A Sports Writer and a Film Writer Deliver. . . : The Pitch for Baseball : Does It Make for a Great Movie, or What?

Baseball brings out the satirist in some, the sentimentalist in others. The game itself is so rich in costumed imagery, so rife with colorful personalities and vivid vocabularies, that a goofball film such as “Major League” truly might be more documentary than parody. At the same time, the game is so steeped in tradition, so evocative of heartfelt childhood memories, that a storybook fable such as “Field of Dreams” makes a straight-faced, strait-laced pitch that baseball is as everlasting and reliable as anything in our lives, and just about gets away with it.

Whatever eternal appeal baseball does have, it clearly is a pastime this nation cannot seem to do without. Even those who do not follow the box scores, who could not tell AB from R from H, must agree that in an often-confusing world, baseball gives us undeniable winners and losers, telltale statistics, occasional pageantry and various degrees of tragedy. In person, someone could be captivated so much by a baseball game’s simple choreography as to make keeping score completely unnecessary. Baseball is a dance in baggy pants.

Possibly this explains why Hollywood cannot resist cranking out movies such as these new ones, movies that show polar-opposite sides of the sport. Even baseball in its rawest form--playing catch with your old man--becomes the central image of “Field of Dreams,” same as it is in “The Natural,” proposing the game as a natural extension of family love, as important as baby’s first step or daughter’s first date.

So, if we are willing to follow and swallow all this, we might also go along with every other preposterous notion of “Field of Dreams,” which supplies an amazing assortment of malarkey presenting baseball as a magical, mystical world where wishes can come true. Those of us who do not buy into this sweet movie’s premise undoubtedly will be painted as unfeeling, unimaginative ogres who deserve all the kung fu and car-chase cassettes we can rent. People do take their baseball seriously.

Anyhow, I already can see producers scrambling for new baseball-related ideas. No doubt some will draw from real life--as well they should.

The owner of the Cincinnati Reds’ major-league baseball team also owns a St. Bernard named Schottzie, who is pictured in the team’s yearbook, has full run of the ballpark and someday might even--it would not surprise us a bit--inherit the ball club. Now would that make a movie or what?

The best player in the history of the Cincinnati Reds, a man who now manages them, recently has been accused of everything from betting on games to selling bogus copies of his memorabilia to exchanging hand signals from the dugout with gamblers in the stands. Now would that make a movie or what?

A young outfielder for the Kansas City Royals, who is playing quite well at present, quit baseball for the entire 1985-86 season because of a nervous disorder, later diagnosed as Tourette’s syndrome, which gave him something tantamount to a classic case of stage fright. Some cruel souls joked that he had turned into a twitch-hitter. Now would that make a movie or what?

A young left-handed pitcher for the California Angels has no fingers on his right hand, but won the final game of the Summer Olympics in South Korea and reached the majors in his first year out of college. He says the only real problem he has in life is fastening his left cufflink.

C’mon. Ideal film fodder, right? Almost right up there with that Lou Gehrig-Gary Cooper “I’m the luckiest man on the face of the (echo) Earth-Earth-Earth” stuff.

So, expect a deluge of baseball comedies, baseball dramedies, maybe even baseball biographies. Danny Glover as Hank Aaron. Bruce Willis as Roger Maris. James Woods as Wade Boggs.

Too bad that guy Joe E. Ross (“Ooh! Ooh!”) from the old TV series “Car 54, Where Are You?” is not around anymore. What a Yogi Berra he would have made.

Funny how baseball is no longer profession non grata in the minds of producers. Or was it ever? Supposedly, baseball themes were to be avoided at all costs, the key word here being costs. Baseball was anathema to women and lacked appeal internationally, the reasoning went. Baseball movies were going, going, gone. Yet, within a year, “Eight Men Out,” “Stealing Home,” “Bull Durham,” “Major League” and “Field of Dreams,” a virtual murderers’ row of baseball-related movies have been released.

Well, nobody knows anything, right? Nobody knows what will sell. Perhaps we are due for a glut of sports pictures, and not just about baseball, either. More basketball films. “Amazing Grace and Chuck II: Amazing’s Revenge.” More football films. “Everybody’s All-American II: He’s baaaaack! “ More track-and-field films. Florence Griffith-Joyner, starring in: “Stripped to Run.”

Oh, and don’t forget white boxers. Hollywood can’t get enough of white boxers. Never mind those Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson nobodies. Commission a few more scripts about the white guys who fought them.

Baseball, though, is the game for which Americans reserve a heartfelt love, a tenderness almost, that likely will keep the national-pastime movies coming. Clearly there will always be some love interest (“Pride of the Yankees,” “Bull Durham”) or some tragedy (“Bang the Drum Slowly,” “The Natural”) or some other subplot that will keep the film from being entirely about baseball.

Also of continuing importance is The Happy Ending. Moviegoers must leave the theater smiling, evidently, to enjoy today’s feel-good baseball films. Someday when they remake “Pride of the Yankees” or “Bang the Drum Slowly,” miracle cures undoubtedly will save Lou Gehrig and Bruce Pearson just in time. Too bad nobody had the nerve to make “The Natural” the way Bernard Malamud wrote it in 1952, with Roy Hobbs striking out in the end. Then again, Malamud’s Hobbs put himself into the hospital by gorging himself on greasy food. Not exactly a leading man’s dream scene.

I love most baseball movies, even the bad ones. Mainly the bad ones. One hasn’t really lived life to the fullest until one has seen William Bendix as Babe Ruth, rushing a sick puppy to a veterinarian’s hospital, still wearing his Yankee uniform. One hasn’t really lived at all until one has seen William Bendix as Bill (Two-Call) Johnson in “Kill the Umpire,” in which he mistakenly uses somebody else’s eyedrop prescription just before a big game, then ends up seeing double and calling every play twice. (The umpire: “Ball! Ball!” The catcher: “I hoid ya da foist time!”)

Furthermore, I save a special place in my heart for Ray Milland in “It Happens Every Spring,” pitching baseballs dabbed with a top-secret solution that makes them repellent to wood. (Why he didn’t have 27 strikeouts a night, I’ll never know.) I also look forward to Late, Late Show telecasts of “Angels in the Outfield” (which has nothing to do with Reggie Jackson or Chili Davis), “The Kid From Left Field” (the original peanut-vendor movie) and “Rhubarb” (Ray Milland, again, in the story of a baseball franchise willed to a pet cat. And you think it can’t happen with the Cincinnati Reds.)

Non-sports movies have been known to slip in a ballpark scene, here or there. Let us not forget Doris Day causing Berra, Maris and Mickey Mantle to be ejected from a Yankee game in “That Touch of Mink.” Or, Lana Turner catching a foul ball at Dodger Stadium in “Bachelor in Paradise,” while a very young Vin Scully calls the action. Or, Matthew Broderick ditching school and nabbing a souvenir at Wrigley Field in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” Or, Glenn Ford gunning down Ross Martin on the pitching mound of Candlestick Park in “Experiment in Terror.”

Baseball also has been very good to television, if for no better reason than to provide a colorful means of identifying a character’s favorite team. Tom Selleck in a Detroit cap. Brian Keith in a New York cap. Victor French in an Oakland cap. Jamie Farr in a Texas cap (actually intended to represent Toledo). About the only guy you never see in a baseball cap is Ted Danson on “Cheers,” and he is supposed to be an ex-pitcher for the Boston Red Sox. Guess he just hates covering that hair.

I suppose we will be seeing more and more baseball-themed screenplays and teleplays in months to come, and I have some ideas. Or, rather, I have stolen some ideas. Stealing is permitted, remember, both in Hollywood and in baseball. After all, “Bull Durham” dealt with an aging catcher in his last season, a wild pitcher with a great fastball that he cannot control and a first baseman who practiced voodoo.

“Major League” deals with an aging catcher in his last season, a wild pitcher with a great fastball that he cannot control, and a first baseman who practices voodoo.

One film was released first. For all I know, the other film, might have been written first.

Well, it’s baseball’s oldest argument: Who’s on first?

I intend to pitch to the major studios a sequel to “Pride of the Yankees,” with Arnold Schwarzenegger as Lou Gehrig. Only this time, Lou’s last line is: “I vill be back!”