By Mary Shaffer
and Jerry Bunin
The Tribune

Opening day is April 6. It's the American pastime, a rite of spring, and such stuff as movies are made of.

The best baseball movies are uniquely American and mainly see the game as a metaphor for life: A game of simple rules set against a complicated world without any.

"Field of Dreams" says more about fathers and sons reconciling their past than about passed balls. "Bull Durham" is as much about love as love of the game.

Baseball films are as old and lasting as movies themselves. A version of "Casey at the Bat" appeared in 1889 and new feature films about baseball are released every year, including 1992's "The Babe" and "A League of Their Own."

Despite their popularity, football and basketball films are rare while baseball movies are as perennial as spring. Baseball is as lyrical and leisurely as a sunny summer day, yet larger than life, with mythical heroes like Lou Gehrig.

"The Pride of the Yankees" (1942) was made a year after the legendary first baseman died at the age of 37. Imagine being so beloved and well-known that we still call the illness by his name. It would be as if we now started calling AIDS "Magic Johnson's Disease."

The classic black-and-white film follows [Gary Cooper] Gehrig from childhood, college and marriage to his still unbroken record of 2,130 consecutive games in 16 years in the major leagues and his final appearance at Yankee Stadium.

"The Pride of the Yankees" is also a love story between Gehrig and his wife (Teresa Wright) and Gehrig and his immigrant parents, who teach him the value of hard work.

The film shows his life as exemplifying the Protestant work ethic. He never misses a day at the ballpark, even on his wedding day and despite broken bones and nagging injuries.

Gehrig's humanity is illustrated in the famous story of the day Babe Ruth, Gehrig's teammate, publicly promised to hit a homerun in the World Series for a boy in the hospital.

After almost everyone leaves, Gehrig privately promises to hit two homeruns, telling the boy, "You can do anything if you try hard enough." And that is exactly what he does.

Gehrig always played by the rules and never argued over bad calls. "Is it three strikes, doc?" he asks, noting, "All the arguing in the world can't change the decision of the umpire."

The film ends with a moving reenactment of Gehrig's famous farewell speech ("Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth."), and his final walk to the dugout and into immortality.

You can't watch it without seeing Magic retiring. That will mean as much to us as Gehrig's farewell did to our parents.

Cooper earned an Oscar nomination for portraying Gehrig (after winning the year before as World War I hero "Sergeant York"), but lost in 1942 to James Cagney playing another American icon, George M. Cohan, in "Yankee Doodle Dandy."

Although nominated for 11 awards, "The Pride of the Yankees" only won for editing.

Director Sam Wood also worked with Cooper in "For Whom the Bell Tolls" (1943) and directed such classics as "King's Row" (1942) with Ronald Reagan and the Marx Brothers' "A Night at the Opera" (1935).

Like "The Pride of the Yankees," "Bang the Drum Slowly" (1973) contrasts the innocent games of youth with the random tragedies of real life.

"Bang the Drum Slowly" also explores the theme through a card game the ballplayers use to "fish" money from unsuspecting, starry-eyed fans.

The game is called TEGWAR, "The Exciting Game Without Any Rules," because ballplayers make up the rules as they go along, deliberately confusing the fans and guaranteeing the outcome.

Accepting life's outcome is the central issue of this seldom seen but worthwhile film about a dying ballplayer and the value of friendship and teamwork.

Adapted by Mark Harris from his own 1956 novel, the story follows Bruce Pearson's (Robert De Niro) final season with the fictional New York Mammoths. Just before spring training, the third-string, "plumb dumb" catcher from rural Georgia is diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease.

Only his roommate, hot-shot pitcher Henry Wiggen (Michael Moriarty) knows. "Bruce was almost too dumb to play a joke on," he notes, "and now he'd been played the biggest joke of all."

Determined to make Pearson's last season memorable, Wiggen accepts a lower salary in exchange for a contract clause that guarantees Pearson a spot on the team.

Wiggen becomes Pearson's self-appointed protector, fending off a call girl who is after Bruce's money and fellow ballplayers who constantly "rag" the catcher.

He tutors and encourages Pearson, telling him that "power plus brains is the difference between nobody and somebody."

Wiggen, a writer who sells insurance to other ballplayers on the side, is everything Pearson isn't. Yet his friendship with Pearson makes the pitcher a better person, too.

He realizes that everyone improves when they work as a team, reaching beyond their individual potential by rallying around Pearson instead of fighting among themselves.

"Bang the Drum Slowly" has the rhythm of a baseball game, slow paced yet always dramatic and unpredictable. The acting is first rate, especially by De Niro and Moriarty.

Released before De Niro became a star in "The Godfather, Part II" (1974) and "Taxi Driver" (1976), "Bang the Drum Slowly" lacks the intensity we now associate with him. Yet he is utterly convincing as a naïve, soft-spoken, tobacco-chewing hillbilly.

Moriarty is the true focus of the film, exuding confidence yet betraying subtle and conflicting emotions over Pearson's situation and his own life, mortality and ethics.

The second of Harris' four novels about Wiggen, "Bang the Drum Slowly" was also performed on live television in the late 1950s with Paul Newman and Albert Salmi as Wiggen and Pearson.

We had to call several video stores to find both films. The search was worth it. These timeless stories were as good as we remembered.

They recognize the same thing Wiggen does, "I don't know why you don't live it up when dying is just around the corner, but you don't."

You just keep playing the game.

Mary Shaffer works at Cal Poly. Jerry Bunin is a Telegram-Tribune staff writer. The husband and wife team has been co-writing film reviews since 1978.