* The most unlikely slugger

September 12, 2008

Ever since the announcement was made that 2008 would be the final year for Yankee Stadium, baseball fans and players have been waxing nostalgic about The House That Ruth Built. Legendary names come to mind as the memories flood in: Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mantle, Gandhi.

Gandhi?

What, you never heard?

The Bronx landmark has been the site of many dramatic home runs. The mighty Babe hit 259 round-trippers there himself, but his role in one of the most unlikely blasts by what must unquestionably be the most unlikely batters had long been kept a secret until Gandhi at the Bat, was published by Chet

"The Tiny Terror of Tealand," as played by Delgin "Elfin" Labao. Photos courtesy Alec Boehm

Williamson in The New Yorker in 1983. It has recently been “unearthed” in newsreel footage, courtesy of California filmmakers Stephanie Argy and Alec Boehm.

The screen version of Gandhi at the Bat will be one of the entries in the third annual National Baseball Hall of Fame Film Festival held in Cooperstown, NY, Sept. 19-21.

Argy and Boehm discovered the story while researching the baseball “career” of Fidel Castro. It took a good deal of detective work to track down the author. In addition to his writing, Williamson is a musician, which is how they found him in an Internet search.

Boehm happens to be a musician as well, which might have played a role in gaining Williamson’s cooperation.

“I had done a record called Urban Shocker because I liked the sound of the title, but it was also the name

of a pitcher for the Yankees back in the 1920s,” Boehm told NJ Jewish News in a telephone interview. “Not many people know that, but of course he did, and I think that was the sort of thing that tipped us in his favor.”

Williamson gave them a nonexclusive option to use it. “He said, ‘If [Steven] Spielberg calls and he wants to do a version of it, I don’t want to be just locked in to you guys. But since I don’t see Spielberg coming down the driveway, I’ll let you guys go ahead,’” Boehm recalled.

The film clocks in at just under 11 minutes. Of course, that doesn’t reflect the three months of preproduction; two days of shooting at Sam Lynn Ballpark in Bakersfield, Calif.; and nine months of editing. The final product has an authentic newsreel quality: grainy, scratchy, and warbly audio.

Alec Boehm ans Stephanie Argy discuss their film during production.

Alec Boehm and Stephanie Argy on the set of Gandhi at the Bat.

“It was so much fun,” said Boehm , 47, discussing the technical intricacies. “We did a lot of testing beforehand to figure out how to make something look like a newsreel, because there’s a lot of things you couldn’t do. You couldn’t move the camera on a dolly shot because they didn’t do that in newsreels. You couldn’t use a zoom lens because it hadn’t been invented yet. And there were just certain places where it was wrong to put a camera. We shot about 17 hours of footage until we found something that worked.”

Three cameras were used to attain that quality. Even the actors, used to modern movie methods, were a little “discombobulated because they didn’t quite know which camera was shooting them.”

Boehm had submitted the film to several festivals, but the Cooperstown event had special meaning. “This was the only one that we said ‘we have to get in this one.’”

For more information on the Hall of Fame Film Festival, visit baseballhalloffame.org or contact 607-547-0215 or info@baseballhalloffame.org.

(A version of this story appears in the Sept. 11 issue of New Jersey Jewish News.)

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