Tonight I finally watched a movie that had been sitting on my TiVo since October: “The Cameraman,” from 1928, starring Buster Keaton. This is relevant to this blog because there is a 5-minute sequence filmed in the then-brand-new Yankee Stadium in which Buster’s character pantomimes a baseball game. (Well, of course he pantomimes it, it’s a silent film.) He does so because the plot of the film is that he’s attempting to impress a girl by becoming a newsreel photographer, and his attempts to film some sports action are thwarted by the fact that the Yankees are playing in St. Louis, so he sets his movie camera next to the pitcher’s mound and makes his own action. Presumably, he didn’t capture any of that action, because — that’s right — he was too busy playing fake baseball to crank the camera.
Anyway, it’s not as long, nor as pivotal to the film, as the baseball sequence in “The Naked Gun” (to name another non-baseball movie), but it is certainly fun, and funny.
Now it’s time for real baseball. Last year, I didn’t watch the Sunday night opener, and had to live vicariously through Levi’s tales of Johnny Damon. I’m not making that mistake this year; I’ve got the TiVo set.
And then comes Monday, and once again, I’m planning to watch Opening Day baseball all day, courtesy of the fact that the MLB Extra Innings package is free for the first week of the season, at least on DirecTV. Maybe I’m remembering wrong, but it looks like there are fewer Opening Day Monday games this year than there were last year (although there’s a game not shown on that schedule because it’s on ESPN 2 Monday evening, Cubs at Diamondbacks). For example, neither the Dodgers nor Angels start until Tuesday…although that means I won’t have to switch to a non-blacked-out channel at any point on Monday.