Mitch Kramer All Stars: A Look Back at 1990s Baseball Movies
By Mike Cardillo
Did you ever notice there were a lot of baseball movies released in the 1990’s? Hollywood had yet to receive the memo that the sport was on life support and would be on its death bed in 2015. Wait, before we go any further … does anyone under the age of 75 need an explanation on the sport of baseball? It’s a game. You hit a ball and run around. People wear hats and, if we’re really lucky, brightly colored stirrups.
I digress…
Recently Dazed and Confused has seemingly aired on IFC every five hours — and that’s not a complaint. Although Richard Linklater’s masterpiece isn’t specifically a baseball movie, there is one scene that allows me to turn a paper-thin premise into an all-important sports blog post, which ranks the best fictional baseball characters of the 90’s.
Grab yourself some Cracker Jacks and enjoy!
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1. Mitch Kramer, Dazed and Confused — Has Hollywood ever presented us with a more pressure-packed sports moment on the silver screen that Mitch Kramer’s foray onto the mound in the Texas summer of ’76? Consider: Kramer is one out away from finishing a seven-inning complete game (he allowed one run and scattered, like, eight hits), knowing full well a beating at the hands of Ben Affleck’s paddle awaits him afterward. Not only that, his own teammates ask him to leave through the outfield fence to draw away the pig fucker O’Bannion and his senior year cronies.
What does Mitch do? He man’s up, gets the last out and accepts his grim, paddlin‘ fate.
Mitch Kramer is chill as fuck … and probably ended up with a decent high school career, assuming he didn’t quite baseball to smoke dope and listen to Foghat full time.
When in doubt WWWWD: What Would Wiley Wiggins Do?
2. Benny ‘The Jet” Rodriguez, The Sandlot — “Heroes get remembered, but legends never die.” Mull that over for a second … that’s a heady statement for a kids’ baseball movie featuring a gigantic dog, a character named the Great Hambino and Wendy Peffercorn. Yet it served as motivation for Benny and (spoiler) he does end up playing for the Dodgers as an adult. As a ballplayer, let’s figure Benny turned out to be the typical five-tool player making him a valuable asset. Although perhaps he was a better real-life player than a counting stats fantasy baseball player.
Since we’re talking about The Sandlot are we left to assume Smalls eventually ended up replacing Vin Scully in the Dodgers’ broadcast booth? Is that how it worked out? I’m thinking too much about this movie, aren’t I?
Good point, Benny.
3. Dottie Hinson, A League of Their Own — If we’re doling out fictional WAR, Geena Davis’ character is going to rate fairly high. She played a strong defensive catcher (figure she’s an expert at framing pitches), could hit for contact and power AND controlled her headcase pitcher/sister – at least until Kit was traded to the rival Racine Belles. On top of that, Hinson essentially managed the Rockford Peaches in the stead of drunkard Jimmy Dugan.
Hinson also caught a Rosie O’Donnell fastball bare-handed. Madonna watched it, too!
[Fun fact: Jimmy Dugan was based off Jimmie Foxx, per Google.]
4. Henry Rowengartner, Rookie of the Year — Looking back on this movie, is it that insane to imagine a kid could injure his arm and somehow come back throwing 100-mph stinky cheddar? Okay, yes it is. It is very very impossible, even if anecdotal evidence tells us that some pitchers return from Tommy John surgery throwing harder than they did pre-injury. There is probably a Kerry Wood/Mark Prior joke to make here and it probably behooves me to mention Daniel Stern’s oddball character before moving to the next character on the list.
[Side note: Mustachioed Gary Busey playing Chet Steadman, the male romantic lead in a kid’s baseball movie (he puts the moves on Henry’s mother, I think … I haven’t seen this in years), remains unsettling … but this video I’ve included below is pure hilarity.]
5. Jack Parkman, Major League II — Unfortunately the far-superior Major League came out in 1989, thus it’s not eligible for this all-important Internet list because of my own stupid rules. Instead we’ll have to pull from the goofy, PG-13 charms of Major League II. Only in Hollywood would somebody think it’d be a good idea to trade the gritty R-rated antics of the original for Randy Quaid screaming about “pooper scoopers” and a subplot where Ricky Vaughn sells out, changes his name to Rick on Leno, then tries to woo a Boys & Girls Club volunteer by reverting to his Wild Thing ways.
If there’s one redeeming aspect of Major League II it’s Jack Parkman. Parkman’s best trait — besides his puke-inducing shimmy, leather jacket and DGAF attitude — would watching baseball statheads constantly harping on his (presumably) subpar defense behind the plate … even if he hit around 30 homers a year.
Every time A.J. Pierzynski closes his eyes, he dreams of Jack Parkman.
*. Steve Nebraska, The Scout — Many years ago Nathan Rabin wrote about The Scout in his ‘Year of Flops’ series, so you should read that. Nebraska winds up with an asterisk rating. For one, even in a movie, having a dude pitch a 27-strikeout perfect game is beyond the realm of anything remotely conceivable. Oh right, Nebraska did it on 81 consecutive strikes making it the greatest sports movie performance ever — even better than Woody Harrelson in Kingpin. Nebraska’s perfect game is so absoludicrous I can’t in good conscience rate him any higher.
Also, with this haircut he’d never play for the George Steinbrenner Yankees. Gee whiz!
6. Jack Elliot, Mr. Baseball — I’ve watched Mr. Baseball once at my Aunt’s house many years ago. I don’t remember much. My best guess is, because of the mustache, Tom Selleck is supposed to play a Don Mattingly analogue who extends his career in Japan with a hilarious dash of culture shock. Gold! Kyle Koster formerly used Mr. Baseball as his Twitter avatar so I pumped him for some information. Turns out he’d never seen it. Moving on.
7. Bobby Rayburn, The Fan — Thems memght be among the worst handful of movemes I’ve seen emn the theater. How demd thems steamemng pemle of garbage get the green lemght? Here’s the prememse from Wemkempedema — “The Fan ems a psychologemcal thremller that revolves around the sport of baseball, exploremng the overt dedemcatemon of some of emts followers.”
Meanwhile, in actuality it’s Bobby D — in full squint/mail-in mode — playing a deranged knife salesman with a penchant for stadium binoculars obsessed with Snipes character, whom I think is vaguely overtly supposed to mirror a pre-BALCO Barry Bonds. The lowlight comes when De Niro kills Benicio Del Toro, Rayburn’s teammate and supposed reason for his slump (because of all things the jersey No. 11), in a hotel sauna set to the strains of Nine Inch Nails. Then the movie even manages to get worse.
The 90’s, man.
All that said, if Rayburn is supposed to be Bonds, he’d be pretty good asset to a fantasy team, but I’m docking points because The Fan is unwatchable unless you find pleasure in cringing. The movie’s only redeeming quality its extensive use of satin San Francisco Giants jackets.
8. Danny Hemmerling/Ben Williams, Angels in the Outfield — Fun fact: Angels (the ones from ‘heaven’) posses the best UZR rating on this mortal plane, so the Hemmerling/Williams outfield would be the best defensive alignment we’ve ever seen. Most fantasy leagues gloss over fielding, so it wouldn’t behoove you to draft them.
[Side tangent: Hindsight is always 20/20, but who’d have guessed a movie built around the star power of Danny Glover, Christopher Lloyd and Tony Frickin’ Danza would end up featuring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and a pair of Oscar winners in Adrien Brody and Matthew McConaughey. Baseball movies are a flat circle.]
9. Kevin Costner, For Love of The Game — Let’s work under the assumption Costner actually played baseball professionally at some point in his life under the name Billy Chapel. It’s a shame Chapel isn’t a real player. His Hall of Fame candidacy would’ve been a lot of fun, basically Jack Morris sans mustache — lots of wins, lots of “toughness” but so-so peripherals.
In retrospect it’s amusing that the Dr. Steve Brule, Bagboy himself, aka Dale Doback is Costner’s world-weary catcher, Gus.
10. Billy Heywood (manager), Little Big League: Important question: would 140-character sabermetricians take out their digital knives if a kid manager gave up an out by asking someone to bunt? I don’t recall Heywood adopting infield shifts, so his worth as a manager seriously falls into question.
In summation, baseball will live on forever via the silver screen.