Cleveland Sports Forum

..............WE WIN!!!

i'll be there tomorrow to watch them complete the sweep!

7 shutouts for the Tribe, leads the league!

Don't forget your broom, J. R.!

gaylord perry wrote:Don't forget your broom, J. R.!

They won't let you bring them into the ballpark

Just fly in on it.

I broke mine in a quidditch game.

"J.R."

Kevin Costner is in the crowd today. Can you spot him?

Found him!

lol - the girl on the right is on the phone to her friend saying, "OMG, you won't believe who is sitting TWO SEATS AWAY FROM ME!"

Was he in town for the new Avengers movie?

Kevin Costner: King of baseball movies turns to football for 'Draft Day' in Cleveland

By Clint O'Connor, The Plain Dealer

on May 04, 2013 at 12:00 PM, updated May 04, 2013 at 12:07 PM


Kevin Costner, who starts shooting "Draft Day" Wednesday in Greater Cleveland, famously made his first big splash on screen in Lawrence Kasdan's excellent "The Big Chill" in 1983. Except he didn't.

He played Alex, the friend who had died, the reason for the weekend funeral gathering of former college buddies (played by Kevin Kline, Glenn Close and William Hurt among others). But all of his flashback scenes were cut. The story goes that Kasdan felt so guilty, he wrote a fabulous part for Costner in his next film, the Western "Silverado" in 1985.

Costner's Jake, the younger brother of Scott Glenn's Emmett, was an eternally smiling, daring, rootin'-tootin' cowboy, who was impossible not to love. A star was born.

Westerns have been good to Costner. He won two Oscars for directing and producing "Dances With Wolves" in 1990, and was nominated for a third for best actor. He also won acclaim for his recent turn as "Devil" Anse Hatfield in the History Channel's miniseries "Hatfields & McCoys." This summer, he can be seen as Clark Kent's Earthly dad in the new Superman movie, "Man of Steel," which hits theaters June 14.

But the first films that spring to mind for many Costner fans are his sports movies. He has excelled as a baseball player and fan in Ron Shelton's "Bull Durham," Phil Alden Robinson's "Field of Dreams" and Sam Raimi's "For Love of the Game," and as stubborn golfer Roy "Tin Cup" McAvoy in "Tin Cup" (Shelton again).

"Bull Durham" and "Field of Dreams" are among the most beloved sports movies ever made, often landing in the top five or top 10 on various all-time-best lists. They came out bang-bang in 1988 and 1989 and established Costner as Mr. Baseball Movie.

The roles could not be more different.

In "Bull Durham," Costner starred as Crash Davis, the veteran minor-league catcher who gets stuck on the Durham Bulls and becomes entangled with Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon), the team's brash, William Blake-quoting groupie. Both of them are mentoring -- to varying degrees -- green pitching phenom "Nuke" Laloosh, played by Tim Robbins. Costner, who has been accused of being wooden in other roles, is quite loquacious, philosophical and romantic as Crash.

"I believe in the hanging curve ball, high fiber and good scotch," he tells Annie. "And I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days."

Ray Kinsella in "Field of Dreams," based on the baseball fantasy novel "Shoeless Joe" by W.P. Kinsella, was a much more earnest, awe-shucks, all-American Everyman from the Jimmy Stewart school.

Beleaguered by financial woes and trying to do right by his wife (Amy Madigan), Kinsella hears voices -- is he truly touched or just nuts? -- that tell him to build a baseball diamond in the middle of his Iowa corn fields. He is a character on a journey, eventually crossing paths with Shoeless Joe Jackson (not to mention Burt Lancaster and James Earl Jones).

This is Costner at his best. He shines with a contagious enthusiasm and a willingness to choose hope over cynicism. Costner's genuineness makes us care and allows us to believe in the magical and mystical. You'd like to bang back beers with Crash Davis, but you would like to lasso the indomitable spirit of Ray Kinsella's quest. (And if you don't choke up at the end of "Field of Dreams," you have no soul.)

Now, Costner trades in his diamond skills and dreamy aspirations for the grim realities of running a pro football team in Ivan Reitman's "Draft Day." Costner will play Sonny Weaver Jr., fictional general manager of the Cleveland Browns, a team that, in the real world, has not won a championship since 1964. Weaver is charged with saving the franchise by finagling the best possible deal and pick in the first round of the NFL Draft.

Reitman and company shot some scenes at the real NFL Draft on April 25 in New York, and now the production is moving here for the next two months. The cast also includes Jennifer Garner, Denis Leary and Frank Langella.

Football tends to be less poetically cinematic than baseball, and we don't wallow in the teary-eyed nostalgia of football the way we do with baseball. Perhaps Costner and company can change that. There's certainly room in the sports movie pantheon for a great new football film.

This "Moneyball"-ish character study of a besieged GM, co-written by Cleveland Heights native and noted playwright Rajiv Joseph, is billed as a drama (with some laughs). In light of the stumbling-bumbling Browns of recent vintage, shouldn't it be an all-out comedy? Or a tragic-comedy?

Down early on 0-2, and go 123 in the bottom of the first.

Rayburn hits a 2 out 3 run homer....followed by a tape measure job by Gomes.
4-2.

Bourn bunts.....bad throw to first. He's safe. calling it an error and not a bunt single.

Kipnis base hit....bourn to third. Indians at the corners....still 2 outs.

Tribe on top 4-2 going to the 3rd

Kas gives up three straight hits to give them a run, 4-3 no out, 2 on.

Kas getting roughed up pretty bad

They hit into a double play, but the tying run scores.

Smokes grounds out. Damage done.

4-4 to the bottom of the 3rd