Built in 1910, it's currently America's oldest ballpark...though it ceased to be the home stadium of the Birmingham Barons in 1987. They still play there once a year and some high schools use it too. They still used chalk lineup boards even when I was a kid. That place had some serious charm and they traded it in for a run of the mill cookie cutter park.
In the end, I just gave up. I could not go on. And it is very disappointing. The movie was very good, and the story compelling (more so that it was based on her childhood). So, I am now reading:
I'm reading A novel of bridge building and gin distilling in late 18th/early 19th century Brooklyn, or Brookland, or Breuklen. I'm about 100 pages in and it's quite good at describing the landscape and society of revolutionary America as well as the isolation of Brooklyn pre-bridges. Plus, I think I can now make bathtub gin.
It was along the same lines of "Girl With a Pearl Earring" which isn't at all a bad thing, I don't think. So, yeah, I'd recommend it. I got the hardback on the remainder table at Barnes & Noble for $5.98, too so definitely got my moneys worth!
Darn nice looking ballyard. Though the park in my wife's home town claims that it, too is the oldest still in use, going back to 1908. Currently it's the home of a summer collegiate league team, and the Rhode Island Sunset League (a mens' amateur hardball league that's around 70 years old) http://newportgulls.com/Cardines.htm (both the dugouts are on the first base side, incidently. Anyway, just started this, by former New York Times correspondent Christopher Wren http://www.vtonly.com/walking_to_vt.jpg He started his retirement by walking from Times square to VT. He says that one of the most frightening things in his life was walking with a backpack through Westchester County. And he's a former war correspondant.
Re-reading All The King's Men, after that Kipling's Just So Stories for a class I need to teach to 8th graders on porquoi stories and eventually get them to write their own.
I'm about to start reading my wife's first draft of her her first ever novel, loosely based on her mother's family from the Outer Banks of NC.
Just finished 1831 by Louis Masur: Halfway through Freethinkers by Susan Jacoby: And just started INterpreter of Maladies by Jhumpra Lahiri: Plus, I also just finished "Straight Cut" by Madison Smartt Bell (see my last post) which, whatever you might think of the retro-pulp cover (I love it), was a great read.
actually i think it was filmed at Bush Stadium in Indianapolis, which was home to a minor league team. I can't remember the name. The movie was on ESPN Classic, and they had trivia and info running on the bottom and they said the movie was filmed in Indy at Bush Stadium!
This is a fantastic book. Avoid the HBO version like the plague, however. It was a huge disappointment despite what might have been, given the cast and director.
I thought the HBO version was OK. Certainly not a great movie, and not as good as the book, but not too bad. The DVD commentary with Russo and the director is one of my favorite commentaries ever, actually. Anyway, Currently reading (hmmmm, not a single image available on the web...) Of Walking In Ice by Werner Herzog. An account of the director's walk from Munich to Paris to visit a sick friend (Lotte Eisner). Not what I expected, most of it seems lifted straight from his notebooks with little attempt to establish a narrative, but still pretty interesting so far.
Really? I was pretty psyched for it and ended up feeling very let down, thinking they'd just treated Russo's novel as a formula rather than actually adapting it. They show it regularly on HBO, so maybe I'll give it another shot. Dunno if I'm up for renting the disks just for the commentary, but I am curious now about that too.
I got it {the DVD} from the public library. Maybe if I'd dropped a fee for it, I'd have a different reaction. Also, I may have gone into it entirely unpsyched after reading reviews in MTVM, I can't recall. I think we agree completely on the book, though. Damn fine novel, probably the best one I've read this century.
I thought 8 men out was filmed at Perry Stadium (re-named Victory Field (1942) & Owen J. Bush Stadium (8/30/67) in Indianapolis?
True, I guess I was thinking of Cobb, which has Birmingham as a filming location. I guess I just flaked on Eight Men Out. I remember big ads in the paper asking for extras at the ballpark. I stand corrrected.