“Skipped Parts”

A couple of years ago I was watching the 1966 movie “Penelope,” starring (peak) Natalie Wood, when I came upon a brief scene in which Wood casually opens a pack of 1966 baseball cards. Here, read this.

One of the best minutes in movie history.

So last night I watched the 2000 film “Skipped Parts,” with an ensemble cast led by Jennifer Jason Leigh. Its kind of a coming-of-age story, set in 1963, in which Leigh plays the unwed mother of a 14-year-old boy. Leigh’s father is a wealthy citizen considering a run for governor in some unnamed southern state, who exiles his daughter and grandson to a house in Wyoming so that they don’t embarrass him during his campaign. Leigh is a bit “wild”, even with a son. She also has never worked a day in her life, so she pretty much has to do whatever her father says.

There is a scene near the start of the film where grand-dad summons the boy into a room and makes him toss a stack of baseball cards into a raging fire. Something about “setting aside all childish things.” Prior to the summons, we see the kid (who knows what is coming) palm a 1958 Don Drysdale and slip it into his back pocket. When he tosses in the stack, we see (with a bit of freeze framing, several rewinds, and several minutes of Google image searches) that the top card is a 1962 Felix Mantilla, and below that is a 1961 Alvin Dark managers card. For the rest of the stack we can just see the backs in the fire, and they include a 1961 Willie Mays. The cards looked to be in good shape, though deteriorating by the second.

All of this is soon forgotten, and lots of interesting stuff happens for the next 90 minutes. It is sort of a proto-Juno, except the teenagers (Bug Hall and Mischa Barton) are 14, rather than the 17-18 year olds in the later film.

In the final scene, which takes place a year or so later, the boy is sitting on the front porch of the Wyoming house, next to (SPOILER) a baby in a bassinet. Above the baby is a mobile constructed out of baseball cards. (How did I not have one of those, or make one for my kids?)

These are also 1961 and 1962 cards. I can make out a 1962 George Alusik (took me a while to figure this out, as the cards were literally spinning in a light breeze), a 1961 Gary Geiger (I think), and, still surviving, the 1958 Drysdale.

The movie was made in 2000, and the cards were obviously meant as a period device. We never saw the kid actually do anything with his cards other than near the start when he has a stack on the table that grandpa makes him destroy. I appreciate that the movie makers made the effort to get the correct vintage, even though very few people likely took the time to notice.

I am likely going to buy this DVD so that I can make clips out of these two scenes to add to my “collection.”

Oh, and the movie’s not bad. (I had no idea about the cards when choosing it.) Its not Casablanca, but the characters are interesting and Leigh, typically brilliant, is worth a couple of stars just by herself.

Please let me know if you run across any other baseball card scenes in movies, or if you have any insight into this one.

Author: Mark Armour

Long-time SABR member, founder and past chairman of the Baseball Cards Committee, founder and past chairman (2002-2016) of the Biography Project, current President of the SABR board of directors, author of several books and dozens of articles on baseball. See mark-armour.net. View all posts by Mark Armour