From Spring Training to Screen Test: Baseball Players Turned Actors

SABR Digital Library, #55

Just in time for the Academy Awards, SABR"s book of baseball's "matinee stars."
For well over a century, stars and supporting players on baseball
diamonds have become stars and supporting players in the movies,
on Broadway, in vaudeville and, eventually, on television and in
concert halls. After all, ballplayers are celebrities. Whether on the
field or the stage, they are in the business of entertaining the
masses. Not surprisingly, many showbiz luminaries have become
baseball enthusiasts. They have invested their time, money, and
expertise to be part of the baseball world as team owners and fans.
From Spring Training to Screen Test: Baseball Players Turned Actors
includes essays by 43 SABR members that connect baseball and
show biz. Not every ballplayer who ever made an appearance on

screen or stage is included; to do so would result in a mini-
encyclopedia. The purpose here is to offer a representative

selection of those who crossed the lines between professional
sports and popular entertainment. Included are biographies of
selected individuals from the famous (Gene Autry, Joe DiMaggio,
Jim Thorpe, Bernie Williams...) to the forgotten (Al Gettel, Lou
Stringer, Wally Hebert, Wally Hood...) There are other select topics,
from baseball on television shows and in Coca-Cola commercials to
Jim Bouton's casting as "Jim Barton" in his Ball Four TV series and
Don Drysdale playing "Don Drysdale" on The Donna Reed Show,
Leave It To Beaver, and The Brady Bunch. Those who will relish the
privileged peeks at the off-the-field life and times of Mike Donlin and
Edward G. Robinson playing Hans Lobert on the big screen in Big
Leaguer will surely savor From Spring Training to Screen Test:
Baseball Players Turned Actors.