Post 3000

I should probably be holding off on any self-congratulation for another couple of days, when I reach the seventh anniversary of my first post, but I note that this is my 3,000th post. Somehow, I don't think I'm going to make it to 30,000 at the rate I'm going, since that would take another 63 years. The only movie I could think of that would fit my 3,000th post is the baseball movie Mr. 3000. Strangely enough, this is one of those films that I haven't seen, although the plot is something easier to remember than some of the movies I have seen.

Bernie Mac (I can't believe he's been dead six and a half years now) plays a retired baseball player who retired with exactly 3,000 hits, which for those of you abroad who don't follow baseball, is the big odometer number as opposed to 2,000 (not too difficult to reach) or 4,000 (only two or three players have done that). Just like the odometer number of 500 home runs, it's also one of those goals that makes getting into the Hall of Fame a near certainty. Or, it did before the extent of steroid use in the game became known and the baseball writers who cast the Hall of Fame ballots wanted to show their hypocritical indignation. But that's a topic completely unrealted to a movie blog.

Bernie Mac's now retired player takes the nickname "Mr. 3000", and uses that to go into business and become successful in business. But something comes up that would never happen in the real world. A recalculation of his statistics reveals that in fact "Mr. 3000" only has 2997 lifetime hits. Now, it does sometimes happen that the official scorers of the game get a call wrong and change it during the game, and on even rarer occasions the change is made a day after the game. But there's no way it would take the official people who do this stuff over a decade to do it, especially when the player is closing in on the big target number and in the age of onstant coverage of sports. But "Mr. 3000" goes back to being a major-league player, trying to get those three hits, and learning a few things about life along the way according to the fuller plot synopsis.

I think I've seen the title show up on my box guide on the Major League Baseball channel, but there it would be chewed up with a bunch of commercial breaks, and possibly edited to get rid of any bad language the film might have. (As I said, not having seen it, I don't know how much content there is that the commrecial channels would edit for airing.) It's also coming up three times on Monday on Starz Black and twice on Thursday on Starz Edge if you've got the Starz/Encore package; check listings.