well, it was just superb.” He added, “Don’t I wish that De Wolf Hopper had been in Boston! Why, he would just go into ecstasies if he saw the manner in which the Giants handled [King] Kelly and his eight shadows.” Bell then went on to offer a detailed description of the “unjust” decision-making on the part of “Umpire Sullivan.”9

Hopper, who was born in New York City in 1858, was described in his 1935 New York Times obit as the “noted musical comedian, whose career on the stage extended into the youthful memories of the oldest theatregoers …”10 The fifth of his six wives was Hedda Hopper, the actress and gossip columnist of note; William Hopper, their offspring, was best known for playing private detective Paul Drake on the long-running Perry Mason TV series. But Hopper’s lasting fame was linked to his countless renderings over a 45-year timespan of “Casey at the Bat,” the Ernest Lawrence Thayer classic. He first performed “Casey” at Wallack’s Theatre on August 14, 1888, less than a month before Bell’s Boccaccio played that venue. The actor then was appearing with the McCaull Opera Company in Prince Methusalem – both he and Bell were McCaull regulars – and Hopper recited the poem during the second act to amuse the New York Giants and Chicago White Stockings players who were in attendance as guests of the management. (Coincidentally, one noteworthy winning streak ended just as Hopper debuted “Casey at the Bat.” Earlier that day, the White Stockings bested Tim Keefe by a 4-2 score, thus handing the Giants star hurler his first loss after 19 straight victories.) 

Hopper’s “Casey” connection was not limited to the stage. In 1916 he starred onscreen in Casey at the Bat, a feature-length drama that is an extension of the poem. The actor plays Casey, a grocery clerk and “the baseball hero of Mudville,” who is devoted to his niece (May Garcia). On the day of an important game against Frogtown, she injures herself while climbing a tree and he refuses to leave her side. The yells of the fans persuade Casey to come to the rescue of his team in the ninth inning, but he strikes out as he notices a messenger in the ballpark who he thinks has arrived with bad tidings about the child.11

Happily, there is a filmed record of Hopper actually reciting “Casey.” In 1922 he did so in a DeForest Phonofilm, utilizing the sound-on-film technology developed by Theodore Case, and the result is a fascinating, unintentionally funny curio. Hopper, garbed in a tuxedo, a slightly askew bowtie, and the most obvious hairpiece, emerges from behind a curtain. “I am very glad that ‘Casey at the Bat’ has been asked for,” he tells the camera, boastfully adding that if he “should forget a line or two here or there … most anyone could prompt me.” He then recites the poem, becoming so involved in its emotion that his eyes close and pop open at the appropriate dramatic moments. Hopper orates as if he is trying to reach the patron in the last row of a theater balcony; back in 1922, sound-on-film was revolutionary and actors knew nothing of playing down to the camera. But to say that Hopper chews the curtain behind him is no understatement. He trills his r’s and wr’s; at the finale, as he describes how there is no joy in Mudville, he is practically bawling. After completing the recitation, Hopper bows slightly, smiles, and disappears behind the curtain.12

But Hopper’s love of baseball transcended his fame as the premier “Casey” interpreter. At his death, he was performing in Kansas City, Missouri, despite his failing health and, as reported in the New York Times on September 24, 1935, “A strange rounding out of fate appeared in the actor’s last words, which referred to his interest in baseball. … At 11 o’clock last night Mr. Hopper had insisted upon sitting up in bed to smoke a pipe while he looked over the sports pages of a newspaper. Physicians insisted that he needed a rest and tried to persuade him to go to sleep. But he waved them aside with a characteristic gesture. ‘See you tomorrow, Doc,’ he said. ‘I never sleep until 3 A.M. anyway. Run along while I see what the (St. Louis) Cards did.’” The following morning, a nurse discovered that Hopper had died in his sleep.13

In an homage to Hopper published in the paper, it was noted that by 1888 the actor “had been a baseball fan for years, had spent every free afternoon at the game and had with Digby Bell put on an annual Sunday night benefit for the local team.”14 Certainly, the duo was not the first to entertain entire ballclubs. For example, on July 16, 1877, the Boston and Chicago nines were in the audience at Chicago’s Adelphi Theatre. On May 5, 1884, the Grand Rapids team was on hand for a performance of Iolanthe in Grand Rapids; the following evening, they were joined by the Muskegon team for a performance of Olivette in Muskegon. But Hopper and Bell were the first to do so regularly.

In their presentations, they often concocted baseball-related entertainment. Such was the case when Hopper debuted his “Casey” recitation. Another example: On October 15, 1888, the New York Times reported that Hopper and Bell were among the organizers of a “roaring benefit” at the Star Theatre for the New York nine, which had just been crowned “League champions of 1888.” “Enthusiastic patrons of the pastime willingly paid $5 and $10 for seats,” the paper reported, adding, “It was estimated that the benefit would net the players between $4,000 and $5,000.” Some of the era’s top actors performed, and many of the numbers were baseball-related. “De Wolf Hopper and Harry Kernell entertained the audience in their own peculiar way for not less than half an hour,” the Times observed, “and the former made some felicitous remarks about the national game.” The finale, featuring Hopper, Bell, and British-American actress/contralto Laura Joyce Bell, Digby’s second wife, was “a comic baseball scene. Digby Bell, wearing a bird cage for a mask, a washboard for a protector, and boxing gloves, stood behind a china plate, where Laura Joyce Bell gracefully wielded a bat and waited eagerly for Hopper, standing in a low-neck dry goods box, to pitch. The scene was irresistibly comic.”15

And still another: On June 10, 1891, the Times reported, “Friday will be baseball night at Palmer’s Theatre. Manager Mutrie of the Giants and Capt. Anson of the Chicago club have accepted an invitation from Manager Harry Askin of the ‘Tar and Tartar’ company and Digby Bell for that night.” The paper added that “Mr. Sydney Rosenfeld and Digby Bell in collaboration have fixed up a lot of bright lines sparkling with diamond dust, so that the players will feel quite at home. Digby Bell will also recite his poem, ‘The Boy on the Fence’…”16 (Various sources list alternate titles for Bell’s creation. Some call it “The Boy on the Left Field Fence.” In 1909 Bell cut an Edison recording titled “The Tough Kid on the Right Field Fence.” It was hyped in The Edison Phonograph Monthly for its “realistic baseball talk indulged in by the youngster from a ‘deserved’ seat on the right field fence. He tells the home team how to play the game and what he thinks of them when their playing isn’t up to his standard. The Record ought to be a real treat to everyone who understands the language of our national game.”17 The following year, Bell recorded a second baseball ditty: “The Man Who Fanned Casey.” And yet another was “A Baseball Monologue.”)

Hopper and Bell were thrilled whenever their Giants copped what then was the equivalent of a World Series victory. In 1894 the Giants bested the Baltimore nine to win the Temple Cup, which was presented to the team in a ceremony at the Broadway Theatre. The venue was decorated with bunting, flags, pennants, and other baseball-linked items. The New York Times reported on October 11 that Hopper, Bell, and “a few other cranks have interested themselves sufficiently to undertake the distribution of seats and boxes for the occasion. Yesterday Messrs. Hopper and Bell astonished the members of the Stock Exchange by appearing in their midst. In the interest of the cause three choice boxes were sold for $100 each, and seats in the orchestra were readily bought, the brokers paying $5 each for them.” The proceeds were divided among the Giants players.18

During this period, newspapers featured accounts of the efforts of Hopper, Bell, and others to organize baseball-related benefits for ailing colleagues. On May 25, 1886, two actor-nines – one consisting of comedians and the other of tragedians – battled each other in the Polo Grounds in what the New York Times described as “a match … for the benefit of the family of the demented playwright, Bartley Campbell.” Playing for the comedians were Hopper, Burr McIntosh (“a new and handsome leading man [with] a record as a heart wrecker”), Francis Wilson (“the funny man in ‘Ermine’” and later the first president of Actors Equity), and Robert C. Hilliard (“the Adonis of Brooklyn society”); the tragedian nine consisted of dramatic actors and stage managers. McIntosh, a former Princeton University sprinter who a quarter-century later would play Squire Bartlett onscreen in D.W. Griffith’s Way Down East, was described as “the best ball player in either of the teams, and he opened the scoring with a home run which gladdened the hearts of the ladies and which made the gentlemen envious.” Additionally, three kegs of beer were placed near third base. All ballplayers who made it to third were encouraged to take a swig of the brew. The five-inning contest ended with the comedians on top, 19-7.19

Then, as reported in the Times on July 31, 1887, a “game of baseball has been arranged by members of the theatrical profession at present in the city, to take place at the Polo Grounds Thursday, Aug. 4, for the benefit of the popular soubrette, Miss Rachel Booth, whose illness during the past season has so seriously interfered with the fulfillment of her business engagements.” The “nines, umpires, and scorers” were selected from a long list of “well-known actors,” among them Hopper, Bell, Hilliard, William Hoey, umpire-turned-actor Frank Lane, and Maurice Barrymore, father of John, Lionel, and Ethel.20 And then on September 7, 1888, Hopper and Bell participated in a Polo Grounds contest pitting actors and journalists, which the Times labeled “one of the funniest games of ball in the annals of American history.” Hopper manned first base; his “long frame was attired in a loud red-and-yellow striped bathing suit, a life preserver, a pair of boxing gloves, and a straw bonnet, (which) would have made the veriest pessimist believe there was something worth laughing at in life after all.” Bell, meanwhile, was garbed “in his ‘Black Hussar’ schoolboy suit” and “pitched in the English bowling style.” The game was a benefit for Carl Rankin, a well-known minstrel who was terminally ill; he passed away two months later.21

Using time-lapse photography, the film shows the demolition of the famous Star Theatre. Judging from the various exposures, the work must have gone on for a period of approximately thirty days. The theater opened in 1861 as “Wallack’s Theatre,” and was re-christened the “Star” in 1883. It was well known for it’s excellent productions, and a number of celebrated actors and actresses worked there, among them Ellen Terry. The celebrated English actor Henry Irving made his first stage appearance in America at the Star. Using time-lapse photography, the film shows the demolition of the famous Star Theatre. Judging from the various exposures, the work must have gone on for a period of approximately thirty days. The theater opened in 1861 as “Wallack’s Theatre,” and was re-christened the “Star” in 1883. It was well known for it’s excellent productions, and a number of celebrated actors and actresses worked there, among them Ellen Terry. The celebrated English actor Henry Irving made his first stage appearance in America at the Star.

*****

It was during this period that show folk were banding together to form organizations of various types and for various purposes. In 1874 a group of actors established the Lambs Club, a social club; Hopper served as its president from 1900 to 1902. In 1888 Edwin Booth founded The Players, for the purpose of “the promotion of social intercourse between the representative members of the dramatic profession and the kindred professions of literature, painting, sculpture and music, and the patrons of the arts.”22 Hopper and Bell were among those involved with the White Rats of America, a male-only labor union formed in 1900, which lobbied for actors rights and against the monopolistic practices of vaudeville theater owners.

Meanwhile, athletic clubs of all kinds were sprouting up. The April 5, 1890, edition of the New York Clipper included a lengthy list of scheduled events for dozens of these organizations, from the Canadian Amateur Athletic Association to the Scottish American Athletic Club, the Acorn Athletic Club, and the Lorillard Debating and Athletic Association.23 Quite a few were baseball-oriented. The Amateur Baseball League, for example, comprised teams representing the New Jersey Athletic Club, Staten Island Cricket Club, Staten Island Athletic Club, and Englewood Field Club, with a championship series played each season.24

One such organization even linked actors with athletics. In 1889, Hopper, Bell, and other baseball-loving celebrities established the Actors’ Amateur Athletic Association of America, otherwise known as the Five A’s (or 5 A’s). On the afternoon of April 25, its organizers convened at Manhattan’s Bijou Opera House, where they adopted a constitution, agreed on the regulations that would govern the group, and elected officers. As reported in the New York Times, the constitution “provides that any gentleman who derives his living from the theatrical profession is eligible to sic membership if, of course, he is in good standing.” The organization was described as “a representative social athletic club of theatrical men, and the athletic feature will be carried out as soon as practicable.” Additionally, a “clubhouse will be secured, and will be fitted up with gymnasium, library, billiard and pool tables, bathing facilities, and other conveniences.” Dues were $1 per month; those who joined were assessed an initiation fee of $5; those wishing a life membership were charged $50.25

Given his standing as a theatrical luminary and his fascination with baseball, it was not surprising that De Wolf Hopper became the Association’s president. The first vice president was Burr McIntosh. William H. Crane, an actor-producer who enjoyed a 50-plus-year career primarily on the stage, was the second vice president. Not all the officers were performers. Two in fact were then affiliated with the Fourteenth Street Theatre. J. Wesley Rosenquest, its manager (and later owner), was the treasurer, while James T. Maguire, its business manager, was the secretary. Those on the governing committee were performers. The most prominent were Digby Bell and John Drew, described by critic-columnist-writer Ward Morehouse as the “leading light comedian of the era,” who was the uncle of John, Lionel, and Ethel Barrymore.26 Among the others on the committee: Robert Hilliard; Frank Lane; and Nat C. Goodwin, a comic actor best known for his mimicry.

The following month, the Association rented the clubhouse of the Land and Water Club, near Whitestone, Queens, but quickly realized that the cost would be prohibitive. So they sublet the property; for the time being, members could exercise on a track operated by the Manhattan Athletic Club. Almost immediately, they formed a “nine” and began scheduling ballgames. The May 10 Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported that “De Wolf Hopper and Bob Hilliard will be in their glory to-day. There is no matinee today and at the Manhattan Athletic Club’s grounds … the actors’ nines of the County Fair Club and the American Actors’ Athletic Association will play a match at 4 P.M.”27 The following month, the group held its inaugural track-and-field meet. Members competed in foot races, high jumps, mile walks, and broad jumps, with baseball represented via “throwing the baseball” and “running bases” contests.28 The New York Herald categorized the actor-athletes as “the heavy men, the juvenile men, the walking gentlemen and the deep, scowling villains of the stage,” adding that the “elongated comedian De Wolf Hopper stood on the field as judge and frequently became very much excited. Digby Bell … was also a judge and graced the meeting with his own peculiar smile. …” Lastly, the “obstacle race” winner even came away with the “De Wolf Hopper Cup.”29

Then in July, it was back to baseball as the Five A’s traveled to Middletown, New York, to battle a squad from the New York State Homeopathic Asylum for the Insane. Here, the thespians were bested by the “insane young gentlemen,”30 but this victory came with a bit of chicanery. As reported in the New York Press, an “elaborate spread was prepared for the Actors before the game, and to this the jolly Thespians afterward laid their defeat. While the overfed Actors were dozing in various parts of the field the erstwhile lunatics knocked out 20 runs. The actors scored but 8. Of course this was a tremendous victory for the Asylums, and their joy nearly sent the convalescent patients back to padded cells.” On a second visit, “the wily Asylums again tried to steer the actors up against a sumptuous spread, but they were not to be taken in. …The Asylums’ pitcher went back to his pristine wildness …” and he and his teammates lost to the Five A’s, 17-2.31

It was at this time that the Association rented a property, at 43 West 28th Street, that would serve as its clubhouse and headquarters and be furnished in “a ‘rich, not gaudy’ manner.” Amenities would include “a parlor gymnasium and a plunge bath.”32 By then, membership had topped 320. And the Five A’s were not the only organization to settle into a new residence: For part of the 1889 season and all of 1890, the New York Giants played their home games in what would be the second of three different Polo Grounds. Upon seeing the spacious new ballyard, slugger Roger Connor predicted that no player ever would belt a ball over the center-field fence. Not surprisingly, however, Connor himself was the first to do so, and a policeman reportedly retrieved the horsehide and returned it to the ballplayer. As noted in the New York Press, “Connor presented it to De Wolf Hopper, who will have it gilded, appropriately inscribed and hung up in the (Five A’s) club house. …”33

Additionally, more ballgames featuring the Five A’s were scheduled. On August 15 they took on a reporters’ nine at the Polo Grounds. McIntosh was the Association’s pitcher, while Hopper was an umpire; the final score was 13-12 in favor of the actors. More than 1,200 patrons paid 50 cents each to watch the contest, with the money split between the organizations.34 And the following year, they even played exhibitions against two pro teams. One, appropriately, was the New York Giants. It was noted in the April 16, 1890, New York Sun that the Five A’s “did not do themselves justice yesterday. … For three innings they played fairly good ball, but one or two bad plays completely broke them up, and then it became simply a question as to how many runs the big fellows would make.” (The final score of the nine-inning contest was 34-2 in favor of the Giants.)35 The actors also suited up against Ward’s Wonders, a Brooklyn club in the newly formed Players League.36 The Wonders were captained and managed by John Montgomery Ward, who in 1885 established the Brotherhood of American Base Ball Players, a secret organization that supported players rights. The Players League, which ceased to exist after one season, was an offshoot of the Brotherhood.

The Five A’s filed its certificate of incorporation in March 1890; its listed purpose was “to encourage all manly sports and to promote physical culture and social intercourse.” 37 It also was announced that, on Decoration Day, an Association nine would trek to New Jersey to take on the Red Bank Athletic Club. The following month was a busy one for the group. On June 12, they sponsored a track-and-field event at the Manhattan Athletic Club grounds. The competition included races, dashes, walks, hurdles, high jumps, and a “throwing baseball for members” contest.38 Then on June 25, they took on the Manhattan Athletic Club’s baseball team in a game that, as announced in the New York Times, “promises to be quite a notable one among amateur baseball people.”39

Off the playing field, the Association sponsored benefits to raise money both for themselves and for charity. On June 10, 1889, the New York Press reported that Five A’s members participated in a benefit at Palmer’s Theatre to solicit funds for victims of the Johnstown Flood, which had occurred a week and a half earlier.40 Five days later, the National Police Gazette noted that they “gave a matinee performance at the Metropolitan Opera House last week, in aid of the building fund. It was a big affair: The house was packed; the lobbies were full of girls selling flowers and fellows standing around and buying them. Our athletic actors got up a splendid programme.” Some were baseball-related: Hopper and actor Wilton Lackaye, for example, appeared in a comic skit in which they respectively played Cleopatra and Mark Antony. In it, Antony “dresses himself in a baseball umpire’s outfit and Cleopatra rushes around with a big lobster attached to her girdle.”41 Exactly one year later, a second benefit was organized at the same venue. The National Police Gazette described one of its highlights as a “monster minstrel exhibition” featuring more than 20 performers, among them Hopper and Bell.42

In January 1891 members served as ushers in a program at the Broadway Theatre. That May, the organization put together yet another entertainment at the Metropolitan Opera House, with the program including everything from the De Wolf Hopper Opera Company chorus backing up Della Fox as she performed her song “Columbia” to a scene from Romeo and Juliet. The finale featured the “Five A’s Circus,” spotlighting a hodgepodge of riders, acrobats, gymnasts, vaulters – and Hopper as the ringmaster.43 In February 1893 the Association organized a benefit, held at the Star Theatre, with the New York Times reporting that the “house was crowded, and the audience appeared to greatly enjoy the efforts of a score of well-known performers. …”44 Then in May 1894 a Five A’s benefit was held at Tony Pastor’s Theatre. The Times noted, “Many of the leading vaudeville artists now in the city have volunteered for the occasion. …”45

Not all those associated with the Five A’s were acknowledged stars. One of the more notable was a future legend of the silent cinema who then was a 20-something struggling to establish himself on the stage. In 1892 the “Professional Cards” sections of quite a few issues of the New York Dramatic Mirror cited review quotes from various productions featuring William S. Hart (“Mr. W.S. Hart, [as] Phasarius, has the most difficult part in the play, but he renders it most acceptably,” wrote the Louisville Courier Journal), and added that he may be contacted through the Five A’s. The Mirror also ran the following: “W.S. Hart, Leading Support, MacLean-Prescott Company” and “W.S. Hart, Leading Man, Mlle. Rhea’s Company, 1892-93.” His address remained in “care (of) Five A’s, 43 West 28th Street, New York.”46

Nonetheless, all was not sunshine and smiles with the Five A’s. In May 1893 the organization’s hierarchy began publicly condemning what the New York Times described as the “financial forgetfulness” of many of its members. More than 100 of them reportedly were in arrears of their dues, not to mention the cost of beer and wine that had been imbibed in the clubhouse. That May each one received a letter, signed by “Alfred D. Lind, Attorney and Counsellor at Law,” threatening legal proceedings if the funds remained unpaid. The club, noted Lind, “has a lot of dead timber on its hands and it wants to get rid of it. Many of its members think it is a big thing to belong to this great club of professionals, but they think it is too much for a good thing to pay for it.”47 The following month, two of them were the first to be sued: Lee Harrison, an actor, who owed the Five A’s $51.65; and Charles Davis, the business manager of Proctor’s Theatre, who owed $17.90. “I’ve started the ball rolling with these two suits,” declared Lind, “and others will follow.”48

Then in January 1894, the Association nearly was evicted from its quarters. Its rent had not been paid for two months and it was reported in the New York Sun that the Five A’s “has been in difficulties for some time. It recently tried to collect some $7,000 outstanding dues.”49 The New York World noted that its members in good standing were “much depressed” over the eviction. While the crisis was averted when enough money was collected to meet the rent, it was announced that “the club is now looking for smaller quarters.”50

Apparently, none were found and, within a couple of years, the Five A’s quietly disappeared from the public record. No longer were there media accounts of their fundraisers and sporting contests, baseball and otherwise. A host of other businesses soon occupied their West 28th Street clubhouse, including music publishers, florists, and “dramatic agents”; one was the fledgling William Morris agency, which went into business at this address as “William Morris, Vaudeville Agent.” Most interestingly, in 1896, Vitascope, an early film-production company, built an open-air studio on its roof. Two years later, in relation to the Five A’s, the New York Dramatic Mirror quietly noted that “the society gave up its clubrooms several years ago.”51

By then, the ballyhoo that accompanied the Five A’s inception had dissipated – and De Wolf Hopper and Digby Bell were immersing themselves in other theatrical enterprises. When Bell died in June 1917, more than 500 Lambs Club members and an unspecified number of Players Club representatives attended his funeral. Hopper was one of the pallbearers.52 And when Hopper died, in September 1935, two of the subheads on the New York Times report of his funeral arrangements were: “Delegations from Players and Lambs to Attend Services” and “Every Branch of the Theatrical Profession to Be Represented Among Pallbearers.” 53

Of course, by that time, no pallbearer was aligned with the Actors’ Amateur Athletic Association of America.

ROB EDELMAN is the author of Great Baseball Films and Baseball on the Web (which Amazon.com cited as a Top 10 Internet book), and is a frequent contributor to Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game. He offers film commentary on WAMC Northeast Public Radio and is a longtime Contributing Editor of Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide and other Maltin publications. With his wife, Audrey Kupferberg, he has coauthored Meet the Mertzes, a double biography of Vivian Vance and super-baseball fan William Frawley, and Matthau: A Life. His byline has appeared in Total Baseball, The Total Baseball Catalog, Baseball and American Culture: Across the Diamond, NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture, The National Pastime: A Review of Baseball History, The Baseball Research Journal, and histories of the 1918 Boston Red Sox, 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers, 1947 New York Yankees, and 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates. He is the author of a baseball film essay for the Kino International DVD Reel Baseball: Baseball Films from the Silent Era, 1899-1926; is an interviewee on several documentaries on the director’s cut DVD of The Natural; was the keynote speaker at the 23rd Annual NINE Spring Training Conference; and teaches film history courses at the University at Albany (SUNY).

Photo credits

Digby Bell, Harvard Theatre Collection.

Notes

1 “Athletic Actors,” New York Dramatic Mirror, May 4, 1889: 6.

2 De Wolf Hopper and Wesley Winans Stout, Once a Clown, Always a Clown (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1927), 76.

3 “Short Stops,” New York Times, April 21, 1889: 3.

4 “Morality in Books,” New York Times, June 2, 1900: BR12.

5 John Kieran. “Sports of the Times: Si Sets Things Right,” New York Times, September 5, 1938: 21.

6 “Nickname of ‘Giants,’” New York Times, February 22, 1936: 11.

7 “Digby Bell, Actor, Dies in 69th Year,” New York Times, June 21, 1917: 13.

8 “A Cold Night for Digby Bell,” New York Times, September 12, 1888: 8.

9 “Sullivan Has Friends Who Say Boston People Who Criticize Him Are Cranks,” New York Times, August 18, 1887: 3.

10 “De Wolf Hopper, 77, Dies in Kansas City,” New York Times, September 24, 1935: 23.

11 Rob Edelman, Great Baseball Films (New York: Citadel Press, 1994), 51.

12 Edelman, 51-52.

13 “De Wolf Hopper, 77, Dies in Kansas City.”

14 “Hopper Idol of Playgoers for Half Century,” New York Times, September 24, 1935: 23.

15 “The Pennant Is Theirs,” New York Times, October 15, 1888: 5.

16  “Theatrical Gossip,” New York Times, June 10, 1891: 8.

17 The Edison Phonograph Monthly, Vol. VII, No. 5, May 1909: 18.

18 “To Receive the Temple Cup,” New York Times, October 11, 1894: 6.

19 “It Was a Comic Victory. Actors Make a Frantic Attempt to Play Ball,” New York Times, May 26, 1886: 5.

20 “Actors To Play Baseball,” New York Times, July 31, 1887: 12. Throughout her life, Ethel Barrymore – who was born in 1879 and debuted on Broadway in 1895 – prided herself on her love of baseball. Barrymore family biographer Margot Peters noted that Ethel “knew the batting averages and pitching records of every player in the major leagues; during the World Series, she hung over her radio.” In 1951, she cited her all-around major-league all-star team: Hal Chase [first base]; Charlie Gehringer [second base]; Pie Traynor [third base]; Honus Wagner [shortstop]; Babe Ruth [left field]; Tris Speaker [center field]; Ty Cobb [right field]; Mickey Cochrane [catcher]; and Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, and Carl Hubbell [pitchers]. Then on October 12, 1952, she was the mystery guest on What’s My Line?,, the TV game show. Given the time of year, it was not surprising that the first question panelist Dorothy Kilgallen asked her was, “May I assume that you are not in baseball?” After her identity was established, host John Daly observed, “I understand that you have a rather substantial interest in a thing called baseball.” After she acknowledged this, Daly asked Barrymore if she was in town for the World Series. She responded that she had seen “all of them on television.” Margot Peters reported that on June 17, 1959 – the day before her death – Ethel “listened to a Dodgers-Milwaukee Braves doubleheader.”)  

21 “A Comedy of Errors: Yesterday’s Benefit Ball Game Between Actors and Journalists,” New York Times, September 8, 1888: 3.

22 theplayersnyc.org/history.

23 “Athletic. Coming Events,” New York Clipper, April 5, 1890: 8.

24 The Sun’s Guide to New York (New York: R. Wayne Wilson and Company, 1892), 88.

25 “Actors’ Athletic Club,” New York Times, April 26, 1889: 4.

26 Ward Morehouse, Matinee Tomorrow: Fifty Years of Our Theater (New York: Whittlesey House, 1949), 2.

27 “The Babies Win,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 10, 1889: 1.

28 Outing: An Illustrated Monthly Magazine of Sport, Travel and Recreation,

The Outing Company Limited, April 1889-September 1889: 59-60.

29 “Thespian Athletes on the Field,” New York Herald, June 13, 1890: 9.

30 Documents of the Assembly of the State of New York (Albany: James B. Lyon, State Printer, 1890), 93-94.

31 “Lunatics As Ball Tossers,” New York Press, March 23, 1890: 19.

32 “Theatrical Gossip,” New York Times, July 31, 1889: 8.

33 “Diamond Tips,” New York Press, July 11, 1889: 4.   

34 “A Plucky Rally,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 16, 1889: 1.

35 “Sport With the Base Ball,” New York Sun, April 16, 1890: 4.

36 https://covehurst.net/ddyte/brooklyn/1890.html.

37 “General Metropolitan News,” Chicago Tribune, March 20, 1890: 2.

38 “Actors as Athletes,” New York Times, June 13, 1890: 2.

39 “A Great Baseball Day,” New York Times, June 24, 1890: 3.

40 “Stars of Hope for Johnstown,” New York Press, June 10, 1889: 2.

41 “Masks and Faces,” National Police Gazette, June 15, 1889: 2.

42 “Masks and Faces,” National Police Gazette, June 14, 1890: 2.

43 “Notes of the Stage,” New York Times, May 24, 1891: 13.

44 “Degradation of Amusement,” New York Times, February 27, 1893: 8.

45 “Theatrical Gossip,” New York Times, May 3, 1894: 8.

46 “Professional Cards,” New York Dramatic Mirror, February 6, 1892: 7; February 20, 1892: 7; April 23, 1892: 8; May 7, 1892: 14; September 17, 1892: 17; October 19, 1892: 17; November 5, 1892: 17; December 10, 1892: 17; etc. 

47 “Five A’s After Delinquents,” New York Times, May 18, 1893: 8.

48 “Five A’s Members Sued,” New York Herald, June 15, 1893: 13.

49 “Five A’s and No W’s,” New York Sun, January 16, 1894: 2.

50 “The ‘5 A’s’ Nearly Evicted,” New York World, January 16, 1894: page number undecipherable.

51 “Questions Answered,” New York Dramatic Mirror, October 8, 1898: 14. 

52 “Digby Bell’s Funeral,” Billboard, June 30, 1917: 4.

53 “De Wolf Hopper Funeral Friday,” New York Times, September 25, 1935: 23.

Most casual baseball fans are familiar with such well-known movies as the Lou Gehrig biopic The Pride of the Yankees, the myth-making twosome of The Natural and Field of Dreams, and the irreverent Bull Durham, but there are numerous films that have been largely forgotten even by diehard baseball and film aficionados. The 1953 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer release Big Leaguer falls into the latter category of cinema which is, in all likelihood, due to the fact that the real-life stories of some individuals involved in the project are of more interest than the characters and events in the film itself.

Later in his career, director Robert Aldrich called Big Leaguer “a nineteen-day marvel,” intended to be little more than theater-filler for MGM.1 Aldrich went on to greater fame as director of movies like The Dirty Dozen (1967) and the football-themed The Longest Yard (1974), but Big Leaguer marked his theatrical-film debut. In addition to cutting his teeth in cinema on the set of this film, Aldrich had the opportunity to work with longtime Hollywood star Edward G. Robinson, who was best known for his gangster roles in such films as Little Caesar (1931) and Key Largo (1948).

In his heyday, Robinson would have had no part of such a low-budget effort, but this was the first major-studio film role he had been offered in three years due to the fact that he had run afoul of the House Un-American Activities Committee.2 Robinson was twice called to testify before the HUAC, in 1950 and 1952. Though he sought to distance himself from his liberal political activities in the 1930s and 1940s, he was “effectively ‘graylisted’ from Hollywood,” which resulted in film producers being hesitant to hire him.3

Robinson was also known to be a baseball fan, which likely helped him to embrace his role as Hans Lobert, a former Deadball Era infielder who was working as a scout and instructor for the New York Giants at the time the film was made. Though Robinson’s name still gave clout to his film, Aldrich developed some doubts about the casting choice. He recalled, “Eddie Robinson was a marvelous actor and a brilliant man, but he was not physically coordinated. He would walk to first base and trip over home plate.”4

Robinson’s lack of agility stood in contrast to the real-life John “Hans” Lobert, whom he was portraying. Lobert was born on October 18, 1881, and began his major-league playing career with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1903. The first Pirates player Lobert met was future Hall of Famer Honus Wagner, who dubbed the new rookie “Hans Number Two” because they shared the same first name.5 Lobert played for five different teams over the course of a 14-year career in the majors; he batted .274 with 1,252 hits and 316 stolen bases.

Lobert went on to become a baseball lifer. After his playing career ended, he coached the West Point baseball team from 1918 to 1925 before returning to the New York Giants – the last team for which he had played – as a coach. In 1934 he became a coach with the Philadelphia Phillies, another of his former teams, and ended up as the team’s manager for the 1942 season. The Phillies’ 42-109 record that year was, according to Lobert, “enough to end a beautiful friendship.”6 After two years as a coach for the Cincinnati Reds, Lobert returned to the Giants in 1945 and worked for the franchise until his death on September 14, 1968, by which time his life in Organized Baseball had spanned a total of 66 years.

Although Hans Lobert was a real person who did indeed work for the New York Giants and the movie was filmed at the Giants’ training complex in Melbourne, Florida, Big Leaguer is a fictional film that indulges in several of the clichés that abound in much of baseball cinema. Robinson’s Hans Lobert character runs a training camp that allows him to scout and to train prospects for the New York Giants. The movie alternates between faux-documentary narration about the training camp and the true action involving the characters.

The clichés involve the conflicts surrounding the primary prospects in the camp. Adam Polachuk (Jeff Richards) is an immigrant’s son whose father believes he is studying law while he is actually pursuing a baseball career. To complicate matters further, Polachuk falls in love with Lobert’s niece, who is portrayed by Vera-Ellen in the only non-dancing role of her career. Tippy Mitchell (Bill Crandall) is the son of a former star first baseman and is unable to tell his father that he would rather be an architect than a ballplayer. Lastly, there is pitching prospect Bobby Bronson (Richard Jaeckel), who is rejected by the Giants and then is signed by the rival Brooklyn Dodgers. Lobert is worried that Bronson will come back to haunt him by fulfilling his potential with the Dodgers, and he becomes concerned that the Giants might dismiss him or end his training program altogether. As Hollywood would have it, however, all turns out well in the end.

Though the film’s content is trite, considerable effort was expended to portray the baseball scenes as realistically as possible. For one thing, Lobert was retained as technical adviser to tell Aldrich and the actors how things should play out and so that Robinson could learn to mimic his mannerisms. Lobert was paid the grand sum of $2,000 for providing his expertise.7 In addition to that, several former ballplayers had minor roles, including future Los Angeles Dodgers executive Al Campanis, Bob Trocolor, and Tony Ravish; Jeff Richards had also been a baseball prospect at one time, but an injury had derailed his shot at a professional career. Lobert recalled that the ballplayers received $10 per day for their roles and that another $10 was added if they actually had a speaking part in a particular shot.8

The most notable player to appear in Big Leaguer was Hall of Fame pitcher Carl Hubbell, who had won 253 games and the 1933 World Series with the Giants. According to Lobert, Hubbell received $5,000 for his cameo role as himself, a paycheck that was commensurate with his status in comparison to that of Lobert and the other ballplayers on the set.9

Big Leaguer received mixed reviews upon its release. One critic called it “nothing more than a double-bill entry,” while Variety magazine wrote that Robinson was “good as the camp founder and believable in the hokum that has been mixed in with fact.”10 The Giants’ training camps were certainly a fact, and Lobert continued to conduct them, even in as far away a locale as the Virgin Islands. In November 1958 the Giants sent Lobert to St. Thomas and St. Croix for two weeks to work with the Virgin Islands Baseball Clinic Committee to plan instructional classes.11 Hollywood may not have ventured out on a limb with Big Leaguer’s content, but the real Giants franchise showed that it was willing to go much farther than Melbourne, Florida, in search of new talent.

FREDERICK C. BUSH and former big-leaguer Hans Lobert, who is featured in his article, have much in common: 1) They both lived in Pittsburgh, PA for parts of their lives; 2) Lobert played briefly for the Pirates, and Bush later cheered for the same franchise; 3) Lobert is featured in Lawrence Ritter’s The Glory of Their Times, and Bush has read Ritter’s book; 4) Lobert coached the baseball team at the US Military Academy (Army) at West Point for eight years, and Bush grew up as the son of a career US Army soldier. Add in the fact that both men hail from German ancestry, and it becomes obvious that Bush is practically a latter-day Lobert, who was fated to write about his predecessor for this book.

Notes

1 Robert Bock, The Edward G. Robinson Encyclopedia (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2002), 43.

2 Hal Erickson, The Baseball Filmography, 1915-2001, 2nd edition (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2002), 92.

3 Ibid. According to Robert Aldrich, being “graylisted” was worse than being blacklisted: “Since Robinson was not overtly accused of anything, the HUAC would not give him a chance to publicly defend himself and thus encourage producers to hire him.”

4 Bock, 44.

5 Lawrence S. Ritter, The Glory of Their Times, enlarged edition (New York: William Morrow, 1984), 189.

6 Ritter, 185.

7 Henry W. Thomas and Neal McCabe, eds., The Glory of Their Times, audiobook, by Lawrence S. Ritter (HighBridge Company, 1998), CD.

8 Ibid.  It may be of some interest that Bing Russell, the father of actor Kurt Russell and grandfather of former major leaguer Matt Franco, appeared in an unbilled role. (See https://imdb.com/name/nm0751032/). Bing Russell later owned the Portland Mavericks, an independent minor-league baseball team, from 1973-77. The Mavericks lived up to their name and were featured in a 2014 documentary film, The Battered Bastards of Baseball.

9 Ibid.

10 Bock, 44.

11 “’Hans’ Lobert of Giants to Hold Clinic,” Virgin Islands Daily News, November 18, 1958.

As a kid growing up in New York during the 1950s, I was obsessed with the game of baseball. My all-time favorite player became Roger Maris, just after he was acquired in 1960 by my favorite team, the New York Yankees, from the Kansas City Athletics.

As a 14-year-old kid, I became friends with Maris and caught his first National League home run at Forbes Field when I was 18. The story has appeared in a 1989 issue of Sports Illustrated, The Wall Street Journal, the book Baseball Lives by Mike Bryan, Readers Digest, in Chicken Soup for the Baseball Fan’s Soul, etc. The friendship continued with his family after he died in 1985 and Roger’s grandson is named after me and he is my godson.  

Once I started working in the front office of the San Diego Padres in 1975, my Maris story circulated throughout the professional baseball Industry.

Over the years, the bond I had with Maris and his family has been documented in national publications, books, on radio, and on TV. 

In 2000, four years after leaving the Padres organization, I returned to my office and listened to my voicemail messages.

One of the calls was from a person who identified himself as Ross Greenburg of HBO. The only message he left was to call him back. While I quickly recognized that the number had a New York City area code, I didn’t know at the time that Ross was the president of HBO Sports. 

When Ross answered the phone, he asked me if I had any idea why he had called me. Being a wise guy, I said, “Sure, Ross, I figure you’re with HBO and you’d like me to try HBO for 30 days for free to see if I like it and would want to subscribe.”

Fortunately for me, he laughed and then explained the reason for the call.

“Andy, we just hired Billy Crystal to direct a movie about Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle and that incredible 1961 Yankees season. We have spoken to representatives from the commissioner’s office, the Yankees front office, and the Baseball Hall of Fame. Each group has recommended that you should be involved because of your knowledge of Maris and that 1961 team. HBO would like to hire you as a technical consultant for the movie.”

I was floored and said that if the Maris family gave me their approval for my involvement, then I’d do it.

Lucky for me, Roger’s widow, Pat, gave me her OK and I was now in the moviemaking business.

“The greatest summer of my life was 1961. The Yankees’ Mantle and Maris provided the excitement and drama as they both attempted to break the single season home run record. The second greatest summer of my life was the summer of 2000 when I was able to relive that 1961 summer.”

—Billy Crystal
Director of 61*

I agree.

During the summer of 2000 I was given the opportunity to travel back in time and visit places and live experiences that had eluded me the first time 1961 happened. I was prepared. I knew what to look for, where to go, and whom I wanted to meet. I would get to be 13 years old again.

For me the process of making a movie was fascinating, interesting, and entertaining. The experiences I had on the HBO set of 61* were memorable. I met talented people and formed new friendships. It became apparent to me that the success this movie would enjoy was the result of a subject for which everyone has an insatiable appetite. It contained a heavy flavoring of realism and was spiced with details. It has a sprinkle of dreams and just a pinch of make-believe. America was hungry for this movie and HBO knew that. And there was only one chef, er, I mean director, who could carefully prepare it and serve it up just right …

The Director

Someone on the set told me that Billy Crystal had the movie recorded in his head. He knew what every scene looked like and how it should be shot. In order for Billy to bring that vision to life and make it into a reality, he hired a team that was unbeatable. The result produced a powerful, emotional, and dramatic film about two baseball legends.

I asked members of the crew if the 61* set was typical of other movie sets. The answer was always “no.” The HBO 61* movie set’s personality was a reflection of Billy Crystal. It was largely formed by the admiration of those people who hold Billy in such high esteem and wanted to be there for him.

Yes, Billy Crystal is the same sensitive, lovable, humorous, personable person off the screen as he is on the screen. And frankly I was amazed that he was taking into consideration that he had meetings before and after he stepped onto the set and worked 15 hours a day. Now add the fact that many days the temperature reached close to 100 degrees, and the humidity must have been in the 90s, plus there were three sets of kids under 4 years of age running around the set crying with planes flying overhead interrupting scenes. Billy patiently handled it all and was simply incredible.

Pop quiz time. It’s a true-or-false test.

1. Is Billy Crystal a perfectionist?
2. Does Billy Crystal know baseball?
3. Was Billy Crystal obsessed with detail for the movie 61*?
4. Did everyone on the set believe that Billy was the perfect director for this movie?

Answers: 1. True. 2. True. 3. True. 4. Absolutely true!

During a break when a scene was being set up several members of the staff started talking about tennis. It was casual make-conversation talk. Billy heard the remarks and quickly pointed out that the only subject on the set to be discussed was baseball. He said it in a joking manner and got a laugh. I took it seriously and thought the same thing. In fact I would have taken it one step further. … My rule would have been that the only subject discussed off the set would be baseball.

The movie set’s personality was a reflection of Billy Crystal, his love for Mantle, Maris, and baseball. How many directors during breaks would pick up a glove and have a catch with the players (actors), play pepper or talk baseball? I quickly realized that it was common knowledge that everyone who worked on this movie had the utmost respect and admiration for Billy. I observed Billy for a couple of months and agree that he is most deserving of those accolades.

The Script

The script was incredibly important, as I knew that this movie would be the legacy by which people would know my childhood hero Roger Maris. My biggest concern was that the Roger Maris I had followed as a kid could possibly be transformed and become unrecognizable as William Bendix’s portrayal of Babe Ruth or Anthony Perkins’s of Jimmy Piersall.

61*‘s screenwriter, Hank Steinberg, had managed to capture the essence of Roger Maris without making him into a “Hollywoodized” caricature of himself. Hank recognized that Roger was a family man who enjoyed playing baseball and was not interested in the bright lights and exposure that he received. Hank provided the lines for the principal actors to say that would bring out their personalities, attitudes, frustrations, and philosophies of life. I am amazed at Hank Steinberg’s talent.

Equally important, Ross Greenburg of HBO and Billy Crystal approved the script and then brought it to life.

The Actors

I’m convinced that if Roger Maris had met Barry Pepper he would have been impressed with his athleticism, dedication to his craft, and his love of baseball. Roger might have also thought that he was looking in a mirror. I am convinced that Barry’s acting abilities exceed his strong resemblance to Roger. And there were times that I thought Barry was Roger.

The very first thing Barry said to me was that he wanted to know everything about Roger. He wanted to know if Roger walked with his thumb in his pants pocket and his fingers hanging outside. Barry demonstrated daily his incredible dedication to his craft. In fact, one day Barry became ill due to the fact that he doesn’t smoke, but for the film smoked unfiltered cigarettes as Roger did in 1961. I was amazed to watch Barry enjoying his time between takes with the actresses portraying 8-year-old Susan Maris rather than go back to his trailer. Barry was connecting with these young actresses in a very special way that has nothing to do with acting but has everything to do with who Barry Pepper was as a person.

Maybe an even better example of Barry’s obsession with the role was the fact that after I told him about Roger’s fascination with a board game called Labyrinth, Barry started using it when he wasn’t shooting a scene or lifting weights.

Every time I turned around it seemed that Barry was pumping iron. Barry’s workout did not have a schedule or a special location. He did it everywhere throughout the day to build up his arms so that they would resemble Roger’s. Unbeknownst to the viewers, moments before he walked into the Raytown house for a scene, Barry did at least 20 curls. Talk about dedication.

Thomas Jane, who played Mickey Mantle, told former big leaguer Reggie Smith – the baseball coach for the movie – that he didn’t have any bad habits when it came to playing baseball. He said that because he didn’t play baseball! Thomas’s transformation into the Mick as a ballplayer was nothing short of amazing.

I was very much impressed with both actors’ ability to not only act, but also to personify the larger-than-life person they were portraying and at the same time swing a bat!

I enjoyed Chris Bauer’s portrayal of Bob Cerv. Chris was the comic relief in the movie and played it perfectly. Bauer is a major-league rising star! I thought Bruce McGill’s Ralph Houk was perfect. I especially liked his argument with the umps in right field after a fan had thrown a chair on the field at Roger. It looked so natural for Bruce to argue the way he did that I didn’t think he was acting. It was then that I realized that’s exactly what he wanted us to think. Anthony Michael Hall was a perfect Whitey Ford. He was Mick’s buddy and a street-smart kid. A tough assignment had to be playing Yogi Berra. To begin with, I think Yogi in real life was a caricature of himself. Paul Borghese embraced the Berra role in a way that you would have thought Paul grew up in St. Louis with Joe Garagiola.

The Crew

There were leagues of unsung heroes behind the cameras.

The crew shared a common trait. They were tireless workers, striving for perfection, and always willing to please.

There were camera operators, sound technicians, makeup artists, grips, gaffers, production assistants, and production designers. Job responsibilities on a movie set are endless but I’m convinced that their work is critical to the movie’s success.

Personally, I spent more time with a few select members of the crew in preproduction and immediately recognized their talents and dedication. C.J. MacGuire was in charge of props. One of many challenges C.J. ran into was finding the perfect baseball glove for Barry Pepper to use in the movie. Keep in mind that Roger’s glove was a Spalding model and that Spalding hadn’t made gloves for big leaguers in at least a couple of decades. But C.J. got it done, including the stamped Roger Maris name in the pocket of the glove.

Dan Moore was in charge of providing wardrobe for every human seen in the movie. I’m talking about every piece of clothing, shoes, and socks. The trailer that housed everything was practically the size of a hotel banquet room. Dan not only had to get the right look but the right fit for everyone. The ballplayers were Dan’s responsibility too. I’m talking about sani’s, stirrup socks, belts, fitted caps, and vintage baseball gloves, not to mention flannel baseball jerseys. I was amused at the solution Dan Moore came up with when he encountered a catcher who wore an XXL shirt for the Washington Senators. There was only one jersey that could solve the dilemma. So Dan took the WA off a WASHINGTON road jersey and transplanted it to the front of a BOSTON jersey that was big enough for the XXL catcher. Because the catcher’s chest protector covered everything but the first two and last two letters, the problem was fixed.

Everyone who worked on this movie was an artist. Regardless of whether it was the guys who recreated the monuments in center field, built the Yankees’ right-field fence, or, as Anne McCulley did, decorated each set. It was Anne’s artistry and necessary excruciating attention to detail that provided placement of background objects and getting the right look for the right feel. I’m referring to the objects in the ballplayers’ lockers to all the items in Claire Ruth’s living room. There were times that when I first walked on a set that I felt that I was in a museum.

By no means am I slighting others who were equally dedicated to the effort, but these were the folks who I had the most contact with.

The Reel and the Real: the filming of 61*. (Courtesy of Andy Strasberg)

Secrets

Some things don’t always appear to be what they appear to be. I found out the secret to shooting a scene with the crowd clapping/cheering when the actors have lines that need to be heard. The cheering part was obvious. Everyone was instructed to “act” like they were cheering without saying a word. The clapping part was little bit tricky. The common mistake I found out is when a person claps and their hands don’t touch. This sometimes looks phony because the camera angle could pick up the fact that it’s obvious. So the key to clapping without sound is having the heels of your hands touch but not your palm or fingers. Try it. No sound!

Many of the scenes took place in the Ambassador Hotel. This is the same hotel that at one time was the home of the famous Coconut Grove nightspot and the tragic site of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. It was explained to me at the time that the hotel was used for music videos and movies. Instead of building a set with four walls the production just moves into the hotel. So it was possible that you could walk down the hall and see Mickey’s hospital room, Mickey’s hotel suite, Claire Ruth’s living room, and Toots Shor’s restaurant.

Anthony Michael Hall is a natural righty and in order to make his Whitey Ford pitching scenes look authentic Dan Moore provided a uniform that was a mirror image of what it really was. In other words the Yankee “NY” was reversed as was the number “16.” The result was that when Hall threw right-handed and the film was flopped he appeared as a lefty. This movie trick was used in the film classic The Pride of The Yankees. Gary Cooper played the role of Lou Gehrig. Cooper was a righty and instead of teaching him to become a lefty, the filmmakers used the same technique.

Pop quiz

1. Who is the only Yankee in the movie?

Answer: At one point the script had dialogue for a radio announcer from the Angels to call Roger’s 50th homer. I saw this as an opportunity for my good friend, a former Yankees second baseman who was at the time a Padres broadcaster, to participate. I gave a recorded audition cassette to Billy, who must have liked what he heard. Jerry Coleman got the job!

The Sets

Upon entering the re-creation of the Yankees home clubhouse, I remarked to Billy that the only thing missing was the smell of sweat. “Don’t worry,” he replied, “we’ll have that, too, in a couple of hours.” This was a very special place for me because it was one of those places that I only dreamed about in 1961. The re-creation of the locker room was mind-boggling. Even the hanging lights and bubble gum were just right. I found myself hanging around Roger’s locker even when they were done shooting a scene.

The Los Angeles Coliseum was transformed into Baltimore’s 1961 Memorial Stadium. This is the same Coliseum that was the site of the 1984 Olympics and the home of the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1958. Everything was there. The scoreboard. The trees behind the fence, the dugouts, and the bullpen. And the most beautiful manicured baseball diamond. There was one shot that you can see over the Orioles pitcher’s shoulder when Hurricane Esther was having an effect on the trees. Well, the real story of those shaking leaves took place when Billy realized that the wind machine he had brought in was not getting the desired effect. It was easily fixed when a bunch of guys (no, these are not the people Hollywood lists as grips in the credits) climbed into the trees and started shaking them on cue. It worked beautifully!

Tiger Stadium brought back many memories for me. It was the site of Roger’s first homer in the majors when he was with Cleveland. But my fondest memory now is that it was transformed into my beloved Yankee Stadium of 1961. When I walked onto the field that first day of filming, I could not stop my goose bumps for almost 45 minutes. My allergies must have been affected by something in the air because when I went to right field and looked around and remembered, my eyes started tearing. This is where I had spent a good portion of my youth. Maybe too much time, according to my parents. Now I realized it wasn’t Yankee Stadium but this was my time-travel voyage, and I enjoyed every second of it.

Special Effects

After the movie was completed it was time for the computer-generating artists to work their magic and complete the effect of 1961. The special effects used in this movie are so good that you don’t realize that they’re special effects. Some examples included the Yankee Stadium façade, the Bronx community in back of the Yankee Stadium bleachers, and making a crowd of 350 people look like thousands.

Notes

• Every Maris child under 10 years old who appeared in the movie was a set of twins.
• The baby playing Randy Maris was a girl.
• The scene of Roger visiting a sick boy in Baltimore didn’t make the final edit. Even though it happened it was thought to be too much of movie cliché and would undermine the integrity of the movie.
• The sleeves on Barry Pepper’s Yankee uniform were cut short just the way Roger wore them throughout his career.
• Barry never buttoned his top uniform button similar to the way Roger wore his jersey.

Before a scene was shot the player portraying right-handed Rocky Colavito wore his baseball glove on the wrong hand in the outfield. It was corrected moments before the camera started rolling. As it happens, the scene apparently ended up on the proverbial cutting-room floor.

• During the backyard-barbecue scene, there’s a bag of Roger Maris “Fla –Vor– itt Hickory Chips,” which was an actual product that Roger endorsed when he was with Kansas City.
• A 1961 Post Cereal box featuring Roger Maris on the front and baseball cards on the reverse can be seen briefly in Pat’s kitchen in the Raytown, Missouri, home.
• Former major-league knuckleball pitcher Tom Candiotti was Hoyt Wilhelm in the movie. In order to accentuate the natural crook in Wilhelm’s neck, Candiotti wore his Baltimore Orioles cap on a tilt.
• It took approximately four hours for a Jiffy Lube Station in LA to be transformed into a 1961 ESSO station for the Queens, New York, gas station scene.
• The actor Bobby Hosea, who portrayed Elston Howard, also played O.J. Simpson in a TV movie.
• Over 800 baseball players auditioned for roles as extras.
• The writers voted again for the 1960 American League MVP. For the movie the Baseball Writers Association of America had to approve the reproduction of the 1960 MVP award that Roger receives on Opening Day in 1961.
• Prior to a scene, Billy noticed a “fan extra” with a Fu Manchu mustache sitting over the dugout. He instructed someone to replace the mustached extra, as it didn’t look appropriate for 1961. When the extra was informed and explained the reason for his removal he requested a razor and shaved off the mustache while sitting behind the Yankee dugout. The result was that he didn’t lose his seat – just his mustache.
• The 1961 Tigers batboy had the role down pat. He was the real Tigers batboy from 1999.
• Every seat in Tiger Stadium had to be painted or covered in the 1961 Yankee Stadium teal blue.
• When Barry Pepper hit home run #61 for the movie, the ball traveled over 300 feet and the date was August 12, 2000.
• Barry posed in re-creations of Roger’s baseball cards from 1957, 1960, and 1961 that were used as props in a number of scenes.

The End

My mother and father passed away years ago. I wish they could have seen this movie and how I was involved. While I was growing up, my parents had many concerns about my obsession toward baseball and in particular my idol Roger Maris. My parents always used to tell me they wished I knew my schoolwork as well as I knew baseball because, they explained to me, baseball would not help me later on in life. (Slow down the 61* movie credits to see who was right)

Everyone involved in this process treated me with compassion and kindness. HBO’s Ross Greenburg and Billy Crystal understood what this movie meant to the memory of my childhood hero. We didn’t talk about it. We just looked at each other and they knew. These are very special people who understand. I was extremely fortunate to have had a chance to meet them and experience the sense of traveling back in time.

When Roger hit his 61st homer I noticed that after he shook hands with Yogi Berra and the Yankees batboy but before he reached the dugout a fan jumped from the stands near the dugout to congratulate him with a pat on the back and a handshake. I was 13 at the time and wanted to be that fan, during the filming of 61* I was 52 and still wanted to be that fan … thanks to Billy Crystal and Ross Greenburg, I finally got to be that fan.

ANDY STRASBERG, a native New Yorker, realized a lifelong dream of working in Major League Baseball, when he began a career that lasted 22 years with the San Diego Padres in 1975. Andy served as a technical consultant and made his acting debut for the HBO movie 61* directed by Billy Crystal. In 2008 Strasberg co-authored the book Baseball ’s Greatest Hit: The Story of Take Me Out to the Ball Game and was responsible for the USPS to issue a stamp commemorating the 100th anniversary of the song “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”

Andy Strasberg on the set of 61* (Courtesy of Andy Strasberg)

For Thomas Tull, his status as a Tinseltown powerhouse is the result of a combination of fortuity, hard work, and relentless drive. It is the byproduct of his forming his own film company and producing or executive-producing such box-office blockbusters as The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012), and The Hangover (2009) and its two sequels (released in 2011 and 2013). Granted that in his heart of hearts he is a comic-book geek and a superhero fanboy, but he also is a baseball zealot who has made two highly regarded, high-profile sports films: 42 (2013), a biopic emphasizing the struggles of Jackie Robinson to play major-league baseball; and Fastball (2016), a documentary that offers a knowing overview of baseball in the twenty-first century.  

If one wishes to “make it” in the movies, having a famous parent to place a phone call and request a favor opens doors that otherwise will be shut. But Tull has no such pedigree; his childhood was as far removed from Hollywood as Paris, Texas, is from Paris, France. He was born in 1970 and grew up in Endwell, New York, a hamlet west of Binghamton. His dental-hygienist mother was a single parent, and he helped support her and his two younger sisters by shoveling snow and mowing lawns. “Struggling as a family financially, I grew up within the confines of constantly worrying (whether) the light is going to get turned off,” he recalled in 2016. “I think you can get drive from that.”1

As a youngster, Tull played baseball and football and even earned a gridiron scholarship to Hamilton College, in Clinton, New York, from which he graduated in 1992. His initial intention was to become a lawyer but he entered the business world instead, first opening Smart Wash, a chain of laundromats, and eventually founding Tax Services of America, the owner-operator of Jackson-Hewitt tax-preparation franchises. He then became a venture capitalist. Most significantly, in 2001, he moved on to the Convex Group, an Atlanta-based private-equity firm, eventually becoming its president. 

Tull then turned his interests westward, to Southern California and the movie industry. In 2003 he left Convex, raised between $500 million and $600 million to bankroll film projects, and co-founded Legendary Pictures, a production company. Two years later, Legendary linked up with Warner Bros. to co-finance and co-produce films. In 2009 Tull became Legendary’s majority shareholder. In 2013 the company connected with Universal Pictures in a union that was similar to Tull’s Warner Bros. hookup. Then in 2016, Legendary became a subsidiary of the Dalian Wanda Group, a Chinese conglomerate.

Tull’s fascination with superheroes has greatly impacted his choice of projects. Many of his films are name brands: Superman Returns (2006); Ninja Assassin (2009); Watchmen (2009); Clash of the Titans (2010); Jonah Hex (2010); Man of Steel (2013); Godzilla (2014); Dracula Untold (2014); Jurassic World (2015) … These are the kinds of films that are box-office record-breakers. According to Hollywood.com, Legendary is “perhaps the most progressive and successful motion picture production company to be formed in the 2000s. …”2 In a 2013 New York Times profile, it was noted that Tull’s “aggressiveness and aw-shucks charm made him one of the most successful walk-on players in movie history.”3

His passion for baseball has resulted in the production of 42 and Fastball, films that never will rake in the box-office bucks of a Dark Knight or Hangover. This fervor is emphasized in the first line of the Times piece: “During the baseball strike of 1995, Thomas Tull, then a 24-year-old laundromat owner, was audacious enough to turn up at a training camp for the Atlanta Braves. They looked at his swing and sent him home.”4 If Tull was fated to never sign a pro contract, his accomplishments have allowed him a different kind of access to professional sports. In 2009 he became a part-owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers, a team he had been rooting for since he was 4 years old. Then in 2012, he tried but failed in a bid to purchase the San Diego Padres. The following year, he was elected to the board of directors of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

Tull additionally produced 42, which of course is not the first film to spotlight Jackie Robinson’s integrating the major leagues. Back in 1950, three years after Robinson first played for the Brooklyn Dodgers, he starred as himself in The Jackie Robinson Story; other aspects of his life were examined in the made-for-TV movies The Court-Martial of Jackie Robinson (1990) and Soul of the Game (1996). Notwithstanding, given his importance not just in baseball history but in twentieth century American culture, a retelling of Robinson’s story has never ceased appealing to filmmakers. Since the mid-1990s, Spike Lee had been attempting to mount a Robinson biopic, but the project did not materialize. Robert Redford also wished to produce one, in which he would play Branch Rickey.

Then in 2011, Tull and Legendary Pictures announced their plans to make the film with the assistance of Rachel Robinson, Jackie’s widow. Chadwick Boseman, whose previous credits primarily were on TV series episodes, was cast as Robinson, with Harrison Ford playing The Mahatma, and rising film and television actor Nicole Beharie portraying Rachel. A who’s who of baseball names appear in the scenario, with actors cast as Leo Durocher, Dixie Walker, Pee Wee Reese, Wendell Smith, Ben Chapman, Clyde Sukeforth, Burt Shotton, Clay Hopper, Bobby Bragan, Eddie Stanky, Red Barber, Ralph Branca, and Happy Chandler, among others. C.J. Nitkowski, ex-major leaguer-turned writer/radio host/TV analyst, plays Dutch Leonard.

42 was released in April 2013. That July, Tull was honored by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, and I asked him if he was familiar with The Jackie Robinson Story. “I’ve seen clips, but I haven’t seen the entire film,” was his response. He added, “I talked about it with Rachel. But it was a different voice, and I didn’t want it to influence 42.”5 It is understandable that the creator of a new film would discourage comparisons with earlier, similar projects because of the desire to focus on its marketing. In this case, as Tull explained while addressing the crowd at Cooperstown’s Doubleday Field, 42 is “the most important film I’ll ever do.” He recalled, “I had the privilege of bringing Hank (Aaron) to set. And I can assure you, even Harrison Ford was nervous that day.” Finally, Tull observed, “After making Batman, Superman, and other superhero movies, the greatest ‘superhero’ movie that could be made is about Jackie Robinson.”6

Fastball, Tull’s baseball-centric follow-up, spotlights the heralded fastball pitchers, from Walter Johnson and Bob Feller to Sandy Koufax and Bob Gibson to Nolan Ryan and Aroldis Chapman. Fastball also offers a knowing overview of baseball in the twenty-first century as it stresses the phenomenon of pitcher after pitcher entering games for an inning and challenging hitters by throwing horsehides 95 or 100-plus miles per hour. And given Tull’s profile within the film industry, it is no wonder that a gallery of baseball celebs were enlisted as interviewees, from current superstars – this list begins with Justin Verlander, David Price, Bryce Harper, Andrew McCutchen, and Derek Jeter – to such “old-timers” as Joe Morgan, Goose Gossage, Mike Schmidt, Al Kaline, Ernie Banks, and Hank Aaron. There is a direct connection between Fastball and 42 that transcends baseball; as Bob Gibson is interviewed, he cites the racism American-style that so defined the late 1950s and ’60s, when he was establishing himself as a future Hall of Famer.

And speaking of Hall of Famers, a number of ballplayers who were present in Cooperstown in May 2016 for the Hall of Fame Classic were queried as to how they felt about the content of Fastball. What were their opinions on the demise of the complete game and the arrival of the speedballing specialists? Rollie Fingers, the mustachioed relief pitcher, declared, “It’s probably the biggest change (in the sport). It’s much more specialized, and it seems to be working.” But he added, in relation to his own career, “I don’t think I could do it.” Noted borderline Hall of Famer Alan Trammell, “We all are used to the way the game was played during our era, but times change and we have to be open-minded.” And he was quick to note that “the game today is very healthy.” Hall of Famer Ryne Sandberg observed, “It’s just different today. It’s the nature of the game. There are very different arms in the bullpen, and you want to (use them). … It’s a new piece to the puzzle.”7

Given Tull’s Cooperstown connection, it was no surprise that Fastball was the opening-night selection of the Hall’s 10th Annual Baseball Film Festival, held in September 2015. And it was Tull who approached Jonathan Hock, an Emmy-nominated documentarian, to helm the film. “First, he wanted to create the film every parent, kid, and baseball fan in the world will want to put in the DVD player every March for the next 50 years to get psyched for the baseball season, and fall in love all over again with the game,” Hock observed. “And second, he wanted to put a stake in the ground and do the impossible – to compare pitchers from different eras and figure out who threw the fastest ever.”8

Several years earlier, Tull returned to his alma mater to address students on his “journey from Hamilton to Hollywood.” “I never in a million years planned to be in the movie business,” he noted, adding that the two questions any filmmaker should ask before embarking on a project are: “Is it a great story?” and “How are you going to market the film?” He added, “No matter how fascinating the techno toys are, if the story isn’t there (people will walk out disappointed).”9 Finally, in relation to his out-of-left-field success, Tull on another occasion observed, “If somebody came in and pitched me it as a script, I would say it’s too far-fetched.”10

ROB EDELMAN is the author of Great Baseball Films and Baseball on the Web (which Amazon.com cited as a Top 10 Internet book), and is a frequent contributor to Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game. He offers film commentary on WAMC Northeast Public Radio and is a longtime Contributing Editor of Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide and other Maltin publications. With his wife, Audrey Kupferberg, he has coauthored Meet the Mertzes, a double biography of Vivian Vance and super-baseball fan William Frawley, and Matthau: A Life. His byline has appeared in Total Baseball, The Total Baseball Catalog, Baseball and American Culture: Across the Diamond, NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture, The National Pastime: A Review of Baseball History, The Baseball Research Journal, and histories of the 1918 Boston Red Sox, 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers, 1947 New York Yankees, and 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates. He is the author of a baseball film essay for the Kino International DVD Reel Baseball: Baseball Films from the Silent Era, 1899-1926; is an interviewee on several documentaries on the director’s cut DVD of The Natural; was the keynote speaker at the 23rd Annual NINE Spring Training Conference; and teaches film history courses at the University at Albany (SUNY).

Photo credit

Thomas Tull, photo by Gage Skidmore.

Notes

1 Natalie Robehmed. “Box Office Billionaire: How Legendary’s Thomas Tull Used Comics, China and a Secret Formula to Remake Hollywood,” Forbes, February 29, 2016. 

2 hollywood.com/celebrities/thomas-tull-57636550/.

3 Brooks Barnes and Michael Cieply, “Film Financier Faces a Critical Juncture,” New York Times, February 3, 2013.

4 Ibid.

5 wamc.org/post/rob-edelman-now#stream/0.

6 Ibid.

7 Interviews by the author conducted in Cooperstown on May 28, 2016.

8 https://m.mlb.com/news/article/118994038/fastball-dials-up-heat-on-the-big-screen.

9 hamilton.edu/news/story/thomas-tull-92-discusses-his-journey-from-hamilton-to-hollywood.

10 imdb.com/name/nm2100078/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm.

In 1994, this “son-of-a-bitch” was the subject of a film all his own. It was Cobb, written and directed by Ron Shelton, minor-league journeyman turned major-league Hollywood player.

On the field Tyrus Raymond Cobb, the Georgia Peach, had an exemplary major-league career, lasting from 1905 through 1928. No other batter has matched his lifetime batting average of .366.  Only Pete Rose has bested his total of 4,189 hits.

The story goes that, in 1958, Lefty O’Doul was questioned about how Cobb would fare against contemporary pitching. O’Doul responded that Cobb might hit .340. Why so low, he was asked? “You have to remember,” he replied, “the man is 72 years old.”1

Off the field, however, Ty Cobb was something else altogether. He was an unabashed racist who lamented the South’s loss of the Civil War. He constantly carried a loaded gun. He was a vicious, foul-mouthed brawler and tyrant. It is no surprise that he was so disliked by his fellow players.

“Cobb was the original trash talker,” Shelton explained in an interview just after his film’s release. “He was a Southern redneck who taunted everybody all the time, even his own teammates.”2 This is the Ty Cobb that Shelton depicts on screen.

But Cobb does not focus on the man in his playing days. It is set in the twilight of Cobb’s life, and examines what Shelton described as the “curious relationship” between Cobb (played by Tommy Lee Jones) and sportswriter Al Stump (Robert Wuhl). In 1960 Stump was hired to ghostwrite the faded legend’s whitewashed autobiography, My Life in Baseball: The True Record.

The two spent nearly a year together. A truer picture of the man emerged in Stump’s 1994 book Cobb: A Biography, in which Cobb is portrayed as an argumentative, sickly, booze-soaked old man who was, as Stump writes, “contemptuous of any law other than his own.”3

“He’s in very poor health now,” Shelton said of Stump, who passed away in December 1995, one year after the film’s release. “But I got to know him very well before I began writing the film. For this reason it’s filled with many anecdotes about Cobb that had never before been printed.”

Shelton is one for making literary references, in both his films and his conversation. He contrasted the Cobb-Stump relationship to what might have been “if Samuel Johnson hired Boswell at gunpoint.” In Bull Durham, his instant-classic baseball film, which came to theaters in 1988, one of his characters is noted for quoting Walt Whitman and William Blake.

But while the subject of Cobb is a Hall of Fame ballplayer, Shelton does not consider it a baseball movie. He sees no relation between Cobb and Bull Durham, which is as pure a baseball story as has ever been filmed.

“I am fascinated by people like Ty Cobb, who can be so sociopathic and dysfunctional outside their craft and so brilliant in it,” he said. “Cobb was a fascinating set of contradictions. He was an uncommonly brilliant athlete who was equally uncommonly obsessed. You can only marvel at his numbers – and also at his abominable behavior.”

He added that the film also “is about an old man who’s been called immortal, and how he faces his mortality.” In Cobb, Shelton asks questions that are well worth pondering, and which resonate today: Why do we in America make heroes out of people like Ty Cobb? Why do we forgive the abysmal behavior of a man whose main contribution to society is the ability to hit .366?

Not all less-than-saintly sports heroes – and they are endless, and have appeared on big-time rosters for decades – are as downright appalling as Cobb. Others simply are uncouth. “Deion Sanders, for instance, can get away with his outrageous behavior because he’s so damn good,” Shelton noted. “He can pull off all his jive. But if he wasn’t Deion Sanders, he’d just be another boor.”

Others, meanwhile, are more paradoxical. Shelton said his conception of Cobb was being contrasted to O.J. Simpson. It is a comparison he does not buy. “O.J. Simpson is a man with a public image and a private reality,” he observed. “Ty Cobb was completely different. His antics were not hidden. All of them made the front page. But nobody cared. Because he hit .367, he was able to meet with presidents. If he had hit .267, he would have been in jail.”4

The critical reaction to Cobb was what Shelton described as “most curious” and “schizophrenic.” He explained, “I could show you 400 reviews. Two hundred of the critics loved the film; 200 hated it. There’s been no middle ground.”

Two examples: Peter Travers, in Rolling Stone, dubbed Cobb “the Raging Bull of baseball movies,” adding that “Jones gives a landmark performance (and) Shelton’s strong, stinging film (is) one of the year’s best. …”;5 the San Francisco Chronicle’s Peter Stack described the film as a “histrionic portrait (that) comes across like a fly ball that thuds on the ground. …” Stack labeled Jones’s performance “tiresome,” noting that the actor “succeeds only in running the awful and pathetic Cobb into the ground.”6

The uneven nature of its critical reception plus the inability of Warner Bros., the film’s distributor, to properly market Cobb resulted in a limited release for the film. On the other hand, Bull Durham, Shelton’s first feature as director-writer, not only was a smash hit: It earned him the Writers Guild of America’s Best Original Script award, the Best Script prize from the National Society of Film Critics (as well as kudos from critics’ organizations in Boston, Los Angeles, and New York), and a Best Original Screenplay Academy Award nomination.

Indeed, Bull Durham is a film that Shelton was destined to make. He was born Ronald Wayne Shelton on September 15, 1945, in Whittier, California. A shortstop-second baseman, the 6-foot-1, 185-pounder was taken by the Baltimore Orioles in the 39th round of the 1966 major-league June Amateur Draft. From 1967 through 1971, he toiled in the bushes with the Stockton Ports, Bluefield Orioles, and Dallas-Fort Worth Spurs, topping out with the Triple-A Rochester Red Wings. His minor-league numbers were unspectacular: a .251 batting average in 479 games, with 425 hits in 1,691 at-bats.

As any baseball film aficionado knows, Bull Durham contrasts Crash Davis (Kevin Costner), an aging catcher for the minor-league Durham Bulls who during the course of the story breaks the bush-league record for career four-baggers, and Ebby Calvin “Nuke” LaLoosh (Tim Robbins), a raw rookie hurler famously described as possessing a “million-dollar arm, but a five-cent head.”7 The third major character – the one who cites Whitman and Blake – is Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon), a sexy baseball groupie who each spring selects one Bull as a season-long lover.

Across the years all three have become iconic screen characters. In August 2015 Mike Hessman, a (mostly) career minor leaguer, belted his 433rd dinger, setting the all-time bush-league record. In report after report of the accomplishment, Hessman was referred to as the real-life Crash Davis, the modern-era Crash Davis. In fact, later that month, when his Toledo Mud Hens were playing the Durham Bulls, Hessman was presented with a framed Crash Davis jersey. “I don’t mind,” he declared. “I guess that’s me. It’s fun. It’s cool. And I have the record. It’s good to be known for something.”8

As for “Nuke” LaLoosh, the story goes that the character was inspired by Steve Dalkowski, otherwise known as “The Fastest That Never Was.” In the early 1960s Dalkowski pitched in the Baltimore Orioles farm system. Granted, he just may have been the hardest thrower ever, but he was unable to harness his control and never made it to “The Show”; the yarns Shelton heard about Dalkowski (whose career predated his) supposedly added to his creating the character.

However, in Fastball, the 2016 documentary written and directed by Jonathan Hock and narrated by Kevin Costner, it is noted that LaLoosh “was based in part on Dalkowski or Sidd Finch, George Plimpton’s imaginary pitcher who threw 168 miles per hour.”9 Twenty-eight years earlier, upon the film’s release, Shelton told the press, “All characters and fictional people are composites. Every team I played on had one or two wild young pitchers who could throw the ball through a brick wall, but never got the Zen aspects of the game together.”10

At the time, Greg Arnold, a pitcher who played with Shelton before retiring at age 22 in 1971, claimed that he was Shelton’s inspiration. “There was no other (‘Nuke’) LaLoosh,” he stated. “He (Shelton) knows it and I know it, and that’s all that really matters. He’ll go to bed in September with $4 million or $5 million, and I’ll go to bed knowing one thing – that I am the Nuke.”11 (In his career, Arnold appeared in 83 games, walking 315 batters and striking out 413 in 476 innings.)

Lastly, in one of the most oft-quoted passages from any baseball film, Annie Savoy professes her belief in “the Church of Baseball.” “I’ve tried all the major religions, and most of the minor ones,” she declares. “I’ve worshipped Buddha, Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, trees, mushrooms, and Isadora Duncan. I know things. For instance, there are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary and there are 108 stitches in a baseball. When I learned that, I gave Jesus a chance. But it just didn’t work out between us. The Lord laid too much guilt on me.

“I prefer metaphysics to theology. You see, there’s no guilt in baseball, and it’s never boring, which makes it like sex. There’s never been a ballplayer slept with me who didn’t have the best year of his career.”12

Annie Savoy and her super-fandom aside, in Bull Durham Shelton conjured up a knowing ode to minor-league baseball and baseball players, not to mention the pressures faced by wannabes who yearn for their shot in “The Show.” The underlying point here is that, in the end, pro sports is a business. “It’s about the players as people, the very real pressures they face,” he noted. “For example, are they gonna get promoted? Are they gonna lose their jobs?”

Undeniably, the film’s enduring popularity has reverberated across the decades. One of countless examples: On May 28, 2016, New York Post columnist Kevin Kernan casually observed, “Earlier this year, Noah Syndergaard said his pitching world changed for the better over the past year when he finally learned how to loosen his grip on the baseball and hold it like an egg, as they explained in the movie Bull Durham.”13

The film also has transcended the sports page, and has come to define Shelton’s show-biz success. In 2010 TBS announced that he had signed to write and executive-produce the Bull Durham-esque Hound Dogs, an hourlong TV comedy pilot centering on the minor-league Nashville Hound Dogs. “As he did with Bull Durham, Shelton will draw from his own experiences as a minor leaguer,” reported Entertainment Weekly.14 But the show was not picked up, and Hound Dogs emerged as a 2011 made-for-television movie.

Then in 2013, the Topps Pro Debut baseball card set featured Bull Durham cut signature cards of Costner, Sarandon, Robbins, and Robert Wuhl (who plays Coach Larry Hockett); three years later, the Topps Archives set included seven Bull Durham insert cards along with autographed cards of Shelton and various cast members. The property also was transformed into a stage musical, which premiered in Atlanta in 2014. Shelton contributed the show’s book; the essence of the story is summed up in the three-sentence description found on the show’s website: “CRASH loves Annie. NUKE loves Annie. ANNIE loves Baseball.”15

Then in 2016, he was co-executive producer (along with Eric Gagne and Ben Lyons) of Spaceman, a biopic directed by Brett Rapkin and starring Josh Duhamel as Bill “Spaceman” Lee.

Back in the 1990s, while researching the book Great Baseball Films, I queried real-life major leaguers on their feelings toward baseball-on-screen. Phil Rizzuto commented that those who truly know the game should be hired for their expertise. “They should have ex-ballplayers, groundskeepers (and) newspapermen to make (the films more) realistic,” pronounced Scooter.16

Rizzuto easily might have cited Ron Shelton as the ideal baseball-movie architect. So it was not surprising that Bull Durham was lauded by baseball professionals. “I thought it was a great movie,” Don Mattingly told me in a Yankee Stadium pregame conversation. “I played in the South Atlantic League, (and the film) was pretty close to capturing life in the minor leagues. It was pretty cool.”17 “When it came out,” reported Shelton, “Will Clark (then of the San Francisco Giants) was passing out garter belts in the locker room. Apparently, the Giants really embraced the movie.”

Even the comments that were more critical at least acknowledged the film’s uniqueness. “The most true-to-life (baseball films) have been made in recent years,” observed Joe L. Brown, the son of comic actor Joe E. Brown and the longtime Pittsburgh Pirates general manager, who was interviewed for Great Baseball Films. “Bull Durham was good, but I didn’t like all the profanity. Some of the incidents in it seemed outlandish, but there was truth to it as it showed some of the experiences kids have in the lower minor leagues.”18

Shelton’s reason for making Bull Durham, he explained, was that he “felt no one had made a sports movie right.” The majority of baseball films focus on the glory of the game, on-field drama, underdog heroes hitting game-winning home runs in the last of the ninth or striking out a fearsome opponent’s heaviest hitter with the bases loaded. “I generally don’t like them,” he noted. “They’re not relative to anything other than a publicist’s idea of their subjects.”

For example, Shelton cited two celluloid biographies of Babe Ruth: The Babe Ruth Story, a 1948 film starring William Bendix; and 1992’s The Babe, with John Goodman. “Neither of them worked,” he said. “The first in particular is nothing more than a campy exercise. How can you believe William Bendix, who looked to be about 45 when he made this film, in his scenes (playing Babe) as a 16-year-old orphan?”

He added that fans “don’t understand that athletes don’t hate other athletes. The Dodger players don’t hate the Giant players. The fact of the matter is that they all hate management. They all have much in common with labor.

“My view of sports is from the field, the locker room, the team bus. I tend to tell stories from the field, not the 30th row of the bleachers.” With this in mind, Shelton was ideally suited to direct Jordan Rides the Bus (2010), a 51-minute episode of 30 for 30, the ESPN documentary series. There, he charts Michael Jordan’s early 1990s foray into minor-league baseball.

Shelton’s approach remains consistent in the nonbaseball films he has directed and scripted: White Men Can’t Jump (1992), the story of two urban basketball hustlers (Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes); Tin Cup (1996), about a self-destructive golfer (also played by Kevin Costner); and Play It to the Bone (1999), with Harrelson and Antonio Banderas as aging boxers and best pals who agree to face off in the ring. Sports also are present in films that Shelton only scripted or co-scripted: football (1986’s The Best of Times); basketball (1994’s Blue Chips); and boxing (1996’s The Great White Hype).

However, even when baseball is not the focus of the story, Shelton manages to sneak references to the sport into his scenario. For instance, in Tin Cup, it is revealed near the finale that the hero, Roy “Tin Cup” McAvoy, won his nickname as a schoolboy baseball player. In one sequence, McAvoy even yells out “Louisville Slugger” as he belts a golf ball with a baseball bat.

In his earliest films, Shelton is credited only as screenwriter. He was inspired to work behind the camera because, as he explained, “I wanted to direct my own words. I didn’t like the way they’d been interpreted on screen.” One exception is Under Fire, whose script Shelton co-authored with Clayton Frohman: a 1983 drama set in Nicaragua just before the fall of dictator Anastasio Somoza to the revolutionary Sandinista forces. “I was pleased with the way that one was made,” Shelton said.

One of the secondary characters in Under Fire is Pedro, a bomb-throwing Sandinista who greatly admires then-Baltimore Orioles pitcher Dennis Martinez. Pedro autographs a baseball and instructs an American reporter to give it to Martinez when she returns to the United States. With a grand gesture, he dons an Orioles cap and hurls a grenade with pinpoint accuracy, just as his idol would burn in fastballs.

“Kid’s got a hell of an arm,” observes a photojournalist. Pedro then declares, “Dennis Martinez, he is the best. He is from Nicaragua. He pitches major leagues. … You see Dennis Martinez, you tell him that my curveball is better, that I have good scroogie. …”19 Seconds later, Pedro is felled by a bullet.

“I didn’t want to make an ideological movie about the Nicaraguan revolution,” explained Shelton. “I didn’t want to make a movie for the already converted. But how could I make the Sandinista point of view understandable to audiences? I decided to do it through baseball, by having a young revolutionary infatuated with baseball.” Pedro is a character who, as Shelton said, “is not gonna talk about Karl Marx. He’s gonna talk about Earl Weaver.”

In Under Fire, Shelton honors the type of little-known but devoted ballplayer with whom he feels an affinity by naming one of the characters, a political flack, after career minor-league pitcher-manager Hub Kittle. Kittle entered baseball as a player in 1937 and began managing in 1948, but kept returning to the mound for years after his final full season as a pitcher. In 1980, at age 63, he even hurled an inning for the Triple-A Springfield Redbirds. (Kittle finally debuted in the majors in 1971, as a Houston Astros coach.)

Hub Kittle may be a relatively obscure baseball professional. Ty Cobb may be one of the most famous names in baseball history. But which one would you rather have coaching your kid’s Little League baseball team?

Still, Bull Durham – and not Cobb or any of his other films – remains Ron Shelton’s masterpiece. Upon its release, I described it as “a tremendously entertaining film and arguably the most knowing of all baseball movies.”20 This was true in 1988, and it remains so in 2016. 

ROB EDELMAN is the author of Great Baseball Films and Baseball on the Web (which Amazon.com cited as a Top 10 Internet book), and is a frequent contributor to Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game. He offers film commentary on WAMC Northeast Public Radio and is a longtime Contributing Editor of Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide and other Maltin publications. With his wife, Audrey Kupferberg, he has coauthored Meet the Mertzes, a double biography of Vivian Vance and super-baseball fan William Frawley, and Matthau: A Life. His byline has appeared in Total Baseball, The Total Baseball Catalog, Baseball and American Culture: Across the Diamond, NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture, The National Pastime: A Review of Baseball History, The Baseball Research Journal, and histories of the 1918 Boston Red Sox, 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers, 1947 New York Yankees, and 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates. He is the author of a baseball film essay for the Kino International DVD Reel Baseball: Baseball Films from the Silent Era, 1899-1926; is an interviewee on several documentaries on the director’s cut DVD of The Natural; was the keynote speaker at the 23rd Annual NINE Spring Training Conference; and teaches film history courses at the University at Albany (SUNY).

Photo credit

Ron Shelton with the Rochester Red Wings. (Courtesy of the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle)

Author’s note and acknowledgments

The original version of this article was published in 1997 in Issue 17 of SABR’s The National Pastime.

Special thanks to Rory Costello and John-William Greenbaum for their comments on the “origin” of “Nuke” LaLoosh.

Notes

1 Earl Gustkey, “Ty Cobb: No Better Player Swung a Bat; No Worse a Person Played the Game,” Los Angeles Times, September 12, 1985.

2 All remarks from Ron Shelton are from an interview conducted by the author in December 1994, unless otherwise indicated.

3 Al Stump, Cobb: A Biography (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1994), 6. 

4 Research by Pete Palmer resulted in two base hits – which had been double-counted – being subtracted from Cobb’s career batting average, edging it down from .367 to .366.

5 https://rollingstone.com/movies/reviews/cobb-19941202.

6 https://sfgate.com/movies/article/FILM-REVIEW-Tommy-Lee-Jones-Strikes-Out-as-3028597.php

7 Line from Bull Durham screenplay.

8 Johnette Howard, “Minor League HR King Mike Hessman – the Real-Life Crash Davis – Had Career Worth Celebrating,” ESPN.com, December 14, 2015.

9 Line from Fastball narration.

10 Mark Hyman, “No Bull: Ex-Player Claims He Inspired ‘Durham’ Character,” Daytona Beach Sunday News-Journal, July 3, 1988: 5D.

11 Ibid.

12 Lines from Bull Durham screenplay.

13 Kevin Kernan, “Get Michael Pineda Out of Yankees Rotation Right Now,” New York Post, May 28, 2016.

14 Mandi Bierly, “Ron Shelton to Pen Minor League Baseball Comedy for TBS. Can We Call Up Costner (or Russell)?” Entertainment Weekly, October 21, 2010.

15 https://bulldurhammusical.com/

16 Rob Edelman, Great Baseball Films (New York: Citadel Press, 1994), 10

17 On-field pregame interview with author at Yankee Stadium, July 1994.

18 Edelman.

19 Lines from Under Fire screenplay.

20 Edelman.