Ellen Adair talks with Noah Gittell about his new book BASEBALL: THE MOVIE, many different baseball movies, and then Noah grades SUGAR on the 20-80 scouting scale.
Ellen Adair talks with Noah Gittell, journalist, film critic, and author of BASEBALL: THE MOVIE. They discuss ways in which Noah's Mets fandom has built character, the concept of love of baseball above all, surprises in researching the book, casting a movie about Jackie Robinson using actors from Jackie Robinson movies over the decades, and the worst baseball movie Noah had to watch. Noah has some hot takes about THE SANDLOT! They also talk about which baseball movie characters to put on the cover of the book, Noah's interview with Richard Linklater, and the decline in production of baseball movies in the past decade. Then, they get into Noah's grades for the brilliant 2009 film SUGAR, by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck. Parental advisory: there is some (very fun) conversation about a rated-R word used in the film in the "Lack of Misogyny" category. Ellen also fact-checks the earlier episode of SUGAR on an important "Yes or No" question.