The 1980s and early ’90s may have been the glory years of baseball as portrayed/immortalized on the big screen. A genre that hadn’t been taken very seriously, or more to the point had been depicted haphazardly in the era before Technicolor, all of a sudden had become popular fodder for the imagination industry. There were “ The Natural,” “Bull Durham,” “Field of Dreams,” “Eight Men Out,” “Major League,” “ A League Of Their Own,” “The Sandlot” .

.. all the way up to “ Moneyball” and “ 42′′ in this century.

The game itself, with its dramatic confrontations between pitcher and hitter and enough time between pitches to properly digest the stakes, would seem to be the perfect vehicle to explore greater themes, some of them even rated PG. Were those movies that we saw in the cineplex really as good as we remember? Would they hold up to scrutiny all these years later? And did we in fact become spoiled by the idea that the real game is now in our living rooms every night? The TV techniques and camera angles not only take us onto the field and into the dugout but allow us to become unofficial umpiring critics (and most nights there’s a lot to criticize). Maybe there’s enough drama in real time – especially once we know more about the players off the field – to make the cinema version pale in comparison.

So a look back seems appropriate, as the genre appears to have dried up. Noah Gittell, film critic and baseball guy, did a deep dive in.