This is an entertaining and page-turning overview of the existence of the Montreal Expos. It’s clearly written from the perspective of a fan, which is both a good and a bad thing. But it’s also relatively measured in its assessment of why the franchise failed. There’s just one rather big problem hanging over all of …
Tag: Baseball
Moneyball (2011, Bennett Miller)
This is an enjoyable dramatization of the Oakland As’ 2002 season, from the perspective of their General Manager, who was trying to win games with the lowest budget in baseball. I say dramatization because there is a lot of poetic license here, and because the most important players on that team are barely even acknowledged.
Screwball (2018, Billy Corben)
If I could describe this documentary about Biogenesis and Alex Rodriguez in one word, it would be “glib.” This is one of the glibbest documentaries I’ve ever seen. On the one hand, that makes for a pretty funny movie. On the other hand, the style is very over the top and the filmmakers appear to …
Bull Durham (1988, Ron Shelton)
Somehow, despite growing up a baseball fan, and despite having seen a Tin Cup (which is the baseball Bull Durham, right?), I missed Bull Durham until now. I think I saw a scene sometime in my teens and decided I had watched it so never thought I should.
RIP Roy Halladay
It’s hard to know what to say when someone famous dies. When it’s a musician or filmmaker, I talk about their work. I can’t do that with sports. Normally, I don’t write blog posts about athletes when I they die, as I don’t feel as close to athletes as I to do artists, it’s just …
The Art of Fielding (2011) by Chad Harbach
This is an excellent debut novel, featuring a richly constructed world and (mostly) believable characters. It works as both a baseball novel and a college novel. It has been a long time since I cared about characters this much.
The Battered Bastards of Baseball (2014, Chapman Way, Maclain Way)
This is a sub-30 for 30 quality sports documentary (or low end 30 for 30) that makes up for its lack of film quality with the incredible story of the Portland Mavericks, possibly the most popular single A team of all time and the only independent baseball team of its era.
Summer of 49 (1989) by David Halberstam
I am not a Yankees fan or a Sox fan but I am a fan of The Breaks of the Game, probably the best book I have ever read about sports. Summer of 49 is not on that level, but, for someone like me who was not alive during the summer of 1949, and who was …
Baseball (1994, 2010 Ken Burns, Lynn Novick)
Burns and co.’s constant mythologizing is a lot more appropriate here than it was in The Civil War, and as such I feel like this effort is the more successful one, despite the greater historical importance of the first series. And to their credit, they only mythologize about certain things. For some examples, the game’s …
The Toronto Sports Media Strikes Again
Our beloved sports media (specifically the Star) cannot hold a consistent position on anything, it seems. Obviously, the best example of this is Damien Cox and his endlessly wavering positions on everything. (Currently, this fixation is the Bettman-Balsillie affair: one day Bettman and the league are in the right, the next Balsillie is, and so …