If You Film It, They Will Come

INDIANAPOLIS -- And the most popular baseball movie with the Indians is . . .

Well, let's call it a split decision. It seems a good time to ask, with the 25th anniversary celebration of The Sandlot set for July 14 at Victory Field
 
Memory a little vague on The Sandlot? Four words: You're killin' me Smalls.
 
Is it coming back now? In any case, here are some votes for favorite baseball movie from the clubhouse and staff.
 
Jerrick Suiter: "Major League. Hilarious. Absolutely hilarious. When I was younger, 10 or 11 years old, I tried cutting my hair like Wild Thing. It didn't look so good, but I tried it. I'm pretty sure I shaved my head maybe a day later."
 
Montana DuRapau: "A League of Their Own. Tom Hanks kills it."
 
Joey Stevenson, director of field operations: "Field of Dreams. I just remember watching that with my dad, and the movie is about him and his father. (The ending) can make any grown man cry. When I was a kid, we went to the Field of Dreams and me and my dad played catch out there. He'll text me every time it's on and I'll text him when I see it on TV. Even though we're three hours apart, sometimes we're watching it together."
 
Radio broadcaster Howard Kellman: "I loved Pride of the Yankees. Bull Durham was great, so was Field of Dreams and Major League. That's the top four. I laughed the most at Major League. You can say it's that one because of Bob Uecker."
 
Ryan Lavarnway: "Major League. There's no accounting for taste."
 
Manager Brian Esposito: "Bull Durham kind of resonates with myself and my career. In probably my sixth or seventh year in pro baseball, that was my job -- to be the catcher that was supposed to help develop young pitchers to have major league careers. In that movie, that's all Crash Davis was about. If they ever make a movie about my career, just change the timeline a little bit and some of the cars in the movie . . . even some of the fields were exactly the same. The last game that he played when he broke the home run record was in Asheville, North Carolina. I've had many at-bats in Asheville, North Carolina, I was lucky enough to manage against the Asheville Tourists."
 
Mitch Keller: "The Sandlot. It just brings you back to your kid days when you'd go out to a park or an empty neighborhood lot or playing Wiffle Ball in the back yard. It brings back a bunch of memories."
CEO Bruce Schumacher: "I guess one is a little bit biased because I was involved in helping them make it, which was Eight Men Out at Bush Stadium. To have them come in at the end of our season and set the ballpark up to look like Comiskey Park, shoot all those scenes and then turn around and try to make it look like the Reds' ballpark was fun. I'm actually in it for 15 seconds as a sportswriter of all things. Another one I really like is one with Kevin Costner called For Love of the Game. That one is really well done, and the way they used Vin Scully to narrate is remarkable. That might be my favorite. Just to be entertained and watch a baseball movie, that's probably it."
 
Kevin Newman: "Rookie of the Year. I think at the age that I saw it was the age when a young athlete plays multiple sports. And seeing that movie and the baseball aspect of it and how he gets to the major leagues, I'm not going to say it put me down the baseball road, but I do remember those were the years where I started focusing on baseball more and more."
 
Cal Burleson, senior vice president: "Bang the Drum Slowly. As I'm recalling, it was one of DeNiro's first really big roles (as a dying big league catcher). When I saw him on the screen, I wasn't thinking about who he was, I was just thinking about the character that he played. It had a bit of the grinding day-to-day challenges of playing baseball."
 
Adam Frazier: "I'll go with The Sandlot. It has everything in it that I guess you could relate to as a kid growing up, always playing in the yard. And then the guy getting to the big leagues."
 
Pitching coach Stan Kyles, "I loved The Sandlot. It reminds me of my buddies back when I played. There were about five or six of us who ran around and that's all we did. That's probably why most of us love it. We see that movie and it just brings back those memories and hanging around with your buddies playing sports. There was always the weak link, but even our weakest link was a guy who knew about the game. We didn't have anybody like Smalls."
 
Casey Sadler: "For Love of the Game is pretty good because I can relate to that one; just the whole baseball part of that movie, being on the mound, being able to completely block everything out, basically not hearing anything. It was cool how they captured that in the movie because when you're locked in out there, it's kind of the way it is. You can't hear anything. It's like selective hearing, you can hear the people you need to. It was the first movie that ever did that, what actually goes through a pitcher's mind in the course of nine innings."
 
Through a translator, Jung Ho Kang said he hasn't seen many American baseball movies. Moneyball was one he'd seen. Also Major League. "Old movie," he said in English.
 
Aren't they all?