As in Extra Hot Great, one of my favorite podcasts.
While listening to EHG on my way to work this morning, I learned that Sarah D. Bunting (Bunting!), one of the regular hosts, was absent because she was delivering a paper at baseball conference. I did a quick search and deduced it was this one: The Baseball in Literature & Culture Conference at Middle Tennessee State University.
The topic of her paper: “Casting Bullpen: The Next Great Baseball Biopic.”
Bunting has written several engaging pieces putting together movies with the national pastime, including this critique of Bang the Drum Slowly and this on Sports on Earth about some possible future projects. Not sure if the latter is the same as her paper at the conference but there are some interesting ideas there.
Yes, that’s Phil from Lost (aka Patrick Fischler) playing Shoeless Joe Jackson. Hey, he couldn’t be worse than Field of Dream‘s Ray Liotta, who not only didn’t bother to employ a southern accent, but was filmed as a right-handed batter. At least The Pride of the Yankees had the courtesy to try to turn Gary Cooper into a lefty.
There are also suggestions for a new Jimmy Piersall pic with Ben Affleck as the main character, and another with James Cromwell portraying Connie Mack. Cromwell already has baseball chops: he portrayed Brother Mathias in the 1992 film The Babe (not to mention the farmer in Babe). Then there’s Michael Imperioli as Joe DiMaggio. The former Sopranos star also has a “baseball film” under his belt: Mitch Albom’s For One More Day. (Don’t know if you could consider Affleck’s The Town a baseball flick, even though Fenway Park did serve as a “co-star.”)
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