Psychotronic Paul Talks Baseball - And Baseball Movies - on Labor Day

This writer loves baseball as much or more than psychotronic movies, jazz music, classic rock n' roll and a strong hot cup of coffee. Reside in Ulster County, NY now but still follow the San Francisco Giants and Oakland Athletics.



Love baseball and baseball movies as much as watching The Day The Earth Stood Still, watching Ernie Kovacs, Monty Python or SCTV, listening to Jaki Byard playing the piano or Mel Torme singing "Born To Be Blue".



The first baseball movie the blogmeister ever saw was the 1937 Fleischer Studio cartoon THE TWISKER PITCHER, which confirms that Popeye The Sailor had a devastating four pitch arsenal and would easily command a $200+ million contract as a free agent now.



Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog covered the MLB in films and cartoons topic in a post penned on this blogger's 60th birthday. Today, for the most part, we'll spotlight a few baseball movies we either didn't get to in the April 17, 2016 post - starting with the 1951 version of Angels In The Outfield (not the 1994 film) starring Paul Douglas.



While there was a terrific movie made of Bang The Drum Slowly in the 1970's, it was preceded, two decades earlier (during the heyday of live TV and anthology series) by a version co-starring Paul Newman and Albert Salmi.



At Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, we are big fans of the films about two of the most incredibly talented and over-the-edge characters to play baseball, Jimmy Pearsall and Dock Ellis.



I don't know how Jimmy felt about seeing Anthony Perkins playing him and serial killer Norman Bates, but Fear Strikes Out is a terrific movie.



And then there was Dock Ellis, a brilliant pitcher and something of a rock and roll star among athletes.



Saw Dock face off against the Giants a few times in 1970's.



Even if Mr. Ellis, then with the Pittsburgh Pirates, was, as he described "higher than a Georgia pine" on the mound, he was a helluva talent and fun to watch. Not unlike another super-talented guy this writer saw in person, the great Robin Williams. . .



Have not seen it, but hear there's a documentary about former Red Sox and Expos pitcher Bill "The Spaceman" Lee, wackiest left-hander and best interview in MLB.



What's the greatest film about the national pastime ever made? No contest - Baseball Bugs, just one among several devastatingly funny cartoons Isadore "Friz" Freleng and his ace animators at Warner Brothers produced in 1946.



In 2018, the San Francisco Giants are a banged-up, bandaged-up M*A*S*H unit, while the Oakland A's, possessing blazing lightning bolts in a bottle this season, will be going to the playoffs. And we at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog love baseball, win or lose, good season or bad!