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Mr. Baseball

Composed, Conducted, and Produced by:
Jerry Goldsmith
Orchestrated by:
Alexander Courage
Arthur Morton


Label:
Varèse Sarabande
Release Date:
October 13th, 1992


Also See:

Matinee
Dennis Menace
Mom and Dad Save the World


Audio Clips:

1. Mr. Baseball (0:30), 151K mr_baseball1.ra

6. Call Me Jack (0:32), 160K mr_baseball6.ra

8. The Bath (0:30), 151K mr_baseball8.ra

12. Swing Away (0:30), 150K mr_baseball12.ra



Availability:

  Regular U.S. release. Difficult to find in stores.


Awards:

  None.









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Mr. Baseball

Audio | Availability | Viewer Ratings | Tracks | Viewer Comments | Notes & Quotes
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  List Price: $15.98
  New Price: $14.98
  You Save: $1.00 ( 6%)

  Sales Rank: 324428

  Avg. Rating: 4.00

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Filmtracks Recommends:

Buy it... only if you can find the album for a reasonable price so that you can enjoy the ethnically beautiful love theme buried in the score.

Avoid it... if you have no urge to hear arguably Goldsmith's worst cues of the last twenty years, consisting of electric organ, a modern band, and catchy motif rip-offs.



Filmtracks Editorial Review:

Goldsmith
Mr. Baseball: (Jerry Goldsmith) Opening on the same day as The Mighty Ducks in October, 1992, Mr. Baseball caps off the real baseball season with yet another formula-based sports movie. Tom Selleck is convincing in his role as an aging slugger and first-baseman for the New York Yankees who womanizes, chew tobacco, and speaks before thinking, but basically has a good heart (and is apparently steroids-free, thank goodness). Witnessing his decline, the New York Yankees trade him to a Japanese team, the Nagoya Dragons, and the rather unsophisticated brute is forced to not only fix a hole in his swing, but become accustomed to (and appreciative of) an entirely new culture and language. Along the way, he falls in love with an endorsement rep for the team (a beautiful young Japanese woman), finally accepts the advice of his manager, and ultimately helps the team advance to a playoff confrontation with its archrival. The film did have a certain amount of charm and genuine comedy, although amid merely average reviews, the project quickly became a late-night television find. Composer Jerry Goldsmith had a long and varied collaboration with director Fred Schepisi in the 1990's, yielding one of the composer's greatest scores, The Russia House. Also among the lot were comedy and jazz-influenced works like Six Degrees of Separation, I.Q., and Fierce Creatures, none of which spectacular scores (in fact, the funky I.Q. is probably the best of them). Unfortunately, Mr. Baseball ranks near the bottom of the list when it comes to quality, simply because of Goldsmith's odd choice of style for the score. The film has two distinct parts: the titles and scenes in which the setting is the baseball diamond, and the character-building scenes of romance and culture adjustment. Goldsmith essentially has created two different scores for those two settings, setting himself up for a combined soundtrack that suffers from its worse half being a hugely fatal flaw.

The better half of the score merits some significant discussion because it is one of Goldsmith's rare ventures into cultural romance in the later stages of his career. The budding romance and cues of loneliness for the star player are scored with a love theme that exceeds many of Goldsmith's other delightful melodies of the early 90's in quality. As with other Fred Schepisi films, Goldsmith employs lazy jazz in the form of an electric bass and piano for some of this material, but fifteen minutes of pure beauty occupy the score with a small orchestral ensemble led by a James Horner standard, the Japanese sakauhachi flute. Goldsmith's use of the instrument is far more restrained, however, allowing Japanese culture to enter his orchestral work in subtle steps. Along with acoustic guitar and sometimes broad strokes of counterpoint, lengthier cues like "Call Me Jack/A Wise Brain" move at the pace of a John Barry romance piece. Unfortunately for listeners, this evocative music is shattered in many places by the heinous choice of sounds Goldsmith creates for the baseball sequences. His begins with the six-note "charge" motif used in ballparks all around the world and writes a catchy interpretation of the "Baby Elephant Walk" at spirited rhythms that we'd hear in I.Q. the next year. The six-note baseball motif would be very creatively interpreted throughout the score --even by the native flute-- but it's the choice of instrumentation for the baseball rhythms that ruin this score. An electric pipe organ, electric guitar, modern percussion, clapping sounds and other frightful samples, all existing in the extremely irritating context of the baseball motif and "Baby Elephant Walk" rhythm are beyond most tolerance levels, and they cheapen this score considerably. The frustrating part of this choice of instrumentation is that it is so consistently wretched throughout the entire score. Only in "Swing Away" does the orchestra and band strike a seemingly happy balance. Perhaps the problem with these cues is the rip-off of themes, or maybe it's simply the horrid electric organ. But Goldsmith rarely wrote music this insufferable in the later stages of his career, and along with an equally treacherous Fairchild-performed song, "Shabondama Boogie," at the end, the beautiful cues in the middle are woefully buried. **

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   Viewer Ratings and Comments:

    Regular Average: 2.89 Stars
    Smart Average: 2.89 Stars
    *
    ***** 28 
    **** 25 
    *** 40 
    ** 35 
    * 31 
    (View results for all titles)
        * Smart Average only includes
             40% of 5-star and 1-star votes
                  to counterbalance fringe voting.
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   Track Listings:
Total Time: 32:42

    • 1. Mr. Baseball (2:33)
    • 2. First Night Out (1:54)
    • 3. Acceptance (1:54)
    • 4. New Apartment (0:45)
    • 5. The Dragons (1:04)
    • 6. Call Me Jack/A Wise Brain (2:45)
    • 7. Winning Streak/The Locker Room (1:06)
    • 8. The Bath (3:07)
    • 9. Training (2:31)
    • 10. Go Get 'Em/He's Still Got It (1:25)
    • 11. Team Effort (2:50)
    • 12. Swing Away (1:46)
    • 13. Final Score (5:04)
    • 14. Shabondama Boogie - performed by Fairchild (4:23)




   Notes and Quotes:

    Insert includes no extra information about the score or film.







All artwork and sound clips from Mr. Baseball are Copyright © 1992, Varèse Sarabande. The reviews and notes contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Filmtracks Publications. Audio clips can be heard using RealPlayer but cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 6/25/98, updated 3/10/05. Review Version 4.2 - PHP (Filmtracks Publications). Copyright © 1998-2008, Christian Clemmensen. All rights reserved.