RATING THE BASEBALL MOVIES // Most belong in the cellar, but some are good enough to take the pennant

As a living and breathing printout of the American dream,baseball has long been idealized as the purest, most wholesome formof entertainment. Linked with Mom, hot dogs and, at least forGeneral Motors, a certain domestic automobile, it is a primary sourceof role models for young people. Well, whose autograph would yourkid rather have, Ryne Sandberg's or Ronald Reagan's?

Player strikes, exorbitant salaries, drug problems,out-and-out scandals - these have been mere blots on the balancesheet of the national pastime. Our collective sense of identity issimply too rooted in this game of wide-open "pastures," bellyfloppingon the base paths and razzing from the bleachers to be easilydiminished.

Fiction has done its best to dampen, or at least deepen,this image, entranced as it has been by the dark side of the game -the side of temptation and greed, weakness and mortality. In BernardMalamud's The Natural, young phenom Roy Hobbs ends up as a sad,tarnished soul. In Robert Coover's The Universal BaseballAssociation, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop., death invades the tablegame of a young fanatic's invention. In the cheerier environs ofBroadway literature, the devil himself insinuates himself into apennant race and causes trouble for those "Damn Yankees."

On the playing field of film literature, though, the sun isusually shining. The movies have strenuously avoided the undersideof the game, never more strenuously than in Robert Redford'streatment of The Natural. Redford the producer allowed Redford thestar to be touched by shadowy fate, not to mention Barbara Hershey'swoman in black. But there wasn't the slightest chance of his RoyHobbs succumbing to the book's downbeat ending:

" `Say it ain't true, Roy.'

"When Roy looked into the boy's eyes he wanted to say itwasn't but couldn't, and he lifted his hands to his face and weptmany bitter tears."

This is, after all, the age of "Rocky." And so whileMalamudians may have had reason to react violently to Redford'scalculated lobotomy on a much-loved novel (even if it did turn out tobe a handsome and reasonably entertaining movie), they had littlereason to expect that things would be handled any differently.Lacking an inspirational final inning or round or quarter, no sportsmovie can expect to make a profit; even most of those that honor theformula fail at the box office.

But why limit it to this age? In dramatizing dying players(including Lou Gehrig in "Pride of the Yankees," and Robert De Niro'shayseed catcher in "Bang the Drum Slowly") and that other favorite,the handicapped hero (Jimmy Stewart's hunting accident victim, MontyStratton, in "The Stratton Story," and Keith Carradine's one-armedoutfielder, Pete Gray, in the TV movie, "A Winner Never Quits"), themovies have expressed their abiding affection for upbeat and/orinspirational endings.

And never do they seem more at home than when they'reaccentuating the giddy side of the game. Here is the literalbirthplace of the screwball comedy. Or, in the case of "Fear StrikesOut," in which Tony Perkins climbed the backstop as the disturbedJimmy Piersall, the screwball drama.

I have to admit that in anticipating Tuesday's season openerat Wrigley Field, I'm in no mood for serious fare. Later in theseason, there will be plenty of time to indulge our pessimism andcontemplate failure. With the Cubs - Andre Dawson to the contrary -that will probably be soon er than later. Now, however, it's time to get jolly.

A very good and nostalgic place to start is "It Happens EverySpring" (1949), a comedy directed by one of the less-stellar namesof the day, Lloyd Bacon. In it, the late Ray Milland stars as achemistry professor who becomes the most unlikely pitching sensationever after he accidentally discovers a substance that causes abaseball to avoid wood surfaces like a cat avoids water.

Never mind how he discovers this, or what would havehappened if aluminum bats had been available back then. What'sappealing about the film is the way it touches two key bases in abaseball fan's imagination. First, it's about the attainment of anenduring American fantasy - that of an average Joe gaining entry tothe hallowed ground of the majors. (For verification of just howstrong a pull this dream exerts, consult any of the middle-agebusinessmen who suit up at the Cubs annual fantasy camp.)

Second, "It Happens Every Spring" is about someone finding away to transcend and circumvent the way the game has always beenplayed - someone, in essence, with the wherewithal to rewritereligion. You can see some of this, in a less spectacular sense, inthe increasing dominance of the split-finger pitch, as mastered bythe Houston Astros' Mike Scott.

(For a fleeting moment worth about two lines in the historyof baseball, the blooper pitch, as practiced by such borderlinehurlers as Steve Hamilton, captured people's fancy and scornfullaughter.)

Milland, who starred in the less memorable 1951 comedy"Rhubarb," in which a baseball team is inherited by a cat, gives alovely performance in "Spring." Some movie fans may place prime valueon his Oscar-winning portrayal of an alcoholic in Billy Wilder's 1945"The Lost Weekend." But for a baseball fan, the memory of his happilysending that flutterball on its way is every bit as memorable.

Also released in 1949: Busby Berkeley's forgettable MGMmusical "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," in which Gene Kelly and FrankSinatra play vaudevillians who also play ball for manager EstherWilliams. (In the modern age, baseball stars became Las Vegasvaudevillians. The image of 30-game winner Denny McLain as akeyboard wiz is one that's difficult to forget.)

Four years later, there was "The Kid From Left Field," in whichDan Dailey plays a washed-up star who, as a vendor, directs his teamfrom the stands - through his son, the bat boy. Gary Coleman starredin a TV remake in 1979.

Among the recent baseball comedies, Michael Ritchie's 1976 "TheBad News Bears" is probably the best. In it, boozing Little Leaguecoach Walter Matthau is saved from a fate worse than an early morningwakeup call by Tatum O'Neal, who leads his misfit squad to victory.(The film inspired two lousy sequels, at least one bad film rip-offand a bad TV sitcom.)

That same year saw the release of "The Bingo Long TravelingAll-Stars and Motor Kings," John Badham's film about the NegroLeague, circa 1939. Based on a novel by William Brashler, it isn'tnearly as successful at biting black comedy as it is at being funnyin a more good-natured, rambunctious way. In fact, a lot of it ispretty sophomoric. But with a cast headed by Richard Pryor, BillyDee Williams and James Earl Jones, it can't fail to hit its share ofcomedic line drives. And it actually teaches us something about atoo easily forgotten aspect of baseball's past.

More recently, Roy Scheider starred as an over-the-hillplayer charged with redeeming a young fan's dreams in the TV movie"Tiger Town." (Several years ago, LaVar Burton portrayedconvict-turned-Detroit Tiger Ron LeFlore in a TV movie whose titleescapes me.) And there was "The Slugger's Wife," written by NeilSimon and directed by Hal Ashby, which did its best to stink up the genre for all time. Michael O'Keefe isa jerky ballplayer who tumbles for singer Rebecca DeMornay. Warning:Do not even think about renting this film. Save your money for acouple of hot dogs at the Friendly Confines.

Better yet, save it for a revival house showing of the 1973"Bang the Drum Slowly," a blending of comedy and drama that stands asone of the best of the baseball movies. Directed by John Hancock andbased, in updated fashion, on Mark Harris's second Henry Wigginsnovel,the film wears its sorrowful emotions on its sleeve - and its pantsand its socks and its shoes.

But there's real zestiness in its handling of that favoredfictional team - the one with the colorful character at everyposition, including manager (Vincent Gardenia, spitting up a flood ofvulgarities and tobacco juice). Michael Moriarty, in a roleoriginated by Paul Newman in a '50s TV drama but modeled equally onTom Seaver, is very good as the star pitcher of the fictional NewYork Mammoths who devotes himself to his dying batterymate. PhilFoster and Selma Diamond add to the film's New Yawk charm.

I also like "Fear Strikes Out" (1957). True to theHollywood tradition, it's too tidy a psychological study. Andphysically, Perkins is as unconvincing as an athlete as he would be afew years later in "Tall Story." But he brings brooding intensityand frayed nerves to his portrayal of Jimmy Piersall, and directorRobert Mulligan draws powerful emotions from the material.

You say that baseball bios of more exalted players are yourthing? Well, you can't get much more exalted than Lou Gehrig, whosefarewell speech, as enacted by Gary Cooper in Sam Wood's 1939 "Prideof the Yankees," still echoes through the memory: "Today I considermyself...self...self...the luckiest man...man...man...on the face ofthe earth...earth...earth.... On TV, Edward Hermann played Gehrigopposite the wonderful Blythe Danner as Mrs. Lou Gehrig in the 1978"A Love Affair: The Eleanor and Lou Gehrig Story."

More biographies? "The Winning Season" (1952), of course,with Ronald Reagan as Hall of Fame pitcher Grover ClevelandAlexander; "The Pride of St. Louis" (1952), with Dan Dailey as DizzyDean, and "The Babe Ruth Story" (1948), with William Bendix as theSultan of Swat.

And then there's the baseball movie that exists only in ourimaginations: "The Ernie Banks Story." If it were ever made, it wouldbe so cheery, they probably would have to air it on Christmas Day,maybe after "White Christmas." Needless to say, there'd have to betwin showings.