Bush-league series hits a homer
You can't go wrong making a movie or a TV show about minor-league baseball. It simply can't be done.
The humble, unassuming players, sprinkled with the inevitable phenoms, dreamers and wackos, the tedium interrupted by the goofy, the inane and the truly bizarre, and most of all just the day-to-day beauty of baseball all lend themselves to a leisurely, involving tale.
The best baseball movie, Ron Shelton's "Bull Durham," is set in the low minors, and one of the best reality TV series in the genre, "Baseball, Minnesota," focused on the St. Paul Saints of the independent Northern League.
Now comes the aptly named "Playing for Peanuts," the latest project from independent filmmaker John Fitzgerald, best known for "The Emerald Diamond," a whimsical documentary about the Irish national baseball team.
Fitzgerald has an eye for the oddball that somehow lends itself to baseball, and his motto appears to be: "Have credit cards, will shoot film." Having made a somewhat esoteric movie debut, he seizes on a more compelling new subject for a TV series: the baseball comeback of manager Wally Backman as he takes control of the South Georgia Peanuts in last year's first (and thus far only) season of the independent South Coast League. Debuting at 7 p.m. Sunday on Comcast SportsNet Chicago, it's everything you'd expect in a minor-league tale: a little humble, a little ambitious, a little tragic and, most of all, just a pure pleasure.
Most fans will remember Backman as one of the sparkplugs on the 1986 New York Mets. (He still wears his championship ring, of course.) Fitzgerald shows he isn't immune to a well-placed clichȩ when he allows Backman's former teammate Ron Darling to say, "He was always the smallest guy on the field with the biggest heart." But aficionados will also recall Backman spent a few days as manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks during the off-season between 2004 and 2005. He was hired, then fired when the Snakes announced they were shocked, shocked to discover he had a domestic-dispute parole violation piled on top of a drunk-driving conviction and would have to spend a few days in jail. So they dumped him. Backman spent the next two years out of baseball.
Managing the Peanuts in Albany, Ga., (the self-proclaimed Good Life City) isn't quite getting back into baseball. The South Coast League isn't affiliated with the majors, and Backman admits he had told himself he wouldn't resort to the independent leagues. But "I love the game," he admits. "I have to be on the field."
"You have to love it," agrees pitcher Josh Cowles, caught between casts fishing at the nearby Flint River. Otherwise, you'd be insane.
It's 170 miles south of Atlanta, in the middle of a six-team league where eight-hour bus rides are routine, and one local newspaper reporter says to get there you drive to the middle of nowhere, then a little farther into nowhere. The league salary cap is $75,000 a team - that's for the entire roster, the entire season - with $2,000 a month tops for an individual. Damian Dantibo, for one, augments his earnings as an ultimate fighter. The team stays in abandoned military barracks, except for Backman, who prefers his deceptively posh RV.
Still, it's baseball, and Backman intends to have the Peanuts competing for the league championship with his scrappy, "old-school" style of play - just as soon as he gets back from missing Opening Day to attend a previously arranged autograph show in New York.
That means he's spared the sight of a skydiver delivering the game ball only to crash just short of the outfield fence. It's not only the baseball players who are bush-leaguers in this context.
I've heard how things turn out for the Peanuts, but it would be a critic's worst crime to give away the climax of the 10-week series. Enjoy "Playing for Peanuts" for what it is: a humble, unassuming story about how baseball, even at its lowest levels, is a lot like life - maybe most of all like life at those lowest levels.
In the air
Remotely interesting: All right, skeptics, here's scientific proof: Last year, Ken "Hawk" Harrelson and Darrin Jackson kept mum about Mark Buehrle's no-hitter and he completed it; this year Hawk and D.J. blabbed about Gavin Floyd's no-hitter and he lost it in the ninth. 'Nuff said. Just don't blame Ed Farmer and Steve Stone: They held to baseball tradition, while letting listeners know something special was up, on WSCR 670-AM.
NBC Sports drew more than 14 million viewers nationally for the Kentucky Derby last weekend, making it the most-watched derby in four years. … The Arena Football Rush has shot an ESPN "This Is SportsCenter" spot.
End of the dial: "Cubs Confidential" debuts at noon Sunday on WGN 720-AM. It will air before each Cub Sunday-afternoon home game. This weekend, David Kaplan interviews Kerry Wood about the 10th anniversary of his 20-strikeout game.
Scott Ferrall has extended his contract to do a weeknight show on Sirius Satellite Radio on one of Howard Stern's channels.