*The Natural, on TCM

[elleng]

[Lionel Mandrake]

1. For a good baseball movie,

try "Bull Durham".

[elleng]

2. Yes, that's a good one.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

3. The Natural was good, too, IMHO.

Beautifully shot, at the very least. Really brought to life the depression era feel to it.

There were some clichés, but it was still engaging to me.

And some purists insist that the movie should have gone with the book's downer, depressing ending. I say bullshit. Exploding light towers is way too cool an opportunity to pass up.

[panader0]

4. Try the book too--Bernard Malamud-slightly different from the movie.

[Yavin4]

5. The fan that inspired the book, Ruth Ann Steinhagen, died last December.

She was obssessed with Chicago Cubs' Eddie Waitkus. When he was traded to the Phillies, she decided to kill him.

She inspired a novel and a movie starring Robert Redford when in 1949 she lured a major league ballplayer she'd never met into a hotel room with a cryptic note and shot him, nearly killing him.

After the headlines faded, Ruth Ann Steinhagen did something else just as surprising: She disappeared into obscurity, living a quiet life unnoticed in Chicago until now, more than a half century later, when news broke that she had died three months earlier.

http://movies.yahoo.com/news/obsessed-fan-shot-player-inspired-movie-dies-174838364--mlb.html

[elleng]

6. Oh MY! THAT is QUITE a story!

Thanks.

[Yavin4]

7. Just shows you how much our culture has changed

Imagine living in obscurity after shooting a professional athlete in a hotel room.

And she passed without anyone noticing it for months.