Last month, Baseball Nation posted this entry about baseball-themed movie posters, even if the movies weren’t about the game itself, which led to some semantic reservations by yours truly.
This time they come out and say that these are “The top 10 baseball scenes (in non-baseball movies)”
The piece, by Jim Baker, is especially timely as I just read an interview with the late Maury Allen that appears in Dennis D’Agostino’s excellent Keepers of the Game: When the Baseball Beat was the Best Job on the Paper. Allen, one of my personal favorites sportswriters who became an acquaintance a few years ago, appeared — uncredited — in the movie version of The Odd Couple in this scene:
Allen was movie buff, so he was thrilled when he was asked to be in the picture. No speaking, but he and the other real-life denizens of the press box received $100 apiece. Hard to tell, since the movie was filmed around 1968, but I think Allen is second from the left, in the black-framed glasses.
The players on the field were actual Mets and Pirates. Bill Mazeroski agreed to “hit” into a triple play for $100 after Roberto Clemente declined.
(On the other hand, a recreation of the 1969 Miracle Mets in Men in Black 3 was pretty poor, although the sentiment was sweet. Guess they didn’t want to or couldn’t get the original video rights.)
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