Boom! This is Books & Biceps #309!

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BOOKS

Baseball: The Movieby Noah Gittell

If this week’s MLB All-Star Game reminded me of anything, it’s that while I may not follow baseball as closely as I once did, I’m still drawn to the nostalgia of the game: especially the home runs and the stars and the time in my life when I watched every single Red Sox game start to finish and could have recited our entire starting line up, rotation and prospects in Pawtucket in the blink of an eye.

Also: baseball movies. Man, did I love baseball movies.

Reading Noah Gittell’s new book, perfectly titled, “Baseball: The Movie”, reminded me of how much they were part of my childhood. And now I know a ton more about the backstory to so many that I grew up watching and loving: Major League, The Natural, Field of Dreams, The Sandlot and more…

I figured this book was a bullseye for our Books & Biceps crew and I reached out to Noah to see if he’d be down for an exclusive B&B interview and he was.

If you love baseball movies and this book cover (how could you not?), then you’ll love this interview. We disagree on The Sandlot (I think it’s damn near perfect), but there’s some great inside baseball here on some of your favorite films. Read this interview then grab the book:

FINKEL: One of the beauties of reading this book was the connections you make between the movies you highlight… Some I’d thought of, others seem obvious in hindsight but never occurred to me.

This one in particular, got me thinking. You write, “Is Ray Kinsella much different from Roy Hobbs, whose father died suddenly and who watched a bolt of lightning form his destiny?” When did you first link the two main characters from Field of Dreams and The Natural? Was it long before writing the book or during research?

GITTELL: I didn’t make the connection until I started researching the book. I knew I wanted to link films together in unexpected ways. I couldn’t do it in every chapter, but I did it where I could. Juxtaposition is such a powerful tool. The Natural and Field of Dreams are probably the two most iconic baseball films of the 1980s, and they share a single spirit. They’re both films that celebrate rural America at a time – the 1980s - when rural America was struggling badly.

They’re both rooted in mythology; The Natural is brimming with Arthurian legend and Greek mythology, while Field of Dreams mostly confines itself to the mythology of baseball. Either way, these are films about reckoning with the past, which, when you think about it, is what baseball is all about. It’s the only sport in which the past and the present are basically the same thing, and these two films really get that.

I loved learning that Yankees Closer Sparky Lyle walked to the mound with ‘Pomp & Circumstance’ blaring. Having just come off writing Macho Man’s biography, it was cool to see that his WWF entrance music was used by other athletes and not just at graduations. Ha! This was from the section in your book on Major League and how Rickie Vaughn’s ‘Wild Thing’ came to be.

Can you share the story of walk-up music for closers? It’s awesome.

Yeah, it’s pretty neat! Lyle was the first closer to use a walk-up song. A few years later, Al Hrabosky, known as the “Mad Hungarian,” used “Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2” by Franz Lizst.

Major League basically invented the use of a pop song for a closer’s entrance. “Wild Thing” became so popular that Mitch Williams, then a closer for the Chicago Cubs, had the stadium organist start playing the song for his entrance, and when he signed with the Philadelphia Phillies for the 1991 season, he switched to the version used in the film. Now, every great closer has a trademark song. Trevor Hoffman used “Hell’s Bells.” Mariano Rivera and Billy Wagner both had “Enter Sandman.” Edwin Diaz uses “Narco” by Timmy Trumpet. It all started with Major League.

The Sandlot is a crowd pleaser for just about every baseball fan. I loved it as a kid and now I love watching it with my kids… The Director and writer of the movie, David Mickey Evans, brings up a great point about the nostalgia and feel of the film. It took place way before I grew up, but somehow felt like my childhood. That was his goal, in a way.

His quote about Walt Disney and Disneyland’s Main Street could not have resonated with me more. When you heard that, did you have an “a-ha!” moment as well? What did you think of the quote (and can you share it?).

Sure. In explaining the tone he was going for, Evans said, “Walt Disney finished Disneyland in 1955. It took him one year and a day to finish construction of the park. They said it couldn’t be done. And he was walking a bunch of dignitaries down Main Street, U.S.A., and a guy was looking at the great 1800s and 1900s shops and said to Walt, ‘Boy, Walt, you really nailed it. This is exactly the way it was.’ And Disney said to the guy, ‘No, it’s the way it should have been.’ Now, The Sandlot is not my childhood, but it’s the way that I wanted my childhood to have been.”

I’m not a huge fan of The Sandlot, and this quote explains why. It’s a nostalgic fantasy, and that’s not dramatically interesting to me. Baseball films are prone to nostalgia; baseball is a nostalgic sport. But baseball is at its best when it reckons with its past, instead of simply romanticizing it. There are some things in The Sandlot that bother me - its treatment of women is a little gross, and the erasure of the Negro Leagues through the backtory of James Earl Jones’s character is just bizarre. A less nostalgic film would have avoided those problems.

Rookie of the Year is a personal favorite movie. It’s so absurd and so “I wish it was me” that you can’t stop watching it. The beats are predictable and you wrap it up politely by saying the story is more of a concept than a film… BUT… It’s a hell of a concept! And it’s perfect for 12-year-olds who love baseball. Now that you’ve had some time from researching and the book coming out… Where do you sit on Rookie of the Year? Part of me thinks it’s exactly what it should be. The other thinks there’s maybe a more amazing version out there to be made. You?

Ha, I’m glad you like it. I loved it when I was a kid. In fact, if you’re a kid who loves baseball and you don’t love it, there’s probably something wrong with you. Watching it through grown-up eyes, I think it’s pretty uneven. All the actors seem to be in different movies. I don’t mind that the core concept is ludicrous; great movies have been built on more fantastical ideas. Honestly, the thing that bothers me the most about Rookie of the Year is the baseball stuff. There are so many errors and oversights in this film.

For starters, the idea that the Cubs’ owners would ever have to sell the team because they weren’t selling enough tickets? Now, that’s ludicrous. The Cubs fanbase is known around the league for showing up whether the team is good or bad. Maybe I’m nitpicking a movie that isn’t made to be taken seriously, but I’m a serious baseball fan! I honestly think if they cleaned up some of the tonal issues and chose a different team to build the film around (like, any other team), it would have worked a lot better.

Thanks for your time, Noah!

Grab your copy here!

👉 You’re Invited: Premium Flex Members are reading Jaws together as our July Big Read of the Month, with cool discussion about the book, movie and other awesome action novels in the B&B Community chat group. We’re in the middle of our Summer Blockbuster Reads theme and you’ll love it. You can join with this link.

BICEPS

One of the greatest things about the Books & Biceps Community is that I get to meet some incredible people in the fitness space who are building massive platforms to help people get and stay in shape.

My new buddy Jon Yuen (a fellow Jon with no ‘h’) is on just such a mission. Jon’s got 100k+ followers on instagram along with a powerful newsletter dedicated to being THE trainer for homebodies. I love it.

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QUICK FLEXES

If you grew up loving 80s and 90s baseball, then my column on going to the ‘99 All-Star game will hit you right in the nostalgia button:

If you’ve been waiting for the Macho Man audiobook, you can preorder it right here! Oooohhhhh yeahhhhhh! Only on AUDIBLE:

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Thank you all for reading! Stay Strong! - Jon

BONUS: Check out these greatest hits:

ONE: How ESPN’s SportsCenter United a Generation in the 90s

TWO: Why ‘Warrior’ is the Most Adrenaline-Pumping, Satisfying Sports Movie of the Last 15 Years

PS: You still reading Gus and Mallory? Thanks for getting through the whole thing! No skimming!