Decisions - Team#2_The Movies

The movies have been done for a while, my mind dragged off to elsewheres, mostly to the baseball season itself. Team #2 The Movies was a tough haul. I thought, in the beginning, that it was a home run team, full of colorful characters, easy-to-use personae and plot companionship. In the end, though, it was a bit of a chore. There aren't, after all, very many good baseball movies. A list of the top five will get you far, and you'll miss nothing good beyond that.

That is the point, though: movies about baseball will never--with the exception, perhaps, of Field of Dreams--be as good and as moving as baseball itself. One nine-pitch postseason at-bat has more dramatic tension than any--any--cinematic, simulated pitch and hit, no matter the bursting orchestral score.

So ultimately I kept going back to the same wells, self-consciously mining only a few of the exceptional sources. They are great movies, but give me an afternoon in Chicago, with a long view of the lake over the right-field bleachers. I won't need a plot but for the one unfolding on the green.

Lineup - The Movies

C - John Kinsella
1B - Jack Elliot
2B - Ken Burns
3B - Roger Dorn
SS - Nicky Rogan
LF - Terence Mann
CF - Kelly Leak
RF - Shoeless Joe Jackson

SP - Bugs "Baseball Bugs" Bunny
RP - Ricky Vaughn

Manager - Morris Buttermaker