{"id":516454,"date":"2026-01-12T09:10:47","date_gmt":"2026-01-12T09:10:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/516454\/"},"modified":"2026-01-12T09:10:47","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T09:10:47","slug":"twinkietown-movie-night-mr-baseball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/516454\/","title":{"rendered":"TwinkieTown Movie Night: Mr. Baseball"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Don\u2019t<\/a><\/p>\n

Don\u2019t worry, it\u2019s not \u201cD\u201d as in the team that\u2019s better than the Twins, now, but also had Gardy. It\u2019s \u201cD\u201d as in Dragons! Getty Images<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s your link for the movie<\/a>. It\u2019s from a Strange Site, but most internet security experts consider it pretty safe (when it comes to collecting your data, IMDb is worse). It has good image quality and no commercials, so no sync issues! Sync issues are a pain on Movie Nights! (Plus this time I made sure the link included the whole movie… last week, uh, it did not.) Start the show at 7:30!<\/p>\n

We had to quick change tonight\u2019s movie because gintzer, who requested Benched, will be in jail for eight counts of securities fraud. Oh, he SAYS he\u2019ll be at a Gophers game, but that\u2019s what they all say. I assume his team of Michael Clayton-style high-priced attorneys will manage to get him out in time to join us for Benched in a few weeks.<\/p>\n

Mr. Baseball is directed by Australian filmmaker Fred Schepisi, a personal favorite of mine. He\u2019s had his stumbles — every director does — but The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith<\/a>, Roxanne<\/a>, The Russia House<\/a> are nothing to sneeze at. Six Degrees of Separation<\/a> is a movie which really gets to me every time I watch it. Stockard Channing in that one gives a performance like nothing else I\u2019ve ever seen… and Will Smith, in his first film role, is pretty good, too. Some nobodies named Donald Sutherland and Ian McKellen also have parts in that movie, I\u2019ve never heard of them.<\/p>\n

Schepisi was actually frustrated a bit by how much Tom Selleck, who had producer control, reshaped the script, here. This sometimes happens. Egos clash in the movie business — I know I\u2019m blowing your mind, but sometimes, it happens!<\/p>\n

And, to blow your mind even MORE… egos sometimes clash on sports teams! Crazy, right! But it has occurred! Once every blue moon or so…<\/p>\n

Selleck plays a brash American who butts heads with the more team-first, respect-tradition style of Japanese baseball, represented here by the manager, Ken Takakura. If you\u2019ve never seen Takakura in anything, you\u2019re in for a treat. Selleck is no slouch as an actor; I think he was pretty decent whenever he got the opportunity, which was rarely (Magnum, P.I., wasn\u2019t exactly a deep role, and neither are reverse-mortgages commercials). But Takakura is a world-class actor<\/a>. It\u2019s not criticizing Selleck to say he\u2019s pretty decent, while Takakura is GREAT.<\/p>\n

If I remember correctly, there\u2019s a romantic side plot. If I remember correctly, it\u2019s not very convincing. I haven\u2019t seen this in decades!<\/p>\n

The depiction of how American players have to adjust to the cultural differences in Japan is considered very accurate; in fact, the movie is still used to give American players an introduction to what some of those differences are. You can read this 2022 article<\/a> talking to Rex Hudler, Nick Martinez, and Leon Lee, all of whom played in both countries, and Lee was the film\u2019s baseball adviser. (As of 2022 Lee had the third-most hits of any foreign player in NPB history.)<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Sure, Japan\u2019s different, but different is not always bad,\u201d Lee said. \u201cIf you get anything out of the movie, you see that Jack Elliot makes an adjustment and you realize you, too, can adapt and adjust to a different culture.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Better understanding between cultures! We can all root for that, even if the script isn\u2019t perfect, right? Right! Well, not all root for it. But we TwinkieTowners do.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s tonight\u2019s link again<\/a>! Fire it up at 7:30!<\/p>\n

And here\u2019s the upcoming schedule:<\/p>\n

January 16: Alibi Ike (1935)<\/p>\n

Starring the great Joe E. Brown (Some Like it Hot) as a baseball player who concocts a harebrained excuse for every mistake, hence his nickname. Free on a Strange Site.<\/p>\n

January 23: Major League (1989)<\/p>\n

I wanted to do this right after A League of Their Own (two titles with the word \u201cleague\u201d) but then it disappeared from the mainstream streamers. Well, it is also on the Strange Site.<\/p>\n

January 30: Benched (2018)<\/p>\n

John C. McGinley and Garret Dillahunt star as two youth baseball coaches with very different approaches to coaching. Free on the Strange Site.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve got some ideas for future ones if we do this more, and all movie suggestions are absolutely welcome & wanted!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t worry, it\u2019s not \u201cD\u201d as in the team that\u2019s better than the Twins, now, but also had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":516455,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2290],"tags":[5,28109],"class_list":{"0":"post-516454","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-baseball","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-book-club"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115881357102066876","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=516454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/516455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}