Candid Cameron: It's time to call up Crash Davis

Oh, my goodness. Baseball season is over. Say it ain't so! Whatever will we do until pitchers and catchers report to Arizona in February? Well, it's almost un-American if you don't spend the winter watching baseball movies and dreaming of those first green shoots of spring. But which movies? If you want to get a real argument going among fans and even players, try announcing that such-and-such is your favorite baseball movie. Some folks will nod in gleeful agreement, while others will roll their eyes and say, "That's crazy. The obvious choice is" And off you go. Want proof? OK, we polled a lot of players in the Royals clubhouse and got all sorts of different answers. And remember, these guys just spent six or seven months arguing about everything. Not only that, but discussing baseball movies seems timely now, with an off season on the family room couch beckoning for the guys who aren't playing winter ball. Basically, the players broke down their favorite baseball movies into four categories: comedy, sentiment, childhood memories and realism. Quite a few Royals voted for "Major League" as their favorite to the point where several laughed and repeated some of the more memorable quotes produced by baseball legend Bob Uecker, who was playing announcer Harry Doyle. Heck, pretty much everyone on the team remembers Uecker's famous line when flame-throwing pitcher and ex-felon Ricky Vaughn (Charlie Sheen) uncorked a pitch 20 feet high and wide. "Juuuuust a bit outside," said Eric Hosmer with a chuckle. Alex Gordon is another "Major League" fan, and so are Billy Butler and Everett Teaford. "That whole Wild Thing' character, it's pretty funny," Gordon said. Right, so "Major League" got plenty of support among the group that loves to laugh at baseball movies but it was far from a unanimous choice. Greg Holland and Alcides Escobar went immediately for "Bull Durham." "You've got to go with Kevin Costner in that one," Holland said. "How can there be a better baseball movie than that?" Well, Greg, several of your teammates disagree even if I don't. For instance, there was a wave of enthusiasm for another Costner movie, "Field of Dreams" which has an entirely different theme. Jeff Francoeur and Nate Adcock went for "Field of Dreams" with no hesitation. "It's about the relationship between a father and son," Francoeur said. "And it's every kid's dream to play catch with his dad." Then you have the players who relate to playing ball as kids, and therefore came to love the movie, "Sandlot." Joakim Soria, Chris Getz and Danny Duffy fall into that group but Duffy trumped everyone with some over-the-top enthusiasm. "I'll bet I've seen Sandlot" about 400 times," Duffy said. Finally, there were some players who were enthralled by "61," the movie about Roger Maris' season-long struggle to break Babe Ruth's home-run record in 1961 and cling to his sanity at the same time. Tim Collins chose "61" without a moment's thought. Even Adcock, a "Field of Dreams" fan, conceded that "61" was a movie to which all ballplayers can relate. "Baseball is a game of adversity," Adcock said, "and watching all the things that Maris went through, I think everyone who plays the game can identify with that even if we're not setting records." In a way, I'd suggest that all the Royals are on track. Every movie mentioned in the clubhouse is a winner, even if the various views of baseball were vastly different. Personally, I've always voted for "Bull Durham" I mean, doesn't everyone identify with career minor leaguer Crash Davis? It didn't hurt that Susan Sarandon's character, Annie, was just about the coolest woman in the history of sports stories. Can you possibly stay unemotional at the end of "Bull Durham," when all the laughter fades away and Annie quotes Walt Whitman and Casey Stengel at the same time to make the point that baseball is "America's game"? As for "Field of Dreams," it's a fantastic movie but I'd argue with Francoeur and Co. that it's not really a baseball movie. As Frenchy himself pointed out, it's really the story of an Iowa farmer and the ghost of his father. Couldn't that have been any sport? Thank goodness none of the Royals mentioned "Fever Pitch," the story of a lifetime Red Sox fan who finally sees his team win the World Series. Heck, "Fever Pitch" originally was a soccer movie, written and released in Britain. We could argue about all these films forever, but I've got to go fire up a DVD. After all, a day without "Bull Durham" is 24 hours lost.