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The better half of Goldsmith's effort for Mr. Baseball merits some significant discussion because it is one of the composer'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 1990'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 purely innocent and engaging 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 the Japanese cultural element to enter his orchestral work in subtle steps. Along with acoustic guitar and occasional 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, the mood of 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 listeners would hear again in I.Q. the next year. The six-note baseball motif could have been very creatively interpreted throughout the score, even in the native flute passages, but it's the choice of instrumentation for the baseball rhythms that ruins 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 aspect of this tone is that it is so consistently wretched throughout the entire score, barely developing a narrative and almost never backed with the orchestral ensemble. 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 existing thematic constructs, or maybe it's simply the horrid electric organ. But Goldsmith rarely wrote music this insufferable in the latter stages of his career, and when also considering the equally treacherous Fairchild-performed song, "Shabondama Boogie," at the end of the very short album release, it's nearly impossible to recommend the product just for the woefully buried cues of romantic beauty hidden within.  **   @Amazon.com: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.26 (in 124 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.29 (in 153,454 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.

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