It's the start of the baseball season, and here comes a newly released DVD of "Safe At Home!" starring Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, part of a double feature with "Kill the Umpire" (Columbia Pictures, $19.94).
As a baseball fan, I find it surprising how infrequently ballplayers make it into feature films, even when they're just playing themselves. "Safe at Home!" was one of two films that the Mick and the Rog made after their epic 1961 home run battle which Maris won with 61, breaking Babe Ruth's The other 1962 release was "That Touch of Mink," in which the two Yankees There's no denying that the two superstars, particularly Maris, appear rather awkward as the stars of "Safe at Home!
" -- the story of a Florida boy too early -- Maris dying of cancer at the age of 51, and Mantle at 63 after a There's a bittersweet quality watching them young again, running the bases, In an odd way, because they're not actors, when they play themselves in front of the camera, they really give a sense of who they are, more so than on than Mantle and Maris in the 1938 "Rawhide," his only feature role -- although, it must be admitted, he's no Laurence Olivier. Or John Wayne, for The 58-minute flick, made available on DVD in 2004 by Alpha Video ($7.98), opens with Lou, wearing a huge cowboy hat, telling reporters at Grand Central When the movie was filmed, Gehrig had just finished an off-year, and some amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the disease that killed him at age 37.
But he certainly seems as strong as ever when, during a bar fight, he hoists one balls at the bad guys, taking out a whole crowd of them. Unlike their forebears, modern-day Bronx Bombers haven't done much in the movies, although Roger Clemens and Derek Jeter did have a cameo in the 2003 Clemens: "This clown better hurry up. My arm's starting to ice over.
" The best baseball turn in a recent movie, however, wasn't by an athlete, but by Vin Scully, the play-by-play announcer for the Los Angeles (and, before Scully -- the top baseball play-by-play guy ever, bar none -- brings Studios, $9.99), starring Kevin Costner as Billy Chapel, an aging Detroit Several times, I've skipped that stuff, and just watched the game which For like-minded viewers, all you need to do is just jump to these spots: minute 16, minute 20 to 32, minute 42 to 45, minute 58 to 1:00, minute 1:15 to 1:21, minute 1:24 to 1:29, minute 1:36 to 1:45 and minute 1:48 to 2:02. Through it all, Scully (who, in real life, broadcast the perfect game that Billy gets his perfect game, and the Yankee fans, honoring the baseball history they've witnessed, give him an ovation while Scully delivers a line "The cathedral that is Yankee Stadium belongs to a Chapel.
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