Thursday, May 3, 2012

What's your favorite all-time baseball movie?


Like a lot of people, I enjoy watching a good movie and a good game of baseball. As chance would have it, The Art of Manliness Web site, artofmanliness.com, released on Friday a best-of movie list called “15 Best Baseball Movies.”

Listed in no particular order, their list included the following baseball films – “The Sandlot,” “Pride of the Yankees,” “Field of Dreams,” “Bull Durham,” “The Natural,” “The Bad News Bears” (1976), “Major League,” “Eight Men Out,” “Moneyball,” “Bang the Drum Slowly,” “Baseball” by Ken Burns, “Fear Strikes Out,” “A League of Their Own,” “The Rookie,” “Up for Grabs” and “61*.”

I’ve only seen nine or 10 of these movies, and they’re all pretty good. If I had to pick a personal favorite from the list, I’d probably go with “Field of Dreams.”

One movie that wasn’t on their list that I thought would be a good fit was 1995’s “Cobb,” which starred Tommy Lee Jones in the role of Ty Cobb.

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Now that the dust has settled after this year’s NFL draft, college football fans across the land can begin bragging about how players from their favorite school faired.

Forty-two players from the Southeastern Conference were taken in the draft, and of the 12 teams in the Southeastern Conference, Alabama had the most players drafted with eight. Georgia came next with seven, followed by South Carolina, who had six players drafted. LSU had five, and Arkansas was next with four. Mississippi State saw three of its players drafted. Vanderbilt, Kentucky and Florida had two players each taken in the draft. Tennessee, Ole Miss and Auburn had one player each picked in the draft.

Of course, Alabama and Auburn fans will use the draft as a way to claim bragging rights for a while. Alabama can hang their hat this year on the fact that they had four players taken in the first round. While Alabama had more players taken in the draft, Auburn can still enjoy the fact that they had the No. 1 pick last year when the Carolina Panthers picked Cam Newton first overall.

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The last player taken each year in the draft is unofficially known as “Mr. Irrelevant.” This year, it was Northern Illinois quarterback Chandler Harnish, who was selected 253rd overall by the Indianapolis Colts.

The only Alabama player ever picked last in the draft was former Alabama cornerback Ramzee Robinson, who was picked last in 2007. No Auburn player has ever been picked dead last in the NFL draft.

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When it came to sports-related items, “Ripley’s Believe It or Not!” didn’t disappoint this week. Their cartoon Wednesday of last week featured an item that described a rather unusual sporting event. On Feb. 3, 2012, the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada had a huge dodgeball game with 4,979 players and 1,250 balls.

This event actually set the Guinness World Record for largest number of players in a dodgeball game. Guinness officials were on hand for the event to certify the record, and the game lasted about an hour.

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