“Baseball: The Movie”
The author:
Noah Gittell
The publishing info:
Triumph Books, 304 pages, $30
Released May 14, 2024
The links:
The publishers website;
the authors website;
at Bookshop.org; at Powells.com;
at Vromans.com; at {pages a bookstore}; at BarnesAndNoble.com; at Amazon.com
“Mike Donlin: A Rough and Rowdy
Life from New York Baseball Idol to
Stage and Screen”
The authors:
Steve Steinberg
Lyle Spatz
The publishing info:
University of Nebraska Books, 368 pages, $39.95
Released May 1, 2024
The links:
The publishers website;
The authors website (Steinberg); the authors website (Spatz);
At Bookshop.org; at Powells.com; at Vromans.com; at {pages: a bookstore}; at BarnesAndNoble.com; at Amazon.com
The reviews in 90 feet or less
A six-part series airing on Turner Classic Movies channel rolled out earlier this year called “The Power of Film,” and it led off with an episode that explained the dynamics of what makes a movie both popular and memorable. They are definitely not the same.
Howard Suber, an esteemed UCLA film professor who wrote a book about this topic with the same title in 2006 after teaching this course in Westwood for many years to thousands of students, agreed to do this series. It not only is trying to enlighten those aspiring to be directors, producers or screen writers, but it is really for movie lovers — like TMC viewers — to better understand why they’ve had these connections to certain films over the years, how it is they’re able to watch them over and over again, and what leads them back for reinforcement.
Common themes that resonate in our soul and we see that portrayed on the screen are often about family. Or power. Or the fragility of life. These themes go back 2,500 years in our course of historical storytelling.
Film clips come up during this hour-long series opener, and Suber shows the ties that bind “The Godfather,” “Casablanca,” “Citizen Kane,” “A Star is Born,” “Do The Right Thing” or “The Exorcist.”
At one point during a montage, there is a quick flash of a scene from the 1992 “A League of their Own” — Geena Davis, as Dottie Hinson, bare-hand catches a ball thrown at her without showing any emotion. Awe inspiring. And powerful.
When we saw that clip, we flashed back to the September 2023 book, “No Crying in Baseball: The Inside Story of ‘A League of their Own: Big Stars, Dugout Drama and a Home Run for Hollywood” by Erin Carlson. We reviewed it last year and thoroughly embraced all the info there that confirmed what we suspected: The girls just wanted to have fun. And they did, making history along the way.
But in this TCM series context, “A League of their Own” explained how this is about a family, of baseball players. It was about overcoming odds, from the perspective of women just looking for a chance. It involved power — empowering them to show their worth. It checked off so many boxes that baseball was just a convenient entry point to another version of storytelling as old as time.
Now, we can take that movie, and more, to the next level.
Continue reading “Day 25 of 2024 baseball book reviews: You’re not killing us, Smalls (but the small screen …)”
Tom Hoffarth's The Drill: More Farther Off the Wall 