What sort of preparation does it take to get into the mindset of playing a baseball?
“I actually went and did a lot of research on this. I talked to as many baseballs as I could. Ones that were used for fungos, ones that are used in games, ones that are just batting practice guys – and they all have a different slant on it. I took from all of them.”
Who gave you the best advice?
“Well the best advice I got was from this one ball that was used in a t-ball game. My 6-year-old, well now she’s 8, but when she was 6 she played in t-ball, and it basically said there are no small baseballs, only small something or others.”
What will this film do for the rivalry between bats and balls?
“This is the unspoken rivalry that’s gone on since the beginning of baseball. It’s always been, ‘Who’s more important, the bat or the ball?’ I would always say that the ball is more important. You can’t play baseball… I mean it is called baseball. It’s not called baseball bat or batball. You can play baseball without a bat. You can get a broom handle. You can get a piece of wood. But how do you play without the baseball? Think about that.”
How is the mindset different of a contemporary baseball than the mindset of a 1930s baseball?
“Well the contemporary baseball is looking for more perks, to be quite honest with you. The old baseball would be just happy to play the game - the love of the game. The new baseball likes to be kept in a humidor. It says, ‘I’m not going to be used for more than three batters.’ There are performance clauses, like a second inning. If you get to two innings and you don’t get thrown out, there are perks. There’s a Scott Boras for every baseball now. There didn’t used to be those agents.”
Your baseball complains a lot in Everyone’s Hero. Do you think he has a lot to complain about?
“He does, he does. I mean, think about it. The guy, you know, he got into a game, he gets one pitch, he’s fouled off, and that’s it. He’s lying under the truck for years and nobody pays attention to him so he does have a lot to complain about. You know, he feels that he deserves better. He gets better – we see that he gets better.”
How do baseballs feel about the steroid issue?
“We don’t like it. You know, they accused us of being the reason why the balls were going out of the park. The truth comes out now! It’s not like the baseballs are juiced; the players were juiced. And so we got a bad rap for a long time and now you see the truth is coming out.”
Totally off the subject of baseballs, what’s your next project?
“I’m trying to put this movie together with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman called The Bucket List. We’re trying to get that going. Hopefully we start shooting the end of October.”
What is The Bucket List about?
“It’s a really interesting film about two guys. Nicholson plays a character who is very wealthy. Morgan Freeman plays a character who’s been a mechanic his whole life. They meet in a hospital. Nicholson’s character actually owns the hospital, and owns like a string of hospitals and is very wealthy.
They are both diagnosed with cancer and they’re both terminal. They go through treatments together and they become very close friends. They decide rather than go through more experimental treatments - and they’re asymptomatic – they decide that even though they have maybe six months to a year, they’re going to go on this trip together…
In the case of Morgan Freeman, he’s very intelligent. He went to college and his girlfriend got pregnant his first semester. He had to drop out to get a job and take care of the baby. He’s lived his whole life as a mechanic for 46 years, doing the right thing with three children. He’s never been anywhere. He’s very smart. He knows all the answers on Jeopardy. He reads a lot, but he’s never been anywhere. And Nicholson, who’s been very successful, doesn’t have close friends and decides, ‘Let’s go on this trip.’”
Page 2: Rob Reiner on Finding Projects That Interest Him as a Director
