I received this in the mail:

On behalf of Lionsgate, we are pleased to present the official trailer for THE PERFECT GAME, based on a true story about a rag-tag team of boys from poverty-stricken Monterrey, Mexico who defy extraordinary odds to become the first foreign team to win the Little League World Series - doing so in a perfect game, the only one in championship history.

HBO is going to make Game of Shadows into a movie. I wonder if Barry will play himself, like Jackie Robinson did? :-)

Too bad Avery Brooks is close to sixty. He looks good with his head shaved and would bring the proper intensity to the character.

There's a new movie coming out that revolves around Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. I really like the cast, and you can see the trailer at their web site.

Failedscreenwriter loved Up for Grabs, the story of the battle for Barry Bonds' 73rd home run ball.

I just saw the new Star Wars movie. I was disappointed. Too much action without enough reason.

John Perricone at Only Baseball Matters reviews Up For Grabs, a movie about Barry Bonds' 73rd home run ball. From John's review, I hope the film comes to a theater near me soon.

I had forgotten the feelings of grief.

Within the first minute of Nine Inning from Ground Zero they all came flooding back. The documentary starts with Luis Gonzalez approaching the plate in the bottom of the ninth in game 7. Joe Buck describes it as "the chance of a lifetime." Mariano Rivera goes into his pitch as the scene fades to black and comes up again to see what is happening in the bowels of the rubble of the World Trade Center at the same time. Two months later, and there's still smoke rising from the debris. The shells of building still hang in the background as people labor to clean up the site. It's a scene from hell Dante could not imagine.

Nine Innings from Ground Zero chronicles how baseball helped a city heal. Ballplayers became volunteers packing relief supplies in a stadium parking lot. They became ambassadors, visiting the families and friends of the victims, providing comfort and relief. And they became heroes staging comeback after comeback when all seemed lost.

This movie was an emotional rollercoaster. I found myself moved to tears by the footage of collaspe of the towers and by Mike Piazza's home run in the first game at Shea after the tragedy. The first out of grief, the second out of happiness for the people of the Big Apple. Time dulls the memory of ordinary New Yorkers making food for the firemen, buying carts of bottled water for thirsty workers, lining the streets and cheering as rescuers drove south to the disaster.

The real stars of Nine Innings from Ground Zero are the fans who found solice in the game. Kieran Lynch lost two brothers on the 104th floor of the World Trade Center. He was in the muck and choose game 5 to start climbing out. When Brosius hit the home run to tie the game, he was hugging people he didn't even know. He was out of the muck.

This is a film that should be in your collection. I'm going to bring out once a year or so to remind me of what happened that awful day, because I so easily forget. But I'll also bring it out to remind myself just how inspiring this game can be to many people for many different reasons.

Over the weekend, I watched Reverse of the Curse of the Bambino from HBO. It tells the story of the American League Boston franchise from it's beginning as a power house of the major leagues to years of futility and playoff disappointment to ultimate redemption in 2004. It's definitely a documentary for Red Sox Nation.

The story is told through Red Sox fans; some famous, some not. Long time supporters of this blog, Art Martone and Edward Cosssette each make appearances. But it's the ordinary fans I like the best. The story of Paul Sullivan during the sixth game of the 1986 World Series is one of my favorites. He's watching the game with his brother, and once the Red Sox get two outs, the brother starts dialing their uncle in New York. They are going to rub his face in the victory. Every number except the last number. The second the Red Sox win, the last digit gets pressed. Pitch after pitch, he dials to the penultimate number as the game slowly slips away. He never gets to that last digit.

The editors are very kind to the Red Sox fans during the Bucky Dent home run sequence. You never see the whole event in real time. They show it in parts, fading into a ghostly fog going to interviews after each part of the sequence. The whole sequence has a "it didn't really happen" quality about it. Very well done.

I did get the feeling from the interviews that the Red Sox only won in 2004 because they finally got the fans not to believe in them. After 86 years, losing three in a row to the Yankees (the third game in an absolute drubbing) had finally pushed the faithful off the edge. As one fans says, "Go to hell, I'm never watching this team again."

I do have a couple of problems with the script. They bring on an expert to debunk the urban legends about Harry Frazee. We hear all the wrong information, and all we get from the expert is that the info is wrong, with little about why the sale actually happened. If you're going to debunk something, you need more than No No Nanette wasn't produced for another five years! However, Dennis Leary's comments on No No Nanette make the whole segment worthwhile.

(Six degress of Kevin Bacon aside. When I was a freshman in college, a musical all Oh No, No Net was produced at school. It was directed by Marisa Silver, who lived one floor up from me in Thayer Hall. Marisa went on to direct He Said, She Said, which starred Kevin Bacon and in which you can see the STATS Major League Handbook in Kevin's Apartment.)

To their credit, the curse debunkers get more time. They make two arguments as to why the Red Sox lost for so long; the acquistion of slow, right-handed power hitters at the expense of pitching and the Sox refusal for many years to integrate the team. My feeling is the first one holds more water, since it was true for the entire period. Remember, the Yankees were also slow to integrate, yet they won the World Series in six of eight years between the debut of Jackie Robinson and the signing of Elston Howard. But when you look back and see that the Sox could have signed Mays and Aaron at some point, you realize what a formidable team this could have been in the late 50's and 60's.

The story of the 2004 Red Sox was King Lear with a happy ending. In Lear, just as you think the tragedy can't get any worse, it does. The Red Sox took their fans as low as they could before conquering their arch enemy and capturing the ultimate prize. For fans of the Red Sox, this movie tells that story well.

Law blogger and professor Rick Duncan lists his top baseball movies and reviews his favorite, It Happens Every Spring.

I just received two movies from HBO in the mail, Nine Innings from Ground Zero and Reverse of the Curse of the Bambino. I'll be watching and reviewing these soon.