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      ‘It Ain’t Over’ Review: When Yogi Berra Saw a Strike, He Hit It

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      The baseball player, known for his quirky malapropisms, was perpetually underestimated. But a new documentary proves he was a phenomenal talent.The main brief of “It Ain’t Over,” a lively, engaging and moving documentary is more or less stated upfront by a friendly but mildly indignant Lindsay Berra, the granddaughter of its subject, the baseball player Yogi Berra.She recollects watching the 2015 All Star Game with her granddad. That day at the Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati were four special guests deemed the greatest living players: Hank Aaron, Johnny Bench, Sandy Koufax and Willie Mays. All legends, to be sure. But Berra, in crucial respects a humble man, felt snubbed, as did Lindsay. Because the movie makes a very credible case that Berra was as great a player as any of them.The reason he didn’t make this cut, Lindsay believes, is that Yogi’s boyish, generous personality had come to overshadow his prodigious skill. As Sean Mullin’s documentary points out: As a catcher for the New York Yankees, Berra was awarded Most Valuable Player three times during that team’s remarkable dominance of the game in the 1950s. He was an All-Star for 15 consecutive seasons, and he collected 10 World Series rings.But Berra cut a different figure from baseball heroes of the day. He had an easy grin and read comic books in the locker room. Only five foot seven, he wasn’t big and strapping like Joe DiMaggio. “Everything about him was round,” Roger Angell, one of several sportswriters interviewed here, says of Berra. (Plenty of players chime in, including Derek Jeter, who reflects on Berra’s deceptively simple advice: “When you see a strike, hit it.”)And for all that, he was a phenomenal player. While he didn’t become a catcher until he joined the Yankees, his mental acuity, discipline and intense training from the coach Bill Dickey, plus his own relatively low center of gravity, made him ideal in the position. Yes, you read “mental acuity” correctly. A good catcher has to carry the whole equation of the game in his head. The movie’s account of Game 5 of the 1956 World Series, in which Berra caught the pitcher Don Larsen’s perfect game — the only no-hitter in World Series history until last year, and the more recent accomplishment took three different pitchers — is a thrilling demonstration of Berra’s baseball genius.He was also a devoted family man, married for 65 years to Carmen Berra; his extravagantly affectionate and charmingly repetitive love letters to her are read aloud here. And he was a war hero — he was on a rocket boat off Normandy on D-Day in World War II, and while he was wounded, he didn’t apply for a Purple Heart because he didn’t want to worry his mother.Berra’s exemplary life is animated by the inevitable trotting out of his folksy malapropisms known as Yogi-isms. The movie’s title comes from one, “It ain’t over ’til it’s over,” which nobody, apparently, is sure Berra ever uttered. But the best of them, when you really turn them over, are as profound as Zen koans: “If you can’t imitate him, don’t copy him.” Only an original like Berra could come up with that.It Ain’t OverRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Yogi Berra on the Field: The Case for Baseball Greatness

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      A new documentary argues that the Yankee catcher was not just a malaprop-prone, beloved celebrity but also a legend of the game.In the latest edition of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, there’s a sports figure who towers over the competition.Among the nine sayings attributed to one Lawrence Peter Berra, the New York Yankees catcher better known as Yogi, are phrases that may seem nonsensical at first, but on further reflection offer wisdom for the ages.“You can observe a lot by watching.”“It was déjà vu all over again.”And of course, there’s “It ain’t over till it’s over,” which provides the title for a new documentary about Yogi’s life.“It Ain’t Over” aims to be a corrective to the caricature implanted in the cultural consciousness of Yogi as an amiable clown, a malaprop-prone catcher who looked as if he were put together with spare parts. But Yogi was not only a cuddly pitchman for insurance, beer and chocolate milk, an inspiration for a certain cartoon bear, and a stand-up guy beloved by teammates; he was, the film argues, one of the best baseball players who ever lived.“This guy was criminally overlooked his whole life, at every stage,” said Sean Mullin, the film’s director.The documentary, which opens Friday, is intensely personal, tapping the eldest of Yogi’s 11 grandchildren to serve as a narrator with no pretense to objectivity in fighting for her grandfather’s legacy.It was a relatively recent slight that encapsulates the film’s defining thesis and yields the opening scene. During the All-Star Game in 2015, Major League Baseball honored the four players voted by fans as the greatest living legends. Watching that night with her grandfather, Lindsay Berra remembers becoming infuriated that Yogi had not made the cut. The director Sean Mullin and Lindsay Berra, Yogi’s granddaughter, say the Yankee’s prowess has been “criminally overlooked.” Evelyn Freja for The New York TimesMullin and Lindsay Berra, in separate interviews, emphasized that they meant no offense to the four greats honored that night — Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Sandy Koufax and Johnny Bench. They just fervently believe that Yogi should have been the fifth man walking on the field that night in Cincinnati.“I always thought from the beginning that I figuratively wanted to put Grandpa back in the picture with the documentary,” said Lindsay Berra, who is an executive producer on the film.The filmmakers marshal the statistics and an impressive array of former players and other baseball experts to back up their claim. Yogi — who died in 2015 at 90 — was a core part of 10 World Series championship teams as a player, more than anyone else. He won three Most Valuable Player awards, played in All-Star games in 15 straight years and in 1956 caught the only perfect game in World Series history. And only two major leaguers have ever hit more than 350 home runs while striking out fewer than 450 times: Joe DiMaggio and Yogi.The statistic that most impresses Lindsay Berra comes from 1950. That season, Yogi went to the plate 656 times and struck out just 12 times: “That to me will always be astonishing, because guys today strike out 12 times in a weekend.”Yogi Berra leaping into the arms of pitcher Don Larsen after the only perfect game in a World Series, in 1956.Associated PressAll this passionate lobbying is not mere special familial pleading. Jon Pessah, who wrote the 2020 biography “Yogi: A Life Behind the Mask” (and is not in the film), said the idea that Yogi’s baseball prowess has been overlooked “is 100 percent true.”Besides the hitting feats, Yogi willed himself into becoming a terrific defensive catcher and was expert at guiding his temperamental pitchers. (During Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series, he did not shake off one of the 97 pitches Yogi called.)“After studying his career, you say, wow, this guy carried the Yankees in the ’50s,” a decade that bridged DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle, Pessah said. “You look at what he meant on the field and at the plate, he was a force.”The unfair, and incomplete, perception of Yogi has much to do with his stubby stature and comparisons with his famous teammates. DiMaggio was slick and polished, and married to Marilyn Monroe; Mantle was the blue-eyed, golden-haired, all-American boy from Oklahoma. Yogi — well, no demeaning or belittling description seemed off-limits to the writers who covered him. Early in his career, a Life magazine article referred to him as “knock-kneed” and “barrel-shaped,” and likened his running style to that of “a fat girl in a tight skirt.” That was all in one sentence.His first manager called him an ape. In newspaper and magazine articles, Yogi’s looks were compared to those of a gargoyle, a gorilla and an orangutan.“Can you imagine reporters writing today that someone looked like a gorilla and was too ugly to be a Yankee?” Lindsay Berra said. But Yogi ultimately didn’t mind playing the butt of jokes, sloughing them off as just another test of character. “I think he knew inside who he was,” Mullin said. “There was a real confidence at a very base level.”Growing up the fourth child of Italian immigrants in St. Louis, Yogi quit school after eighth grade to help support his family, although he pretty much just wanted to play baseball. Constantly underestimated, he ultimately signed with the Yankees. He was drafted during World War II and was in a rocket boat at Omaha Beach on D-Day.Back from the war, he played on a Yankees farm team for a year before being called up late in the 1946 season. He was in the majors for good.As seen in the documentary, from left: Larry, Tim and Dale Berra, sons of the Yankee great. Dale said it was stern words from his father that helped him kick a cocaine addiction.Daniel Vecchione/Sony Picture ClassicsWhile proving naysayers wrong with his hitting prowess and improving defense, he also displayed deep-seated integrity. At a time when racism still thrived in Major League Baseball despite Jackie Robinson integrating the game in 1947, Yogi showed respect to Robinson and other Black players; he later became very good friends with Larry Doby, the first Black player in the American League.But a charmed life — he also had a storybook marriage to his hometown sweetheart, Carmen — does not make for the most dramatic of films.To add some texture to his portrait, Mullin examined both Yogi’s larger cultural significance and his personal pain.Yogi became one of the first celebrity endorsers, hawking the chocolate milk drink Yoo Hoo, Doodle fish oil, Camel cigarettes and, really leaning into the persona later in life, Miller Lite and Aflac insurance. “He never resented the way he was viewed but he was savvy enough to know it made business sense,” Pessah said.Yogi’s son Dale followed him into the majors, but a promising career was derailed by a cocaine addiction. Rehab didn’t help, and neither did encouragement from his family. It took an ultimatum, delivered by Yogi, at an intervention in 1992.“You’re not going to be my son anymore unless you make a decision to not do drugs again,” Dale Berra said his father told him. He has been clean since.The other deep wound in Yogi’s life came in 1985, inflicted by the Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. Serving as manager for Steinbrenner was a decidedly unsafe proposition, and 16 games into Yogi’s second season, he was fired. What angered Yogi most wasn’t the firing, it was that Steinbrenner didn’t have the guts (or decency) to deliver the blow himself. Yogi, always a man of his word, vowed never to return to Yankee Stadium until Steinbrenner apologized.It took nearly 14 years before a rapprochement was brokered, leading to Yogi Berra Day at the stadium in July 1999. Forty-three years after the World Series perfect game, Don Larsen was reunited with his former battery mate to throw out the ceremonial first pitch.Yogi didn’t have a glove with him, so he borrowed one from Joe Girardi, a Yankees catcher at the time. Those there that day still marvel at what they then witnessed. David Cone proceeded to pitch another perfect game for the Yankees. A life well lived had its magical coda. More

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      ‘Reggie’ Review: Reggie Jackson on Himself, Racism and, Yes, Baseball

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      Jackson, a.k.a. Mr. October, was called a lot of things during his storied career with the Yankees. A new documentary goes beyond the nicknames.In 1997, Reggie Jackson hit three home runs in a single World Series game. He was a star on the field, and now he’s a star in the documentary “Reggie.”Prime VideoStar athletes in America are often expected to have brash personalities. This delights or alienates fans to different degrees, and for different reasons. A star athlete with a brash personality who also happens to be Black is apt to infuriate a large and vociferous corner of fandom.The baseball great, Reggie Jackson, who distinguished himself on several teams but was especially critical to the success of the New York’s Yankees in the late 1970s, was certainly a case in point. In 1976, George Steinbrenner, the Yankees owner at the time, paid $3.5 million — back in the day, that was a lot of money — to acquire Jackson. The right fielder, because of his frankness, immediately made himself unpopular. “The reason you’re uncomfortable with me is because I’m the truth,” Jackson says in a contemporary interview conducted for this documentary, directed with measured assurance by Alexandria Stapleton. While that’s a statement some would take issue with, this movie is about Jackson’s truth, which, as it happens, is about a lot more than himself.Hence “Reggie,” taking its cue from Jackson himself, considers the famed athlete’s career in a manner more reflective than splashy. Yes, there is a bit at the beginning when Jackson shows off his fleet of well-kept vintage cars in a bright shiny row of garages at his home in Monterey. But soon Jackson gets real in a more meaningful way.He himself interviews several key figures in his life. The first is the home run legend, Hank Aaron, who died in 2021. The pair talk about racism, the civil rights movement and the way baseball fans took umbrage when a Black player caught up with the stats established by a white player in the past. “I never in my life thought about Babe Ruth,” Aaron, a quiet man, says, raising his voice ever so slightly.Later, talking about a stereotypical perception of Black athletes, Jackson says, “They’re not angry. They’re hurt. They’re disappointed. They’re searching for dignity.”And while the viewer might expect the film’s tone, and Jackson’s demeanor, to quieten as the narrative winds down into the present day, it does not. As a young player, Jackson stood on the field of the 1972 World Series and heard Jackie Robinson, who broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball, say, “I am extremely proud and pleased to be here this afternoon, but must admit that I am going to be tremendously more pleased and more proud when I look at that third-base coaching line one day and see a Black face managing in baseball.” Once he stopped playing, Jackson fervently tried to make Robinson’s vision a reality, attempting to buy first the Oakland As, then the Dodgers. His bids did not succeed. “I wasn’t a good fit,” he says indignantly, almost spitting out the words.Even as this movie goes deep on still vital topics, it doesn’t skimp on baseball dish. Jackson recalls that his laudatory nickname, Mr. October, was actually coined contemptuously by his teammate, the beloved Yankee captain Thurman Munson, with whom Jackson had an uneasy relationship. And the detailed accounts of his greatest hits — like when he hit three home runs in a single game in the 1977 World Series — are exhilarating.ReggieRated PG-13 for strong language including racial slurs. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. Watch on Amazon Prime Video. More

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      How Mr. Baseball Became a Go-To for Players Headed to Japan

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      Sure as leaves flutter to the ground and turkey gobbles fill the air, a fall baseball tradition, too, is about to be renewed.The twelve teams of Nippon Professional Baseball have begun their annual courting of foreign talent to play in Japan next season. Many who accept offers will surely prepare for the experience the same way those before them have for 30 years, by watching “Mr. Baseball.”The comedy stars Tom Selleck as Jack Elliot, a former superstar for the Yankees who is struggling to recapture his greatness. He is called into his manager’s office and told they shopped him around but there was only one taker, the Chunichi Dragons in Japan.“I’m a Major Leaguer,” Elliot declares. “There’s no way I’m going to play in Japan.”He does and thus begins his journey into a peculiar new world, where shoes are not permitted in the clubhouse, toilet seats are too small for him and sluggers are sometimes expected to bunt, all of which, according to an unscientific poll of foreigners who played there recently, is still true today.The film was released to limited success thirty years ago this fall, but it has evolved into a go-to resource for players wanting to know what they are getting themselves into.While the image of a washed-up player being jettisoned to Japan does not match up well with the realities of foreign players in Japan — Miles Mikolas, Ryan Brasier and Colby Lewis are among recent examples of young players who went to Japan and returned to American baseball with success — the portrayal of a world that seems topsy-turvy at first glance to Selleck’s Elliot is right on according to those who watched the movie to prepare for their journey.“Absolutely,” said Nick Martinez, a relief pitcher who spent multiple seasons in Japan before signing with the San Diego Padres this season and playing a starring role in the bullpen that led San Diego to the National League Championship Series.In one scene from “Mr. Baseball,” Selleck’s character questions the value of a conditioning drill he has never seen in which players squat low and try to advance across the field by kicking their legs out.“What’s this?” he asks Hammer, his team’s veteran suketto, or foreign player, played by Dennis Haysbert. When told it was a common drill, he retorts, “For what, a Russian dance contest?”Nick Martinez spent four seasons in Japan before returning to the majors as a top bullpen arm for the San Diego Padres.Baseball MagazineMartinez confessed similar doubt before reaching acceptance in the way things were done there.“They had some really unique transfer-of-balance drills where you use a bar or a stick across your shoulders and you shuffle side to side and land on one leg, putting your glute in kind of a power position,” Martinez recalled. “When you first do it, it looks really silly, so you’re kind of doing it half-ass because it just seems like eyewash. But when you take the time to learn it and get into a groove doing it, you’re like, ‘Man, I can feel my glute.’ It makes you more aware of your balance and where your power is coming from. It’s pretty cool.”Rex Hudler is most likely the first player who was able to use the film as a resource. He signed with the Yakult Swallows following the 1992 season, just after the movie was released. His introduction to it was as the in-flight entertainment on the plane taking him to Tokyo to become a real-life version of Jack Elliot.“I used it as a reference big time,” Hudler said. “Nobody else on the plane was going over there to play Japanese baseball, so they were all laughing. I was guarded and soaking it all in like a sponge.”In eight major league seasons to that point, Hudler had played for the Hall of Fame managers Yogi Berra, Earl Weaver, Whitey Herzog and Joe Torre. That did little to prepare him for Katsuya Nomura, his manager in Japan and a Hall of Fame catcher notorious for his biting frankness and distrust of foreign players.Hudler recalled being astonished when Nomura would dispatch the interpreter to the on-deck circle with ill-timed reminders about hitting. Hudler relied on just the kind of ingenuity and diplomacy necessary for face-saving survival in Japan.“I said to the interpreter, ‘Hey, look, I’m a little offended by this right here,’” Hudler said. “‘I’m a professional baseball player, I have been for 15 years, so next time he sends you out here, don’t you dare tell me what he says. Just say, ‘Hey, Hud, get a big hit. He’ll never know what you told me.’ From then on, whenever he’d come out, that’s what he would say and everyone was satisfied.”Hudler survived some early struggles, batted .300, and helped the Swallows to their first championship in 15 years. Suketto are expected to hit home runs, however, and his 14 were not enough. He was not re-signed. Even so, he says he cherishes his time in Japan and considers it one of the best experiences of his life.Baseball Magazine‘I used it as a reference big time.’Rex Hudler, who watched the movie on his flight to Japan before joining the Yakult Swallows for the 1993 season.Amusingly, the featured film on the return flight to the United States was, once again, “Mr. Baseball.”“The second time, I laughed my ass off,” Hudler said. “I was like, Oh my gosh, this is so close to what I experienced, a little fabricated but close. Instead of being guarded, now I had just lived it, and I totally got it. It’s my favorite baseball movie.”That sentiment is a tribute to Leon Lee, whose name appears twice in the film’s credits: as an actor portraying a suketto from another team and, more significantly, as the film’s baseball adviser. Lee played 10 seasons for three teams in a Japan career that ended in 1987. His 1,436 hits are fourth all-time among foreigners in N.P.B.Lee fought for authenticity in the film’s baseball scenes. He argued with the Australian director Fred Schepisi that baseball fans would not believe a runner on first could score on a line drive up the middle or the trajectory of a batted ball discernible as a pop up could be edited as a wall clearing home run. The scenes were reshot and in the latter case, Selleck actually hit one out that made the final cut. Lee earned the trust of Selleck, a noted Detroit Tigers fan, who valued such authenticity.That allowed Lee to make perhaps his greatest contribution, and the one that likely has resonated most with players using the film as a resource to prepare for their own journey. When Selleck and Haysbert would ask for character perspective, Lee consciously dispensed it with a feeling of appreciation and fulfillment from his time in Japan.“Mr. Baseball” is not based on one real-life player’s career. However, it certainly is influenced by Lee’s experiences, which were rewarding and positive despite moments that proved befuddling, like when he was released by the Taiyo Whales after a typically productive season of 31 home runs, 110 runs batted in, and a .303 batting average. According to Lee, the team believed he had not been clutch.Epoch‘I was not going to be a part of something that made fun of the Japanese game.’Leon Lee, a veteran of Japanese baseball who served as a consultant on the film. “I was not going to be a part of something that made fun of the Japanese game,” Lee said of the film. “I played 10 years there, and I wasn’t going to belittle it. For Americans going over there, it’s easy to let your ego get in the way and say, ‘Why am I doing this? Why am I doing that?’ But when you get back home, you realize you actually became a better ballplayer. The Japanese also really emphasize teamwork. Any human being from any part of the world is going to find real joy in the camaraderie that comes from being part of a team in Japan.”At the end of the film, it is Haysbert’s Hammer who gets an offer to return to American baseball while Selleck’s Elliot is happy to stay.Lee thinks he understands why even after thirty years, “Mr. Baseball” remains a resource for players going to Japan.“Sure, Japan’s different, but different is not always bad,” Lee said. “If you get anything out of the movie, you see that Jack Elliot makes an adjustment and you realize you, too, can adapt and adjust to a different culture.”

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      in Television

      How John DeMarsico Made SNY’s Broadcasts Go Viral

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      SNY already had some of the best announcers in baseball. John DeMarsico, the network’s director, has made every game feel like a trip to the movies.On a sticky August evening at Citi Field, toward the end of a crucial Mets victory against division rival Atlanta, closer Edwin Díaz threw his last warm-up pitch and began his long, familiar journey from the right field bullpen to the mound for the top of the ninth inning. But something unusual happened: The television broadcast did not cut to a commercial.Instead, the camera trailed behind Díaz as he walked through the bullpen door, broke into a jog and traversed the outfield grass. The trumpets of “Narco,” Díaz’s beloved entrance song, were fed from the stadium public address system directly into the broadcast, making fans at home feel like they were watching it all happen in person. Or maybe that they were in a bullfighting arena in Spain. Regardless, there were chills.The broadcasting flourish was designed and executed by John DeMarsico, 35, the game director for SNY, the Mets’ regional sports network.“We’d covered him coming in before, but we never blew off a commercial break to show the whole thing,” DeMarsico said. “And we’d never sent the camera crew down there to do the dramatic, from-behind shot. I had it in my back pocket all year, and I was waiting for the right game to do it.”That same game had featured Jacob deGrom’s return to Citi Field after more than a year lost to serious arm and shoulder injuries. DeMarsico gave deGrom, the Mets’ co-ace, his own star moment, skipping an ad break to show his first-inning warm-up pitches. That time, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Simple Man” piped into the broadcast.John DeMarsico has created several viral moments this season with directorial choices during Mets broadcasts on SNY.Michelle Farsi for The New York TimesIn both cases, the embellishments had been discussed earlier in the season but were decided upon in the moment, with DeMarsico feeling the mood in the stadium and improvising a cinematic response.Regional sports networks take their share of abuse, with complaints of streaming blackouts from fans and Major League Baseball’s frequent attempts to build its audience through other alternatives, be it Apple TV+; NBC’s Peacock streaming service; or other platforms. But in a medium that seems antiquated to some, SNY’s theme all year has been innovation.In this case, the network is building on what was already a strength. The chemistry of the network’s broadcast team — the play-by-play announcer Gary Cohen and the analysts Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez — has long made SNY destination viewing, even when the team on the field sometimes didn’t command that level of attention.“The team has always been experimental,” said Darling, who, along with Cohen and Hernandez, has held court over broadcasts full of goofy tangents, movie recommendations, and inside jokes that have been going since 2006. Darling sees their interactions as a sign of respect for the viewer. “I think there’s a fear with some broadcasts that don’t trust their fan base to be intelligent enough to see something different. A lot of broadcast teams are fearful of alienating their core fans who will criticize anything outside of the ordinary, especially when criticism in today’s world is so instantaneous.”Keith Hernandez, Ron Darling and Gary Cohen keep things casual in the booth with guests like the comedian Jerry Seinfeld.Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images For NetflixAs the comedian Jerry Seinfeld said on one of his many trips to the booth, “It’s a TV show, it’s not just a game.”DeMarsico, with the producer Gregg Picker’s support, has quietly been helping the visuals of their broadcasts catch up to the quality and innovation of the narration. And like a crafty reliever, he has done it with a formidable bag of tricks.He uses unusual camera angles, forgoing the typical center-field shot at crucial moments, instead filming the action from behind the right-fielder or near the visitor’s on-deck circle.He employs split-screens to highlight confrontations between pitcher and batter. In a tense at-bat between Díaz and Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Christian Yelich earlier this season, DeMarsico began the shot with Díaz’s face in the left side of the frame. He then faded in Yelich’s face on the right side, gradually having Díaz disappear. Fans had a chance to truly see the pitcher and the batter staring each other down.DeMarsico understood that Jacob deGrom’s return was something special. Capturing his warm-ups was turned into art.Michelle Farsi for The New York TimesThese techniques are attempts to tease out the drama that already exists in the game but had previously been difficult to visualize.“Baseball is inherently cinematic, more so than other sports,” DeMarsico said. “In football and basketball, there’s so much speed. In baseball, there is no clock. The geography of the field is very structured. You’re able to set the scene, and establish the confrontations between batter and pitcher like a duel in a western.”After decades of baseball games looking nearly identical from network to network, these shots can feel bracingly original.For DeMarsico, it is a natural collision of his two passions: baseball and film. Before beginning his SNY career with an internship in 2009, he studied film at North Carolina State University. Conversations about his work are peppered with the names of directors, both famous and obscure. He models his methods of creating suspense on the work of Brian De Palma, and cites Martin Scorsese’s famous tracking shot at the Copacabana in “Goodfellas” as his inspiration for the Díaz bullpen moment. He also cites Nicolas Winding Refn — the Díaz-Yelich moment was inspired by Refn’s 2009 Viking epic “Valhalla Rising” — and Sergio Corbucci, who directed some of the most violent spaghetti westerns.While the concepts of SNY’s viral moments were discussed in advance, they were deployed in the moment by DeMarsico. Michelle Farsi for The New York TimesIn Saturday night’s win over the Philadelphia Phillies, DeMarsico repeated the Díaz bullpen shot, but this time began it in black and white, and then moved to color when the pitcher stepped onto the field, a clear nod to “The Wizard of Oz.”Then there’s Quentin Tarantino, who influenced perhaps the most lighthearted of DeMarsico’s innovations: the “Kill Bill” filter. The Mets lead the majors in hit batsmen this year, and Showalter’s escalating irritation has been a running joke among Mets fans. The broadcast team ran with it, using the same effect employed by Tarantino in the “Kill Bill” films whenever their protagonist’s thirst for vengeance is triggered: a red tint, a sound known as the “Ironside Siren,” and a double exposure of her face and a memory of the traumatic event.DeMarsico used the sound and color a few times, but knew something was still missing. So he had his crew put together a montage of the most egregious hit-by-pitches this year and overlaid it on Showalter’s face, implying that the manager was reexperiencing a season’s worth of insults each time a Met got plunked.Some baseball purists might object to such shenanigans, but it is certainly drawing attention to the network. The clip of Díaz’s entrance went viral and has now been viewed on Twitter more than 8 million times.How games are shot for regional sports networks has rarely been a hot topic. That has changed with SNY this season.Michelle Farsi for The New York TimesFor a sport that has long battled traditionalism in its effort to attract younger fans, these innovations may come across as avant-garde. But they could also give something of a road map for how baseball could modernize its other broadcasts — a process that began almost immediately when Apple TV+ recreated the Díaz entrance, nearly shot for shot, in its presentation of a Mets game.But with the Mets on pace for more than 100 wins this regular season, and DeMarsico at the helm of their broadcasts, a little competition is nothing to worry about. “I still have a few tricks up my sleeve,” he said.That type of confidence could explain why the SNY production team has been given such wide leeway to experiment, even sacrificing some advertising dollars along the way to do it.“It’s not something we want to do a lot because the commercials obviously pay the bills,” DeMarsico said of the times they stayed with the action on the field. “But there’s a trust factor with SNY. We pick our spots and choose wisely, and as long as it doesn’t become an everyday thing, we can do things like that and make moments that are special for the folks at home.”He grinned and added: “Maybe 8 million views is worth a commercial break.”The Mets are on pace for more than 100 wins this season. DeMarsico still has some tricks up his sleeve for the stretch run.Michelle Farsi for The New York Times More

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      in Movies

      Nolan Ryan Had a Softer Side. He Just Hid It (Very) Well.

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      A new documentary explores the unique challenge of facing Ryan, the game’s most prolific strikeout artist, but also shows off a gentler version of the Ryan Express.Like the Beatles did shortly before him, Nolan Ryan performed at Shea Stadium and sang on the Ed Sullivan Show.The former is a well-known and well-told part of Ryan’s life, the early days of a Hall of Fame career that eventually launched the Ryan Express as if by rocket fuel. The latter, when he and the entire 1969 Mets World Series-winning roster sang “You Gotta Have Heart” to a national television audience, is less known and one of the many surprising parts of a new documentary, “Facing Nolan,” that surely will elicit smiles.“I thought that was the worst suit I’ve ever seen,” Reid Ryan, the oldest of Nolan and Ruth’s three children and an executive producer of the film, said. Reid laughed and added: “I’m not sure the mustard suit was ever in. I know he can’t sing, but that was funny.”Nolan Ryan said that though it might look as if he and his teammates were lip-syncing, they really were singing.“We were all plenty excited about being on that show and the honor it was to be on it,” Ryan said during a recent telephone conversation. “But the highlight of the evening for me was that Eddy Arnold was there. I was a big Eddy Arnold fan, and that made the night special.”What is both charming and disarming about the film, which began streaming on multiple services this week, is the surprising humility shown by Ryan. A Hall of Fame pitcher that still owns 51 major-league records — according to the film’s count — Ryan has a legend that easily fills his native Texas, but to some of his on-screen co-stars he is simply grandpa, who tells corny jokes and who, yes, cannot sing. And he loves it.The high praise for Ryan comes in interviews with his fellow Hall of Famers. George Brett, Rod Carew and Dave Winfield are among those who offer keen insight into the challenge that is described in the film’s title. Pete Rose, too. Upon being reminded that Ryan finished second to Baltimore’s Jim Palmer in the 1973 American League Cy Young Award voting after a record-setting 383 strikeouts — of course, Ryan also led the league that year with 162 walks — Carew reacts as if hearing it for the first time.“You’ve got to be kidding!” Carew exclaims when told Ryan never did win a Cy Young.Says Brett: “Nolan never won a Cy Young Award? I thought he won three, four, five.” More

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      in Music

      Blue Jays Manager Charlie Montoyo Moonlights at Salsa Clubs

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      The salsa band was 45 minutes into their first set at Lula Lounge on a recent Saturday when Charlie Montoyo showed up at the front door. An owner of the music club spotted Montoyo and led him and his group to a table reserved for them closest to the stage.Montoyo, 56, took off his jacket and waved to the band members he knew. Moments later, Montoyo, the manager of the Toronto Blue Jays — one of the top teams in Major League Baseball — was up there with the band and was handed a güiro, a staple of Latin American music. A smile remained on his face for the next two and a half hours.“Tonight, we’re accompanied by our great manager of the Blue Jays,” Luis Franco, the lead singer of his self-titled band, told the audience in Spanglish. He signaled for Montoyo to join him at the front of the stage and continued, “This guy is doing an impeccable job with our team. A round of applause, please.”Montoyo stepped forward, embraced Franco, smiled and waved to the crowd. But he quickly returned to his preferred position: with the band members, among the instruments.Montoyo, in white shirt, played the güiro with the Luis Franco Worldwide Salsa band on a recent night in Toronto.Brendan Ko for The New York TimesBaseball may be the driving force of Montoyo’s life, but music has been the underlying beat. His stadium office is cluttered with bongos, congas, timbales, maracas and records. He plays salsa music to relax before games. And sometimes, he spends weekends during the season accompanying bands in night clubs with a güiro, an instrument which produces sound by rubbing a stick against a notched hollow gourd.“Charlie jumping onstage has been a thing our whole relationship,” Montoyo’s wife, Sam, said in a recent phone interview. “I remember looking up during our wedding after talking to people, and he’s onstage with the band.”On the field, the Blue Jays are a diverse and vibrant bunch. After a player homers, his teammates rush to get him a blue jacket, which features the names of the many countries represented on the team, from Canada to the Dominican Republic to Cuba to South Korea.Montoyo is from Puerto Rico and his vibrant team celebrates home runs with a jacket that honors the countries where players on the roster were born.John E. Sokolowski/USA Today Sports, via ReutersMontoyo is their boisterous leader, though it took him a long time to reach this point. After 18 highly successful years of managing in the minors for the Tampa Bay Rays and four years of coaching in the majors, he finally got his chance to manage Toronto in 2019.The 2022 M.L.B. Season“Relax, all right? Don’t try to strike everybody out. Strikeouts are boring! Besides that, they’re fascist. Throw some ground balls, it’s more democratic.”An Ace Seeks a New Title: Dave Stewart has been a star player, a coach, an agent and an executive. To truly change baseball, he wants to own a team.Look Good, Feel Good, Play Good. Smell Good?: For numerous players, a heavy dose of cologne or women’s perfume is the unlikeliest of performance enhancers.The Third Baseman’s Gambit: Manny Machado is the hottest hitter in baseball, and he is coming for your Queen.King of Throws: Tom House has spent his life helping superstars get even better. With a new app he wants to fix young pitchers before they develop bad habits.He took over a promising but rebuilt roster and guided it to the playoffs in 2020. The Blue Jays fell one win shy of another postseason appearance last season but entered 2022 as a popular preseason World Series pick. Through Wednesday, they were 33-23.Every step of the way for Montoyo, the soundtrack has been salsa.“He’s been phenomenal,” Blue Jays General Manager Ross Atkins said of Montoyo. “His experiences have always been attractive to me, personally. His minor league experiences, his playing experiences, his cultural experiences. He’s been exactly what we had hoped for in hiring him and then some.”From the small town of Florida, Puerto Rico, Montoyo was raised around salsa and baseball. After a four-game call-up with the Montreal Expos in 1993 and 1,028 games in the minors, Montoyo retired and began his coaching career.“I always wanted to be a baseball player,” he said sitting in his office at the Rogers Centre in Toronto. “I never thought I’d be a musician. But little by little, I played more. And I love salsa. But now, yes, I’d love to be a musician.”Unlike his brothers, Montoyo never took music classes or joined the school band. Growing up, he learned music organically. At parrandas, a Puerto Rican tradition that is like Christmas caroling at night, he helped play the maracas, güiro or tambourine as they went door to door. At gatherings on the beach, he watched others play the congas and picked it up himself.Montoyo has a large collection of instruments at his permanent residence in Tucson, Ariz., and at his office at the Rogers Centre, which is also a shrine in equal parts to Puerto Rico and salsa. His wife surprised him with an autographed painting of his favorite musician, Herman Olivera, and a new set of congas for the office after he was hired by Toronto.Montoyo’s love of music has led to him keeping records on hand to play along with in his office.Brendan Ko for The New York TimesThe office is like a shrine both to Puerto Rico and to salsa music in general.Brendan Ko for The New York TimesMontoyo said meeting or getting to know some of his musical heroes — such as Roberto Roena, Oscar Hernández, Eddie Palmieri and Olivera — has meant more to him than meeting many famous baseball players.During spring training in 2019, Montoyo hosted an impromptu performance in his office in Dunedin, Fla., with the singer Marc Anthony, whose entertainment company has a baseball agency that represents the Blue Jays star first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Anthony sang “Aguanile,” the salsa classic by Willie Colón and Héctor Lavoe, while Montoyo handled the bongos. Other members of the Blue Jays coaching staff from Puerto Rico joined in.(The night of Montoyo’s recent visit to Lula Lounge, he texted Anthony a video of his performance. “Wow,” Anthony wrote back. “What swing, papito. I love it. Made my day.”)Montoyo holds jam sessions often. He once invited a few musicians from the club to his office, and they played until 4 a.m. But most of the time, Montoyo is by himself, cuing up music videos on the TV hours before a game and playing along.“We’re in a competitive sport, and the position he’s in comes with a lot of pressure and attention from the moment he walks in the clubhouse,” said Hector Lebron, 44, an interpreter for the Blue Jays who played for Montoyo as a Tampa Bay minor leaguer. “He uses the music to relax a little bit and to think.”Montoyo first played at Lula Lounge in 2019. During pregame batting practice in May, he met some of the musicians from the club who had heard about his musical ability through mutual friends. In their conversation, Luis “Luisito” Orbegoso, a well-known local artist, said he could tell Montoyo knew what he was talking about and invited him to the club that night. Montoyo came and played, and that started their friendship.Brought on stage at Lula Lounge, Montoyo was handed a güiro and asked to play along with the band. Brendan Ko for The New York Times“Whenever he’s in Toronto, he calls me to ask, ‘When are we going to play? When are we going to rumbear?’” said Orbegoso, 51, who was born in Peru and moved to Canada when he was 12. “Including in the winter, the off-season, he contacts me and sends me videos. We’re pure salsa.”Lula Lounge was among the things Montoyo missed most about Toronto from 2020 to 2021, when Canada’s pandemic border restrictions forced the Blue Jays to play a majority of their home games in Buffalo and their spring-training facility in Florida.“He’s got a home here,” said Jose Ortega, a co-owner of Lula Lounge who began hosting salsa dance lessons at his apartment in Toronto in 2000 before that grew after two years into the permanent restaurant and club that he co-owns with Jose Nieves. “We see him as almost another band member.”Montoyo has played at Lula Lounge six times in all, including twice this season after Saturday afternoon home games. He often goes with team officials or coaches and has brought his wife when she was visiting from Arizona, where she stays during the school year with their youngest son. Montoyo was tired the day of his most recent visit — the Blue Jays were in the middle of a stretch of 20 straight days of games — but the club is his escape.“If Sam knows it’s Saturday and we lost a tough game and I’m at the apartment alone, she tells me to go there and enjoy,” Montoyo said.Montoyo stayed on stage until just after midnight, leaving only because his baseball team had a game later that day.Brendan Ko for The New York TimesSo after the Blue Jays beat the Houston Astros — a game from which Montoyo was ejected in the fifth inning for arguing a called third strike to Guerrero — he was at Lula Lounge with the Luis Franco Worldwide Salsa band.“We call it swing,” said Alex Naar, 42, a percussionist for the band who lent Montoyo a güiro and guided him through the more modern arrangements. “He has a natural swing for the music. He feels it in his heart. He has the rhythm.”After the first set, Montoyo posed for photos with a few fans. As a D.J. played salsa and reggaeton classics, Montoyo darted up to the empty stage to play congas along with the song. And when the band returned for their second set, he rejoined them.“Baseball is very Caribbean,” said Ortega, who was born in Ecuador and raised in New York. “It’s Puerto Rican, it’s Dominican, Venezuelan, and the whole rhythm and style and panache that Latinos bring to the game. That vibe, it kind of goes together. So to me, when Charlie was there, I thought, ‘Wow, this is a funny, perfect marriage of all of those things.’”In all aspects of his life, Montoyo has tried to represent his island, from the field to the stage.“It’s hard to reach this level,” he said of his job. “I sincerely never expected to reach it after so many years. That’s why I have the Puerto Rican flag on my glove, everywhere. I’m proud of where I’m from and the music.”Not long after midnight, with a few songs left in the second set of his recent visit to Lula Lounge, Montoyo was done. He handed the güiro back to Naar, gave him a hug and said his goodbyes. He didn’t want to leave but the Blue Jays had a 1 p.m. game. He grabbed his jacket and left with the team employees who had come along. He will be back. More

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      in Movies

      Willie Mays Aikens Has His Story Told in ‘The Royal’

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      A film tells the true story of Willie Aikens, a World Series star for the Kansas City Royals whose life was derailed by drugs — and prison — before he pieced it back together.COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — The greatest player in the history of the Kansas City Royals slammed his palm onto a conference table at the Baseball Hall of Fame last Friday. George Brett was pretending to be an F.B.I. agent showing off his badge.Just like that, you were not in Cooperstown. N.Y., anymore. You were somewhere with the Royals in the early 1980s, and you might be in serious trouble.“He brings my name up, he brings Jamie Quirk’s name up — and he brings your name up,” Brett said, pointing to his old teammate, Willie Mays Aikens, across the table.“And he brings Vida Blue’s name up, and Jerry Martin’s name up and Willie Wilson’s name up. And he says, ‘You know, we had a meeting earlier about calling up bookies and betting games. Let’s just say George and Jamie are calling some guy we got a wiretap on …’”Brett was shaken and quickly understood: He stopped betting on football games. But the F.B.I. did not care much about him and Quirk. Investigators were trying to signal the others that they were onto their cocaine use.“If we had stopped right then and there, we’d have never had a drug case,” Aikens said. “They tried to warn us, man.”“And you kept doing it,” Brett said.“And we kept doing it,” Aikens replied.Aikens kept doing it for a decade. Like Blue, Martin and Wilson, he served a short prison term after the 1983 season, but that was hardly the worst of it. That is not why Samuel Goldwyn Films has turned Aikens’s life story into a movie, “The Royal,” scheduled for release on July 15. It will be available for streaming and in limited theaters, and it had a premiere last Friday at the Hall of Fame.For Aikens, 67, it was his first trip to Cooperstown, where Brett is enshrined for a career that ended with 3,154 hits in 1993. By then Aikens was deep into his cocaine addiction, which came to consume him during a six-year career in Mexico after eight seasons in the majors as a slugging first baseman with the California Angels, the Royals and the Toronto Blue Jays through 1985.In 1994 he was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for selling 2.2 ounces of crack cocaine, on four occasions, to an undercover female officer. Aikens has said he was interested in the woman and complied when she asked him to cook the cocaine into crack.The 2022 M.L.B. Season“Relax, all right? Don’t try to strike everybody out. Strikeouts are boring! Besides that, they’re fascist. Throw some ground balls, it’s more democratic.”Look Good, Feel Good, Play Good. Smell Good?: For numerous players, a heavy dose of cologne or women’s perfume is the unlikeliest of performance enhancers.The Third Baseman’s Gambit: Manny Machado is the hottest hitter in baseball, and he is coming for your Queen.The Loneliest Team in Baseball: The Oakland Athletics gutted their roster and flirted with Las Vegas. Now their fans appear to be in full revolt.King of Throws: Tom House has spent his life helping superstars get even better. With a new app he wants to fix young pitchers before they develop bad habits.That decision made Aikens — the first player with two multihomer games in the same World Series, in 1980, when the Royals lost to Philadelphia — a public face of the gross disparity in sentencing for crack cocaine and powder cocaine offenders. A 1986 federal law punished people far more severely for crack; it took until 2010 for Congress to reduce the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine from 100 to 1 to 18 to 1.Aikens was incarcerated for 14 years, and has now been out of prison as long as he was in. “The Royal” mostly chronicles his transition back to society — reconciling with his wife and family, becoming a father again, working on a road crew digging manholes and, with Brett’s help, securing a job as a minor league coach for the Royals.“How many people in this world go through their life on earth and get a movie?” said Aikens, who now serves as a special assistant to the Royals as part of their leadership development team. “Not many people. I’m hoping that the movie will help save some lives.”Aikens is being portrayed in “The Royal” by Amin Joseph, an actor known for his work on the FX series “Snowfall.”The actor Amin Joseph, who plays a crack dealer in the FX series “Snowfall,” portrays Aikens. Joseph, 42, grew up in Harlem and said he remembers crack vials strewn on playgrounds. He was drawn to playing a different kind of figure impacted by drugs.“There are real people in our communities that are dealing with this and still healing, and like Willie often says, not all of them were major league baseball players with the luxury of having friends in powerful places to give them a second chance,” Joseph said. “A lot of these people are lost, forgotten, the underbelly of what we consider society, the people that we judge.”Aikens’s background gave him a pathway to return to baseball, but it was not always smooth. He first had to confront his past and show that he could share his experiences.Aikens was something of an unlikely public speaker, having dealt with a stutter for much of his life. Brett had first encouraged him to tell his story for the athletes at Brett’s son’s high school, a scene loosely depicted in the film. It became a revelation.“When I picked him up at the halfway house and I heard him talk, I had tears in my eyes. I really did,” Brett said. “I was so proud of him.”Phylicia Rashad and Willie Mays Aikens discussed “The Royal” at a screening in Washington, D.C. last week. Brian Stukes/Getty ImagesAikens — who testified before Congress in 2009, urging sentencing reform for drug offenders — has told his story many times since, to Royals prospects and to students at the team’s Urban Youth Academy. The message has stayed all too relevant in baseball; while cocaine was a scourge of the 1980s, the death of Angels pitcher Tyler Skaggs, in 2019, revealed the toll of the opioid epidemic on the sport.Four Angels teammates revealed in court this year that they, like Skaggs, had received oxycodone pills from Eric Kay, a former Angels communications director who was found guilty on two charges for his role in the death of Skaggs. Prosecutors argued that Skaggs had died from a pill or pills he received from Kay that were disguised to look like oxycodone but were actually fentanyl, a far stronger opioid.“This drug that they have right now, it’s mixed in with Oxycodone and drugs like that, and it’s a blind killer,” Aikens said, referring to fentanyl. “When I was using drugs, you could sit there for hours or days and just snort or smoke cocaine. But with this drug now, fentanyl, you can take this one pill and it can just knock it out. It doesn’t even give you a chance.”Almost in spite of himself, Aikens survived to get another chance. Now he has taken his story to a theater in Cooperstown — and, soon, far beyond. More