Through the weekend Ichiro, as he prefers to be called, was hitting .348, second in the American League. One game shy of the midpoint of the season, his 125 hits mean he has a shot at George Sisler’s record of 257, which is 81 years old. To give you some context, Lou Gehrig’s consecutive game streak stood for 56 years; Joe DiMaggio’s hitting streak record has stood for 60. Nobody’s even had 250 hits in a season since 1930.

Monday the final All-Star voting was announced. I’ll get to the voting in general presently, but Ichiro led all players with 3,373,035 tallies, which is, coincidentally, exactly how many people have pasted the above comment into an e-mail and sent it to me, by way of subtly pointing out that I’m an idiot. I was wrong about the Mariners’ not hitting — they’re second in the league in batting average, first in scoring — but what my correspondents are referring to is my lunkheaded dismissal of Ichiro, who is clearly Cooperstown bound.

So let me just say, with all the authority that my prediction of great things for the Cincinnati Reds gives me, that I don’t like Ichiro, and I still don’t believe the hype.

I don’t mean I don’t like him like I don’t want him to come to my house or anything. (I don’t, but just because the place is such a mess.) He’s actually kind of cute, the way he squats and stretches right before he gets into the box. And I don’t mean he can’t play. I saw him make a throw from right field to third base in Oakland that was one of the most magnificent things I have ever witnessed — and I’ve peered into a live volcano, friends. I’ve seen Johnny Cash stride onstage.

I just can’t abide his style of play. That Punch-and-Judy, slap at the ball, poke it into left field thing. I hate that. And it’s not an anti-Mariners feeling. It’s not like I’d love Ichiro if he played for a team I root for, or even a team that isn’t running away with the American League. I have no problem with the Mariners, a team that is not the Yankees, a team that has lost three superstars in the last few years, running away with the league. It’s good for baseball. Bret Boone hitting home runs, for example, or Kazuhiro Sasaki striking out the side, don’t set my teeth on edge.

I should like Ichiro. I have the tastes of a guy who’d like Ichiro. I like National League baseball, not the designated hitter. I enjoy what’s come to be known as “small ball.” I like a well-placed sacrifice bunt, a perfectly timed hit-and-run. I think home runs have become too easy to come by, and that a 1-0 game is often more exciting than a 12-11 game. In other words, I’m kind of a tradionalist, and here’s Ichiro going all Ty Cobb on my ass, and I don’t like it.

But I find myself watching him and saying, “Will you swing the bat, for crying out loud? Could you shift your weight just a little bit to your front foot?” I’m not arguing against the very concept of the pesky leadoff hitter here. I think we can all agree that Rickey Henderson in his prime was the greatest, peskiest leadoff man of them all — and he swung the bat.

Personal aesthetics aside, I’m still not sold on Ichiro after half a season. I’m not denying that a .348 average and 125 hits in his team’s first 80 games are eyebrow-raising achievements. And he’s a legitimate All-Star starter. But let’s hold off on that Hall of Fame plaque. As a leadoff hitter, Ichiro’s paid to get on base. But his on-base percentage is only .380. That’s 22nd in the American League among those who qualify for the batting lead (242 plate appearances). He barely cracks the top 40 in slugging. People who really spend a lot of time with stats generally say that some combination of on-base and slugging percentages (either adding them or multiplying them) gives you the best idea of who the best offensive players are.

The guys around Ichiro in on-base percentage are Maglio Ordonez of the White Sox, Juan Gonzalez of the Indians, Raul Mondesi of the Blue Jays, all of whom are sluggers, and Jeremy Giambi of the A’s, who is not to be confused with his brother Jason, the defending MVP. In slugging percentage the guys around Ichiro are Chris Richard and David Segui of the Orioles, Scott Brosius of the Yankees and Jose Cruz Jr. of the Blue Jays. Some decent players, but nobody’s flying over from Japan to watch them play.

I’m even willing to give Ichiro credit for stealing bases. I don’t even know if this is an exaggeration of their importance, but I’ll give him a slugging base for each of his 27 steals. That would lift his slugging percentage from .462 to .538, the same as, well, Brian Daubach of the Red Sox (though Daubach would get a few points for his one steal using this system). I haven’t seen any stories about Brian Daubach lately on “CBS Sunday Morning.”

So on to the rest of the All-Star squads. This is the time of year when baseball purists get all worked up about fans stuffing the ballot boxes, or, nowadays, the online voting system. Certainly Ichiro benefited from the first-ever paper balloting in Japan. Now is the time for true fans to work themselves into high dudgeon over the injustice of some plumber who plays for a team that sells out every game getting the nod over a guy having a better year in an old stadium for an unglamorous team.

I suppose it’s a shame for a deserving player not to get the votes he deserves, and the ever-widening attendance gulf between the haves (with their new stadiums) and the have-nots (with their Olympic Stadiums and Metrodomes) means we might not ever see Vladimir Guerrero of the Expos, to take one example, start an All-Star Game unless he changes uniforms.

But I think there are bigger things to worry about — such as the inevitability that Guerrero will change uniforms, even if he kind of liked it in Montreal — and this year’s voting actually came with some surprisingly good news. In a few instances up and down the ballot, the fans — and you know who you are — got it.

If you care you know this already, but for easy reference, here are the starting lineups:

American League: John Olerud and Bret Boone of Seattle at first and second, Alex Rodriguez of Texas at short, Cal Ripken Jr. of Baltimore at third, Ichiro, Manny Ramirez of Boston and Juan Gonzalez of Cleveland in the outfield, Ivan Rodriguez of Texas catching and Edgar Martinez of Seattle at designated hitter.

National League: Todd Helton of Colorado at first, Jeff Kent and Rich Aurilia of San Francisco at second and short, Chipper Jones of Atlanta at third, Barry Bonds of San Francisco, Sammy Sosa of Chicago and Luis Gonzalez of Arizona in the outfield and Mike Piazza of New York catching.

It’s hard to argue with Boone, the Rodriguezes, Martinez and the entire outfield in the American League, or frankly with pretty much the whole N.L. lineup, though you could quibble a bit here and there.

You could make a case for Craig Biggio over Kent, for example. They’re having similar years. Who you’d choose in that debate probably depends on where you live. Given the choice, I’d take Kent, but if you want to take Kent, I’ll take Biggio and we can still have fun arguing. Bring beer.

Albert Pujols of the Cardinals is the obvious choice at third base, but he’s a rookie. He’s not even on the ballot. That’s the way it works. It’s a harsh world for rookies, even when they’re tearing up the league. That means Chipper Jones gets the nod, because he’s Chipper Jones and he plays for the Braves and he’s having a solid year. San Diego fans will squawk that Robin Ventura of the Mets, who’s having an off year, finished second behind Jones, ahead of their Phil Nevin, and yeah that’s wrong, but Nevin doesn’t quite deserve to beat out Jones anyway, and nobody cares who finished second. (Except Bud Selig and his dumb wild-card fetish, but that’s another column.)

In the American League, Ripken beat out David Bell of the Mariners for the third base job with a late rally. Bell, leading the voting through the penultimate public tally, really would have been fodder for the “the fans shouldn’t vote” crowd. Nobody in the American League is having a good year at third, so there would have been no great robbery in any case, but Bell wouldn’t even be able to crack a lineup in the National League. I mean that literally. Russ Davis, recently cut by the Giants, simply given a plane ticket home, was having a better year than Bell. How must it feel to be, say, Scott Rolen of the Phillies or Ventura of the Mets, no better than this year’s seventh or eighth best N.L. third basemen, but good enough to be an All-Star in the American League?

I’d give the nod to Troy Glaus of the Angels, who’s at least hitting home runs and driving in runs to go with his .254 average, but Ripken, who’s hitting .227 with four homers, got a lifetime achievement vote, and at this position this year, that’s fine.

Bell being overtaken means his first baseman, Olerud, is the poster boy for ballot-box stuffing. Olerud is 11th among regular A.L. first baseman in slugging, second in on-base percentage, sixth in average, 12th in homers, fifth in RBIs. Jason Giambi of the A’s is hitting .335 with 19 homers, and he leads A.L. first basemen in RBIs, on-base percentage and slugging percentage. And this is a guy they don’t pitch to. Mike Sweeney of the Royals is my second choice. Olerud doesn’t belong anywhere near the All-Star Game.

In the National League outfield, of course Barry Bonds makes it. The good news here is that Luis Gonzalez of the Diamondbacks overtook Larry Walker of the Rockies at the wire for the third outfield spot after Bonds and Sammy Sosa. They have very similar numbers, except Gonzalez has more home runs, but Walker plays in a home park that pumps up his stats like a monster truck tire. I would have guessed the casual fan was a year away from getting that. Good for the casual fan.

Unless Lance Berkman of the Astros has a big postseason sometime soon, we’re still a ways from the point where casual fans realize they should vote for him over Sosa. As long as he’s playing well — and he is — Sammy Sosa’s going to get a lot of votes.

Behind the plate, the question is: Is Paul LoDuca of the Dodgers having a better year than Mike Piazza of the Mets? And the answer is: Uh, OK, sure. I guess you could say so.

See notes on Pujols and Sosa, above, and take your pick as to which applies.

No one cared about that macho thought because Guillen was skipper of the Chicago White Sox at the time. As the newly hired manager of the Miami Marlins, Guillen repeated the notion to Time last week–”I respect Fidel Castro,” he said. “You know why? A lot of people have wanted to kill Fidel Castro for the last 60 years, but that [expletive] is still there”–and he found himself on the brink of unemployment.

As Miami’s Cuban-American talk radio hosts whipped up a storm of protest, the Marlins denounced Guillen and suspended him for five games. On Tuesday the chastened manager repudiated his statements, said Castro was a bad man, and apologized “on my knees.” With Guillen’s job hanging in the balance, most sportswriters attributed the controversy to his big mouth: He is known for insulting gays and admitting he likes to get drunk often.

But Guillen’s real problem is Cuban Miami, where enforcing the anti-Castro party line is a more popular pastime than baseball, not the least because the Marlins owners arranged to stick the city’s taxpayers with the bill for their new $640 million ballpark in Little Havana while depriving local residents of legal parking spaces. The combination of Guillen’s candor, Miami politics, and the Marlins’ arrogance is what has brought the Cooperstown-bound skipper to the brink of being fired.

The city has never shown much tolerance for people who say nice things about Castro. In 2000, Jim Mullin, editor of the city’s alternative weekly New Times, compiled a chronology of violent intolerance that has few parallels in modern America. In 1975 a Cuban American man was murdered after advocating closer relations with Castro’s Cuba. In 1978, an anti-Castro talk radio host had his legs blown off by a car bomb because he dared criticize his fellow exiles for resorting to violence. In 1983, the Little Havana branch of a Miami bank was bombed because one of its executives had negotiated with the Castro government for the release of 3,600 political prisoners. In 1998, a bomb threat emptied a concert hall during a performance by Compay Segundo, a 91-year-old musician made famous by the movie “The Buena Vista Social Club.” All told, Mullin found more than 40 instances of bomb threats and explosions directed at people who had somehow offended the anti-Castro orthodoxy.

A 1994 Human Rights Watch report on the sorry state of free speech in Miami concluded,  the city is “dominated by fiercely anti-Communist forces who are strongly opposed to contrary viewpoints.” The HRW reports linked these forces to “acts of repression ranging from shunning to violence.” The reports found “significant responsibility” by the government at all levels, including “direct harassment by the government and government support of groups linked to anti-free speech behavior.”

That tradition continued this week when two local politicians injected themselves into the controversy by calling for Guillen’s firing. The call was echoed by a vigilante group known as Vigilia Mambisa, which describes itself as “a hard-line, right wing, Anti-Castro, Anti-Communist group of dedicated Cuban-American demonstrators … known for their rapid response to calls for protest aired on Miami Spanish-language stations.”  The group is calling for a boycott of the Marlins until Guillen is fired.

The problem is Miamians are already boycotting the Marlins. The team ranked 28th out of 30 major league teams in attendance last year. Dario Moreno, a professor of political science at Florida International University, said, “I don’t think this is a free speech issue. There’s a lot more tolerance than there was 30 years ago.” Moreno noted that south Florida’s three Cuban-American congressional representatives and the state’s Cuban-American senator have not called for Guillen to be fired.

“This has more to do with the Marlins and a community that invested large sums of money in their stadium over the objections of lots of people,” Moreno said. “The promise was that they would bring the community together and give us something to be proud of. It’s not working out very well.”

Moreno says he thinks Guillen may be able to keep his job if the Marlins muzzle Guillen (good luck with that) and reach out to the community. “The baseball fans are willing to let this one go by if he just promises to not talk politics,” Moreno said.

“As a Christian, I accept his apology,” said Alberto Muller, a former newspaper columnist who spent 15 years in a Cuban prison. “But in Miami, not everybody is a Christian.” Muller thinks Guillen will be fired.

A Miami Herald online reader survey found 57 percent of 2,500-plus respondents saying Guillen’s five-game suspension was sufficient punishment. If Guillen only loses his job for expressing admiration for Fidel’s toughness, it will be a sign of civic progress. Not long ago, he might have lost his legs or his life.

The rebrand was planned as part of the team’s big move to their new stadium, New Marlins Ballpark (which also sports a logo with a rainbow motif), a baseball-only park with a retractable roof to keep the tropical rains away. With a name like New Marlins Ballpark, the powers-that-be decided the team needed a new identity as well. So not only are the uniform colors radically different, but the team will now be called the Miami Marlins.

Gone is the teal, silver and black color scheme the team has worn since its inception in 1993 (and in which it won two World Series), and in its place, as you can see, is a curious combination of oranges, yellows, blues and assorted other bright hues. Gone too is the detailed illustration of the eponymous fish, bursting around and through the logo with furious determination. Instead there is now a whimsical suggestion of a marlin swooshing from some unclear source out of the Aztec-influenced M letterform. Whatever its origin, one thing is sure: The overall effect is anything but intimidating.

In addition to the new logo and color scheme, new uniforms will also be revealed. Again, this look isn’t certain to be the one unveiled on Thursday (and in light of all the backlash, it’s entirely possible the Marlins’ design team has gone back to the drawing board) but this is what has been floating around the ether and seems to make sense based on the logo. White home jerseys with black caps. Away grays with a radically out of place blue cap (that strangely echo the original Tampa Bay Devil Rays uniforms). And some assortment of combinations for Fridays and other games.

Apparently the team’s (and stadium’s) colorful new look is meant to reflect the multicultural heritage of the many diverse ethnic groups living in the area. But you have to wonder if the Marlins’ head honchos learned nothing from the atrocious Houston Astros uniforms of the mid-1970s (known as the “rainbow era”) that made even Nolan Ryan and J.R. Richard, at left (two of the era’s most dominating pitchers), look a tad sheepish.

Not to say orange is a bad choice for a sports team (the Giants, Orioles and Tigers pull it off pretty well), but it does require some tasteful design skill and a healthy grasp of workable color palettes.

Perhaps it’s not the worst logo ever (for some ideas on that front click here); there are always the Chicago White Sox shorts and collared unis from the ’80s to claim that distinction. But if this is indeed the look of the new Miami Marlins, my guess is it won’t be around long.

Copyright F+W Media Inc. 2011.

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Everyone knows that Buckner lost the 1986 World Series for the Red Sox. But what everyone knows is wrong.

At the time, the Red Sox were burdened with 68 years of frustration; their last championship was in 1918. Leading three games to two against the New York Mets, Boston was ahead by a score of 5-3 in the bottom of the 10th inning. Red Sox pitcher Calvin Schiraldi got two quick outs. In the Sox locker room the champagne was iced, and the scoreboard flashed “Congratulations Red Sox.”

Gary Carter, Kevin Mitchell and Ray Knight all singled, and the score was 5-4 with Mitchell on third. Reliever Bob Stanley came into the game to pitch to Mookie Wilson and threw a wild pitch that brought Mitchell home and tied the score. But it’s the next play that still has Red Sox fans screaming in the middle of the night.

Stanley threw a sinker-ball, designed to produce ground balls to infielders. What was supposed to happen did happen—Mookie Wilson tapped a slow grounder at Buckner at first base. But the ball rolled between Buckner’s legs, and the Mets won in the most incredible finish to a World Series game ever. (See it with commentary by the inimitable Vin Scully.)

Buckner’s career changed in an instant. Up to that moment, he was one of the game’s great unsung hitters. He’d batted better than .300 seven times in his career, winning the 1980 American League batting title. He led the league four times in assists. During that crucial September 1986 playoff run, he carried the team, hitting .340 with eight home runs. All that was soon to be forgotten.

The scholar Stephen Jay Gould (in Natural History magazine) called him “a gallant first baseman and a veteran with a long and distinguished career.”

“For weeks,” wrote Gould, “manager John McNamara had been benching Buckner for defensive purposes during the last few innings of games with substantial Red Sox leads, but after a long and hard season, Buckner’s legs were shot … he could hardly bend down.”

Plagued with chronic ankle soreness—he was the first player to wear high-top baseball cleats to ease the pain— Buckner had been relieved in three previous series games by Dave Stapleton. Why was he still playing when Wilson hit the ground ball? Because McNamara was sentimental; he wanted his regulars on the field when the Red Sox won the series.

But Buckner’s error did not lose the championship for the Red Sox; it didn’t even lose Game 6 for them — the Red Sox had already blown their two-run lead. Two nights later, with another chance at the ring, Boston lost 8-5.

(Buckner, incidentally, had two hits in four at-bats and scored a run in Game 7.)

Red Sox fans cried “Curse of the Bambino”—the punishment Boston supposedly merited for selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1919—but the focus of the curse that season was Buckner. Yet Buckner did not put the tying runs on base. He didn’t throw the wild pitch that made it 5-5. He did not make the decision to keep his defensive replacement on the bench. Had he made the play, the Red Sox could have lost the game anyway.

When so many others contributed as much or more to the Red Sox defeat, why has history made Buckner the goat? Perhaps Gould said it best when he suggested that in the collective minds of Red Sox fans, “If Buckner fields the ball properly, the Sox win their first World Series since 1918 and eradicate the Curse of the Bambino. In this scenario, Buckner’s miscue marks the unkindest bounce of all, the most improbable trivial little error sustained by a good and admired man. What hath God wrought?”

What God wrought, perhaps, was a curse on both teams. The New York Mets have not won another World Series since; their greatest stars on that 1986 team —pitcher Dwight Gooden and slugging outfielder Darryl Strawberry—saw their careers cut short by drug abuse. In 2007 and 2008, the team crumbled down the stretch and missed the playoffs. And this year, the Red Sox, who seemingly broke the Curse by winning the World Series in 2004 and 2007, suffered the all-time worst collapse in baseball history, losing 20 of their last 27 games.

But that was kid’s play for what God had in mind for Donnie Moore. Red Sox fans were quick to forget that they never would have had a crack at their own little tragedy had it not been for Donnie Moore. Boston made it to the World Series by beating the then-Anaheim Angels in the American League Championship Series. After four games, they were in better shape against the Red Sox than the Red Sox ever were against the Mets.

On Oct. 12, 1986, playing in Anaheim, the Angels were up three games to one with a 5-2 lead going into the top of the ninth. Then, a real curse revealed itself. Don Baylor hit a two-run homer to make it 5-4. Moore had been a fine relief pitcher that season, tallying 21 saves. With two outs and the tying run at second, Moore got two strikes on Dave Henderson, then tried to slip a fastball by the Red Sox outfielder. The pitch changed his life. Henderson slammed it to deep left field for a two-run homer. On TV, Al Michaels screamed, “Unbelievable! Astonishing! With one strike away Anaheim Stadium was one strike away from turning into Fantasyland! You’re looking at one for the ages here!”

Like Buckner, Moore was damned for losing the big one. What was forgotten is that the Angels came back to tie it, and Moore, still in the game, induced Jim Rice to ground into a double play. But in the 11th, the Red Sox scored another run off Moore on a sac fly by – of course – Dave Henderson. The Angels lost 7-6.

But that still left them with two chances to win their first-ever pennant and trip to the World Series. The Sox blasted the Angels pitching for 19 runs over two games and went on to meet their destiny against the Mets, without the slightest thought that they owed a great big ugly debt to sheer luck – one that would soon be repaid with interest.

Still, to Angels fans, it had all come down to the pitch that Donnie Moore threw to Dave Henderson. All the subsequent chances that they lost were the evil spawn of that one pitch.

For the next two years, Moore couldn’t walk out on the field without being booed, crushed and heckled. When he left the ballpark, fans were lineup to scream insults, even when he won. Moore began to drink heavily and his talents eroded. On July 18, 1989, Moore got into a shouting fight with his wife at their home in Anaheim Hills. He went to his closet, got an automatic pistol and, in front of his children, shot his wife and one of his daughters. The daughter drove herself and her mother to the hospital; they survived. Moore did not. Back in the house, with his son pleading for him to drop the gun, Moore shot and killed himself.

Now that is tragedy. That puts Bill Buckner’s error in perspective. It’s only a game, unless you choose to regard it as something more.

Meanwhile, the infamous Buckner ball, once owned by Charlie Sheen, is up for auction on eBay, asking price $1 million. The bid will close at the exact minute of the 25th anniversary of the play.

Now a successful businessman, Buckner has lived down the error by turning the joke on himself. On “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” he won the cheers of a New York crowd by catching a baby dropped from a burning building.

In 2008, he threw out the first pitch of the Red Sox home opener and got a standing ovation from the sell-out crowd. Somewhere, one has to feel, the Bambino himself was applauding.

Thankfully, though, we now have baseball to help shine a light on the problem so that everyone can see it for what it really is.

Today, Major League Baseball games using QuesTec’s computerized pitch-monitoring system are the most statistically quantifiable workplaces in America. Match up QuesTec’s accumulated data with demographic information about who is pitching and who is calling balls and strikes, and you get the indisputable proof of how ethnicity does indeed play a part in discretionary decisions of those in power positions.

This is exactly what Southern Methodist University’s researchers did when they examined more than 3.5 million pitches from 2004 to 2008. Their findings say as much about the enduring relationship between sports and bigotry as they do about the synaptic nature of racism in all of American society.

First and foremost, SMU found that home-plate umpires call disproportionately more strikes for pitchers in their same ethnic group. Because most home-plate umpires are white, this has been a big form of racial privilege for white pitchers, who researchers show are, on average, getting disproportionately more of the benefit of the doubt on close calls.

Second, SMU researchers found that “minority pitchers reacted to umpire bias by playing it safe with the pitches they threw in a way that actually harmed their performance and statistics.” Basically, these hurlers adjusted to the white umpires’ artificially narrower strike zone by throwing pitches down the heart of the plate, where they were easier for batters to hit.

Finally, and perhaps most important, the data suggest that racial bias is probably operating at a subconscious level, where the umpire doesn’t even recognize it.

To document this, SMU compared the percentage of strikes called in QuesTec-equipped ballparks versus non-QuesTec parks. Researchers found that umpires’ racial biases diminished when they knew they were being monitored by the computer.

Same thing for high-profile moments. During those important points in games when umpires knew fans were more carefully watching the calls, the racial bias all but vanished. Likewise, the same-race preference was less pronounced at high-attendance games, where umps knew there would be more crowd scrutiny.

Though gleaned from baseball, these findings transcend athletics by providing a larger lesson about conditioned behavior in an institutionally racist society.

Whether the workplace is a baseball diamond, a factory floor or an office, when authority figures realize they are being scrutinized, they are more cognizant of their own biases — and more likely to try to stop them before they unduly influence their behavior. But in lower-profile interludes, when the workplace isn’t scrutinized and decisions are happening on psychological autopilot, pre-programmed biases can take over.

Thus, the inherent problem of today’s pervasive “post-racial” fallacy. By perpetuating the lie that racism doesn’t exist, pretending that bigotry is not a workplace problem anymore, and resisting governmental efforts to halt such prejudice, we create the environment for our ugly subconscious to rule. In doing so, we consequently reduce the potential for much-needed self-correction.

John Thorn

[My favorite baseball movie is] “Bull Durham,” because it is gritty, real, and smart about the subculture that only baseball professionals know. Not to mention that it is funny, as is “Major League,” which stands up to repeated watching. Not funny but also with much to recommend them are “The Natural” (better than Malamud’s dreary novel) and “Field of Dreams,” a three-hankie weeperoo for guys.

Baseball movies are hard to get right, as are baseball novels, as are novels or films about the worlds of film or theater. The writer or filmmaker tackling baseball always starts off at one remove from reality, and is always playing catch-up. Baseball is not about baseball, at least not entirely, even if you’re playing it. It is about past glories, power transference, surrogated combat and unconscious contests of generation and gender. Some of this is acknowledged in “Bull Durham,” along with the humor and the realism, which makes it, for me, the gold standard.

John Thorn is the official historian for Major League Baseball. His most recent book is “Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game.”

Nicholas Dawidoff

The best baseball movie I have seen is “Bull Durham” — so funny! so sexy! — but my favorite is “Field of Dreams.” I know, I know! So uncool! But while it’s undeniably sentimental to the point of mawkishness, much of the joy of pretty good movies has to do with what the viewer brings to them. I grew up without a dad in the house and because that was just the way it was, this was also just something we didn’t talk about in our family. As a younger person I only thought about the situation obliquely, through mediums like movies and baseball players. I think the film gets exactly right that primary feeling of longing for an absent father, and the mysterious way baseball can express so much about how people romanticize the things they don’t have but very much want. I remember sitting in that dark theater in my very early 20s, getting choked up and trying to be stoic in public, when suddenly all around me I heard the sound of grown men weeping in the dark. That was a huge moment in my life — there were others! — and I haven’t since been able to separate the film and the moment. I also liked the cornfield and James Earl Jones.

One of the problems with baseball movies is that baseball itself is so exciting and so dramatic and also real. Most baseball films feature play that seems lame and contrived. That is also true, by the way, of baseball novels. They try to match the reality and can’t compete. One reason that Chad Harbach’s new novel, “The Art of Fielding,” is so successful is that it really understands the game. The book takes the time to address the nuances in persuasive and insightful ways that would be very challenging to express on film, and it uses baseball as a backdrop for big subjects like college life, coming of age, the search for beauty, etc. I think that the life in full of a small college baseball team might make an excellent film, especially if the baseball was kept to a minimum. Baseball films that are just about baseball don’t work. The reason the television program “Friday Night Lights” is the best fiction ever filmed about football is that there isn’t much football — it’s the story, among other things, of a distinctive community in small-town Texas and the most convincing marriage I’ve ever seen portrayed on-screen. “Field of Dreams” may be sentimental, but it’s also a very smart commentary on sentimentality. And by making no attempt at all to seem real, it feels real and true to something original and meaningful.

Nicholas Dawidoff’s books include “The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg” and “The Crowd Sounds Happy: A Story of Love, Madness, and Baseball.”

Jane Leavy

[My favorite baseball movie is] “Bull Durham” — because it gets the language of baseball right, the studied obfuscations and the native dugout patois. Because I want to be Susan Sarandon in a bathtub with Kevin Costner. Because Ron Shelton, the one-time minor leaguer turned filmmaker, allowed a woman to be the apostle of that old time baseball religion without getting all religious about it. Remember the gospel of Annie Savoy: “I believe in the Church of Baseball. I’ve tried all the major religions, and most of the minor ones. I’ve worshipped Buddha, Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, trees, mushrooms, and Isadora Duncan. I know things. For instance, there are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary and there are 108 stitches in a baseball. When I heard that, I gave Jesus a chance. But it just didn’t work out between us.”

I don’t know why there aren’t more baseball movies. My funny friend Norman Steinberg, who wrote “My Favorite Year” as well as the unproduced screenplay of my baseball novel, “Squeeze Play,” says: “There’s a common belief among studios and distributors that baseball movies don’t put asses in the seats the way Mickey Mantle did. Then, every once in a while, one comes along to explode the popular negative belief as ‘Bull Durham’ did and ‘Squeeze Play’ woulda’. Damn.”

Maybe it’s locker room verisimilitude they can’t handle. The studio exec who passed on our film told Norman, “Take the penis off the cake” — a marzipan likeness I had situated on a post-game buffet table. It was her only note.

I do think I know why baseball writes so well. The pace of the game, so infuriating to the gigabyte generation, is writerly. The pauses between innings and pitches, and all those goddamn pitching changes, allow for imagination and the play of words. In fact, writing is a whole lot like the rhythm of baseball: long periods of hair-pulling inaction waiting for the right word to explode into consciousness like a 95-mile-an-hour heater. And when it does, you feel, for just an instant, like the man on the mound with electrifying stuff.

Jane Leavy’s books include the bestseller “Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy.” Her acclaimed biography of Mickey Mantle, “The Last Boy,” is out in paperback Oct. 4.

Roger Kahn

I’m not a critic, nor was I meant to be, but I do have favorites. From a non-critical perch my favorite baseball movie is “Bang the Drum Slowly,” based on Mark Harris’ moving novel. A double-edged success: the film is faithful to the book and the actors look as though they actually had played some ball. (In truth they had, under a coach the producer hired.)

Worst baseball movie? For reasons too numerous to list, a tie between “The Babe Ruth Story” and “Pride of the Yankees.”

More than five different producers have bought options to make a movie of my book, “The Boys of Summer.” None has succeeded, although we had scripts by such talented writers as Mark Harris and my late friend Ring Lardner Jr. Why not? Funding never materialized and if I understood that I would understand capitalism, which I don’t.

Roger Kahn’s many books include “The Boys of Summer,” which James Michener called “the finest American book on sports.”

Joe Posnanski

[Choosing a favorite baseball movie is tough] for me. I’d say it’s either “Bull Durham” or “The Natural,” depending on my mood at the moment. “Bull Durham” is the funniest baseball movie ever made, I think, and so I’d probably go with that one three out of four days.

I do think a baseball movie is hard to get right … but only in the same way that everything is hard to get right. I was just talking about this with a friend. I suspect lawyers would tell you that most law movies get it really wrong. I suspect doctors would tell you that most medical movies get it really wrong. And so on. I don’t think movies, in general, are meant to get it right … I have yet to see a movie that gets sportswriters right.

The trouble is that baseball — unlike the law, or medicine or sportswriting — is enjoyed by millions and millions of fans. And so getting it wrong in baseball can crush a movie. John Goodman is a very funny and likable actor, but there’s no way he could swing a bat like Babe Ruth. Ray Liotta is a wonderful actor, but most baseball fans know that Shoeless Joe Jackson swung left-handed and threw right-handed, not the other way around. It isn’t that movies get baseball wrong more than they get other things wrong … it is that it matters in baseball.

Joe Posnanski is a senior writer at Sports Illustrated, and was sports columnist at the Kansas City Star from 1996 to 2009. He blogs here.

Fay Vincent

It is difficult to make a good movie and it is difficult indeed to make a wonderful movie. No one should ever underestimate the challenges of filmmaking. For every memorable film there are dozens of failures. Indeed the definition of a “good film” is tricky. Is it a film that makes lots of money or a film that meets with great critical acclaim but only appeals to a thin slice of the general audience?

My favorite baseball films are “Bang the Drum Slowly” — also the choice of Bart Giamatti — and “Eight Men Out.” A close competitor is “Bull Durham.” These films were about basic human failures and issues but set in a baseball context. The drama and themes of these films are much broader than baseball. The effort to show the game as part of the film, as in “The Natural,” often defeats the film maker. Nothing is so false as fake baseball footage.

It is not that baseball defeats the filmmaker. Filmmaking is just a difficult art form in an even more difficult industry.The miracle is not that there are so few great baseball films. It is, rather, that there are so few great films on any topic. Or as someone once said, there are only four story lines in all of film making and every film is predicated on one of those stories. Baseball is the background. It can not overcome the realities of the business.

Fay Vincent was MLB Commissioner from 1989 to 1992. He was president and CEO of Columbia Pictures when TriStar made “The Natural.” His books include “The Last Commissioner: A Baseball Valentine.”

Allen Barra

There is no question that the greatest baseball movie ever is “Bull Durham.” It’s the best written. There are phrases in there that just went into the American lexicon. … [Director] Ron [Shelton] was a former minor league ball player and he knew all the stuff from the ground up.

[So] clearly, “Bull Durham” is the best. But the other night, there was a radio show and Bob Costas called in, and I was curious to see what Bob was going to say as to the second-best film. In the past, [when] we have talked about this, he’s either picked “The Natural,” which I loathe (it completely falsifies the end of Bernard Malamud’s novel), or “Field of Dreams,” which also sentimentalizes and falsifies the Kinsella novel, “Shoeless Joe,” that it was made from. [Costas] had the guts to say “Major League” — [a] much maligned [film] — which is terrific fun: it’s vulgar, it’s crass, and it’s very, very true in a lot of ways. … It’s got good baseball in it; Charlie Sheen has a terrific cut fastball. I mean, if he’d devoted himself to it from his college career, he could have been Mariano Rivera. He’s got a nice windup too. You see balls and strikes — in what other baseball movie do you see a guy picked off first base? When do they ever bother with that? Also, every other movie ends with a big home run; how do they end it with this? A bunt. I have to say, very seldom do you see a sports movie where you’re surprised at the end [as you are with "Major League"]. I’ll take “Major League” for my second best. …

[One] reason they don’t make more [baseball movies] is that there aren’t more natural ideas out there. Ron Shelton said to me once, “They always end these sports movies with a ‘big game.’” He said, “In real life, there is no big game. There’s always a game coming up after.” And that’s really the problem. I mean, he made one of the best baseball movies ever, and hardly anyone went to see it — “Cobb,” the biography of Ty Cobb — with Tommy Lee Jones, a fabulous performance. And it wasn’t a commercial success. It’s hard to find new variations upon an old theme.

George Plimpton once said, “The smaller the ball, the better the book” — which is why no one’s ever written a good book about beach ball. And I think baseball, if it’s done right, is a better cinematic subject than anything else. … Frankly, baseball doesn’t lend itself to television. Have you ever been to a game with somebody who’s there for the first time? “Oh my God, I didn’t realize the ball was hit so hard! Oh, it’s hit so fast!” The routine things in baseball are absolutely amazing. … If done right, [baseball] works better than anything else on the movie screen.

Salon contributor Allen Barra is author of “Yogi Berra: Eternal Yankee.” He writes about sports for The Wall Street Journal and other publications.

Joe Lemire

“Bull Durham” is my favorite baseball movie. It gives a taste of minor-league baseball life and a sampling of the eccentric characters that have always populated the game. Nuke LaLoosh is a classic archetype of the all-talent, no-brain ballplayer. So much of baseball — thanks to its long season and short bursts of action following periods of anticipation — is a mental game. And his conversations with the veteran Crash Davis (long on maturity, but with just enough talent to get by) are compelling.

I do think the baseball movie is hard to get right, though I think that’s true of all sports movies. Replicating sports action is difficult. And depending on what you’d call legendary, I think there have been several very good baseball films (all in their own way): “Bull Durham,” “The Natural,” “Field of Dreams” and “Major League,” most notably. At least in my opinion, it’s not like there’s a disproportionate number of great basketball or football or golf movies that have been made. I think all sports are hard to capture on the big screen.

Joe Lemire writes about baseball for Sports Illustrated.

Richard J. Tofel

I can’t say that I buy the premise of your question. Four of my favorite films are baseball movies — “A League of Their Own,” “Bull Durham,” “Field of Dreams” and my personal choice, “The Natural.”

What is noteworthy, and what perhaps your question is getting at, is this: Baseball is a subject serious writers love to take seriously, from George Will to Bart Giamatti, from David Halberstam to Michael Lewis, even from Jacques Barzun to John Updike. Yet, our more serious filmmakers have not been similarly moved by the game, and our best baseball films are not as serious — “Bang the Drum Slowly” aside — as our best baseball writing. Even wonderful baseball films such as “Field of Dreams” feel compelled to take the edge off the writing from which they emerge — in that case, W. P. Kinsella’s “Shoeless Joe.”

“The Natural” is perhaps the most extreme example of this phenomenon, transforming Bernard Malamud’s dark ending into a fantasy of exploding stadium lights. That may not be great literature, but it is the most fun I’ve ever had at the movies.

Richard Tofel is the author of “A Legend in the Making: The New York Yankees in 1939″ and four other books, none of them about baseball. He very favorably reviewed “Moneyball” for The Wall Street Journal when it was published in 2003.