Buster Keaton, Joe E. Brown, and the Olympics

Baseball’s nexus with Hollywood had a center point in Los Angeles’s Wrigley Field on February 28, 1932 for a charity game benefitting America’s Olympians; the ’32 Summer Olympics—which took place in Los Angeles—inspired two comedy icons to...

Monty Stratton, Jimmy Stewart, and Hollywood

When The Stratton Story premiered in 1949, movie audiences without even a tangential interest in baseball became engrossed in the story of a champion whose determination serves as a model of courage.  Monty Stratton played a key role on the pitching staff of the...

Rob Reiner and Baseball

Baseball is a never-ending source for popular culture storytellers whose tales tap a range of emotional veins in fans of the National Pastime. We cry when Gary Cooper reenacts Lou Gehrig’s “Luckiest Man” speech in The Pride of the Yankees. We cheer...

Whose Life Story Is It Anyway?

The life story genre is a staple of baseball films. Fear Strikes Out depicted the anxieties of Jimmy Piersall.  William Bendix and John Goodman played Babe Ruth in The Babe Ruth Story and The Babe, respectively.  42 spotlighted Jackie Robinson’s story of...

Lou Gehrig, Baseball History, and July 4th

On my desk, a 25-cent Lou Gehrig stamp rests in a frame nestled on a plastic stand. It reminds me of Gehrig’s dedication to his baseball craft, reflected in 2,130 consecutive games played. It reminds me of Gehrig’s courage in facing Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis...