I agree with him in general.
One place where I disagree strongly is about Field of Dreams, which he rates fairly high, but which made not the slightest effort at realistic period baseball. He is supposed to be rating historical realism as well as the realism of the action, but …
1. The kid playing young Doc Graham looks totally clueless and unathletic. The real Moonlight Graham was an excellent minor league ballplayer for many years, both before and after his brief MLB career, and was considered the fastest man in baseball, according to no less an authority than Christy Mathewson. Equally egregious – forget about historical accuracy – it’s impossible to believe that kid represents a young Burt Lancaster, except maybe at age 12. Lancaster was 6’2″ and a physical Adonis. That kid looks like a paperboy. He’d be more realistic playing Eddie Gaedel. (Nor does he resemble the real Archie Graham, who made his major league appearance in 1905, when he was 27 years old. He got his M.D. that year! He continued to play professional baseball for several years AFTER he became a doctor. Also, he was taller than average for his era at 5’11”, 170. The tall, speedy doctor in his mid-twenties would definitely not be mistaken for a paper boy. In fact, if they had cast an actor who resembled Burt Lancaster at 27, it would have been close to perfect!)
2. The filmmakers didn’t bother to figure out how the old-time ball players pronounced their names. Eddie Cicotte was “SEE-kot.” Not si-KO-tee, who was, I believe, the enemy of the Roadrunner.
3. Most important, showing how little effort went into this: the real Shoeless Joe Jackson was a left-handed batter. Elementary stuff – and they got it wrong.
I can really nerd out on other stuff. For example, the real Jackson is recorded on film, and he had a truly weird, lunging swing which is not replicated in the film. (It looks ridiculous by today’s standards.) Baseball swings in general were different in those days. They did not plant the weight back on their heels and go for a mighty hip turn. But why go into that when the filmmakers couldn’t even bother to get Jackson batting from the correct side of the plate?
That said, I LOVE Field of Dreams and I love the novel upon which it is based (Shoeless Joe). It reminds me of my own dreams, and of some great times playing ball and just having a backyard catch with my own dad, the legendary (in his own mind) Suits Sparrow. Beyond that, it’s a story about redemption and second chances – and who doesn’t relate to that? Let the man without regrets throw the first stone.
The Cicotte I know pronounces it chick-OTT-ee.
That’s closer to the Italian (it would be chee-KO-tay with a long o), but that’s not how Eddie pronounced it. Eddie also had a great-nephew named Al Cicotte who pitched when I was a kid, and he also called himself SEE-kot. The point is that another character in the film calls Eddie by his last name, and any ballplayers who knew him would have known him as SEE-kot.
This is not a matter of arcane baseball nerdery. While it’s true that I know that off the top of my head because I know pretty much everything there is to know about the Black Sox, it takes only a sec to look it up. For example, baseball names, including Eddie’s, have phonetic pronunciation notes at baseball-reference.com.
Let’s call the whole thing off.