Baseball Is Cinema: Celebrating America’s Twin Pastimes with N.Y. Mets Game Director John DeMarsico

The cinematic appeal of baseball has been evident almost since the sport’s invention, turning up in newsreels, documentary, and narrative storytelling for the past hundred-plus years. And while contemporary baseball telecasts don’t often borrow from or directly reference popular movies, the work of John DeMarsico, New York Mets Game Director for nightly SNY broadcasts, stands out for doing exactly that. Justly celebrated for running the most creative and entertaining show in live TV sports, DeMarsico, who studied film in college, brings his knowledge and passion for movies to daily coverage of Queens’ own Mets, from innovative camera shots and musical cues to entire sequences that invoke the language of Hollywood thrillers, action movies, and even classic baseball films. “Baseball is inherently cinematic, more so than other sports,” DeMarsico told the New York Times last year. “In football and basketball, there’s so much speed. In baseball, there is no clock. The geography of the field is very structured. You’re able to set the scene and establish the confrontations between batter and pitcher like a duel in a western.”

The day of programming includes two features selected by DeMarsico, the baseball comedy classic Major League and Brian De Palma’s virtuosic Academy Award–winning crime saga The Untouchables and culminates in a program of clips selected and edited by DeMarsico, followed by a conversation moderated by Curator of Film Eric Hynes.  

Buy individual event tickets below, or purchase a special combo ticket for all three events on April 29 ($30). All programs are free for MoMI members at the Senior/Student levels and above.