The Baseball Filmography 1915 Through 2001

Since the first baseball movie (Little Sunset) in 1915, Hollywood has had an on-again, off-again affair with the sport, releasing more than 100 films through 2001. This is a filmography of those films. Each entry contains full cast and credits, a synopsis, and a critique of the movie. Behind-the-scenes and background information is included, and two sections cover baseball shorts and depictions of the game in non-baseball films. An extensive bibliography completes the work.

Since the first baseball movie (Little Sunset) was released in 1915, Hollywood has had an on-again, off-again affair with the sport. The resulting relationship has produced a wide array of films, some good (Field of Dreams, Pride of the Yankees), some obscure (Roogie's Bump, Hot Curves) and some flops (The Slugger's Wife, The Babe Ruth Story).This is a detailed look at the 81 baseball films released from 1915 through 1991. Each entry includes full cast and production credits, year of release, production company, a synopsis, and a critique of the movie. Behind-the-scenes and background information is included.A separate section examines baseball short subjects and baseball in nonbaseball films. An extensive bibliography completes the work.

This work focuses on the baseball movie genre in the years following World War II, beginning with the 1948 biopic The Babe Ruth Story and ending with the 1962 Mickey Mantle-Roger Maris vehicle Safe at Home!, when the consensus was that conflict should be limited in American society by emphasizing economic growth and a strong stand against Communism. This study of selected films indicates, however, that this strategy was not entirely effective; while offering a certain amount of nostalgia, these films could not provide shelter from the storm gathering in postwar America which challenged conventional ideas of race, gender and class and broke in the 1960s.

For reference librarians and researchers seeking information on sports and fitness, this guide is an important first stop. For collection development specialists, it is an invaluable selection guide. Allen describes and evaluates over 1,000 information sources on the complete spectrum of sports: from basketball, football, and hockey to figure skating, table tennis, and weight training. Focusing on English-language works published between 1990 and the present, the guide thoroughly covers traditional reference sources, such as encyclopedias and bibliographies, along with instructional sources in print formats, online databases, and Web sites. To enable users in search of information on specific sports or fitness activities, chapters are organized thematically, according to broad- type aquatic sports, nautical sports, precision and accuracy, racket sports, ice and snow sports, ball sports, cycling, and so on, with subcategories for such individual sports as soccer, golf, and yoga. Within these categories, works are further organized by type: reference, instructional, and Web sites.

This anthology gathers selected papers from the 2007 and 2008 meetings of the Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, the long-running academic conference held annually at the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Essays included employ the national pastime to comment on issues transcending the playing field, and are divided into six sections: “Cultural Perspectives on the Game,” “Literary Baseball,” “Baseball at the Movies,” “Minority Standard Bearers,” “New Leagues,” and “The Business of Baseball.”

This book examines the narrative and cinematic conventions of movies that are about the quest for identity and individuation. Chapters are devoted to individual films, such as La Belle et la Bête, The Silence of the Lambs, The Searchers, The Deer Hunter, and The Picture of Dorian Gray, as well as considerations of films directed by Catherine Breillat and Robert Bresson.

BASEBALL FAQ: ALL THAT'S LEFT TO KNOW ABOUT AMERICA'S PASTIME

Beginning with Charlie Chaplin's Shoulder Arms, released in America near the end of World War I, the military comedy film has been one of Hollywood's most durable genres. This generously illustrated history examines over 225 Army, Navy and Marine-related comedies produced between 1918 and 2009, including the abundance of laughspinners released during World War II in the wake of Abbott and Costello's phenomenally successful Buck Privates (1941), and the many lighthearted service films of the immediate postwar era, among them Mister Roberts (1955) and No Time for Sergeants (1958). Also included are discussions of such subgenres as silent films (The General), military-academy farces (Brother Rat), women in uniform (Private Benjamin), misfits making good (Stripes), anti-war comedies (MASH), and fact-based films (The Men Who Stare at Goats). A closing filmography is included in this richly detailed volume.