Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

My friend Hawk has given me three baseball movies on DVD: The Natural (1984); The Pride of the Yankees (1942); and Stealing Home (1988). I returned all three unwatched. This upsets Hawk, but as I have explained to him many times, I can't watch baseball movies. The only baseball movie I've ever watched is Bull Durham (1988), and I hated it. Baseball is too important to me to be made fun of. I can't watch the serious movies, either, although it's hard to explain why. I don't want baseball to be filtered through someone else's experience. I want to experience baseball on my own, without a filter. It won't surprise you to learn that I don't read books about baseball, either. I read part of Jim Bouton's Ball Four (1970) when I was in my teens. I consider it sacrilegious.