Whatever the facts of history, geography, government, or law – as if facts really mattered in any discussion of baseball – the national mythology we call the American Dream dwells in two capitals: those very different but equally magical municipalities, Cooperstown and Hollywood. Growing out of a rich mixture of rumor and reality, lore and legend, history and sheer fantasy, and permanently associated with those two places, over their separate lifetimes the twin arts of baseball and the cinema follow parallel courses that, oddly, only occasionally intersect. Despite a potential for fruitful development, the two endeavors, so closely identified with American culture, enjoy a loose, irregular, and complicated relationship, in which they often exhibit a disappointing failure to communicate and collaborate. Because they share a sporadic allegiance to some major strains in the national discourse, by rights baseball really should be a major subject of film and the baseball film itself really should be a major genre. As most students of either or both arts know, however, those rights count for little. The baseball movie remains, for the most part, something like an important, populous, but minor form compared to the great genres of American popular cinema.

Initially baseball seems an entirely appropriate subject, the perfect inspiration for what blurb writers invariably call major motion pictures. Its special place in the history and culture of the country, its appeal as the national pastime, and its practice as an everyday American activity certainly account for its innumerable incidental appearances in hundreds of non-baseball motion pictures, as a characterizing touch, a thematic statement, even a kind of cinematic wallpaper. In addition, despite its spotty history, the baseball movie itself boasts its own traditions, some peculiar to its particular temporal context.