Catch Baseball Fever - In The Movies -- With Players Strike, It's One Of Few Ways Left To See Action

If you're not the far-seeing type who has a private stock of videotaped baseball games stashed away somewhere, your local video store should have a few baseball-themed offerings on tap.

The best movies are not those that get carried away with the sentimentality of baseball (and who could swallow that mush during a strike anyway?), but those that cast jaundiced but affectionate eyes on the national pastime.

Here are some of the best ones available at most video stores:

The popular favorite seems to be 1988's "Bull Durham," the movie that helped propel Kevin Costner to front-rank star status and gave Tim Robbins a major boost in the process.

Written and directed by former college and minor-league baseball player Ron Shelton, the movie offers a backstage pass to the minor leagues, laying bare the manipulations that go into developing baseball talent. Costner's aging catcher, a career busher, takes sensational pitcher Robbins in hand, even if that means tipping to an opposing batter what's headed his way.

Sure, the movie gets a little carried away with Susan Sarandon's mystical blathering about the game, but it's worth listening to her in exchange for some priceless baseball talk.

Overlooked possibilities

Another pitcher-and-catcher saga is "Bang the Drum Slowly," the film version of Mark Harris' classic novel about a first-rank pitcher who helps a second-string catcher deal with a terminal diagnosis of Hodgkin's disease.

Again, casting meant a great deal to director John Hancock's 1973 film, with Michael Moriarty delivering a refreshingly intelligent take on his star hurler and Robert De Niro calmly heart-rendering as the backwoods catcher. Vincent Gardenia's put-upon, eternally suspicious manager of the fictional New York team is an added bonus.

The first adaptation of the book was a television special starring a young Paul Newman and Albert Salmi; some specialty video shops stock it.

One oddball baseball movie that was unjustly overlooked during its 1992 release was "Mr. Baseball," the story of a cocky baseball veteran whose diminishing skills force him to sign with a Japanese baseball team. Directed by Fred Schepisi and co-written by Gary Ross (who also wrote "Dave"), the movie features a sterling performance by Tom Selleck, another former college ballplayer, as the obnoxious ex-star. The movie is a study of adjustments, most of them largely comic, as the oversize American reluctantly scales down to fit Japanese proportions.

But there's also a dollop of poignance, as the once-great athlete begins to understand his best playing days are behind him.

Comedy plentiful

For a classic bit of comedy, look up Buster Keaton's silent "The Cameraman," available at most specialty stores. In the course of the action, the great comedian plays an entire ballgame by himself.

"Rookie of the Year" has been on tape for months and recently made its cable debut.

As for choices in the theaters, with the departure of "Little Big League," about the only selection out there is Disney's remake of "Angels in the Outfield," a fairly amusing comedy-fantasy aimed at kids in which Angels (both of the heavenly and California kind) figure prominently.