THE HERALD OUTLOOK Saturday April IS 13 Baseball movies are the hit of the Spring Three baseball movies are being released in April one in theatres the other two on video to mark the opening of the baseball season Charlie Sheen shows up in two of them The theatrical release is Major League a comedy about a widow who inherits the Cleveland In dians She wants her team to lose so attendance will fall enabling her to break her stadium contract and move the franchise to sunny Florida Rachel Phelps Margaret Whit- ton stocks the Indians with a col lection of misfits including Jake Taylor Tom a catcher on his last legs and Vaughn Sheen a rookie pitcher who was paroled from prison in order to try out for the team Steve Yeager who spent years behind the plate for the Dodgers portrays Indians batting coach Duke Temple Before the cameras started rolling Yeager a technical consultant for the movie spent time honing the baseball skills of Berenger Sheen and Cor- Entertainment Bob Spence Thorn on Newt Service bin Bernsen who plays third baseman Roger All of our stars look like good baseball players but more im portantly they are good ball players said writerdirector David Ward It has always bothered me when a character who is supposed to be a baseball player obviously cant play baseball His cast can The script suffers sonfewhat from cliches but the movie is still worth catching The video releases are a pair of 1988 movies including one of the best baseball movies ever made Eight Men Out The movie is based on the 1919 Black Sox scandal when eight members of the Chicago White Sox were banned from baseball for life for throwing the World Series The other video release is Stealing Home in which a washedup ballplayer recalls his earlier days Eight Men Out starring Sweeney and Sheen deserves the fourstar rating many reviewers have given it It is by far the best of this trio of baseball movies Steal ing Home Mark Harmon Blair Brown with a plot that barely crawls at times is the weakest of the trio While were on the subject of baseball what better subject is there lets turn to the publishing world Ernie Whitt the veteran Toronto Blue Jay catcherturnedauthor offers a plethora of anecdotes in Catch A Major League Life McGrawHill The most compelling portions of Catch which is being released April are vivid details about Whitts struggle to make it to the Major Leagues The book Greg Cable is the coauthor recounts the numerous setbacks Whitt en countered but ultimately over came the last original Blue Jay the only player taken by Toronto in the 1977 expansion draft who is still with the team takes the reader through the Jays 1988 season month by month He keeps interrupting- his tale to offer flashbacks on his career and the development of the Jays Whitt uses a mixture of criticism about attitude and praise for at titude and performance to describe some of his current and former teammates His sharpest criticism is fired at umpire Joe Brinkman and former Jay managers Roy Hartsfield and Bob by Mattick now a Jay vice- president While Whitt may not have endeared himself to some of his teammates this is not a scandal- dripping expose but a story about one players struggle to make it to the Major Leagues and the ups and downs of life in The Show John latest fails to dazzle ABOUT BOOKS REVIEWED BY THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSN By Peter Robertson A Prayer for Owen Meany By John Irving Morrow pages I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice not because of the voice or because he was the smallest person I ever knew or even because he was the instrument of my mothers death but because he Is the reason I believe in God I am a Chris tian because of Owen Meany So goes the first prophetic line in John A Prayer for Owen Meany a book that serves to link faith hope and in the same beguiling way that the author managed in The World According to ANY PI OVER 900 FREE DELIVER WITH GUELPH STREET 8734499 10 MOUNTAINVIEW S GEORGETOWN EVERY FRIDAY PRIME RIB OF BEEF Garlic Bread and Salad Included EVENING SPECIAL After 600 Baked Fresh Dally On Premises HOURS 8731211 Garp The stark assurance of the line her alds the rest of the narrative of the childhoodadolescent recollections of Johnny a- teacher and churchgoer living in Toronto The narrative cuts from past to present across years It moves from his childhood in New Hampshire and his best friend Owen a world al most overloaded with imagery and metaphor to the staid tranquility of Johnnys later years Under five feet tall with a frozen set on a course Only Owen himself knows that the course was set years before that game In previous novels Irvings world has come to include tragedy and hu mor and an underlying The same is true of Owen Meany That Owed has survived an unusual birth foreseen his own death and stoi cally assumed the role of Gods in strument are articles of faith for the unusual youngster and eventually come to mean the same for his friend Sadly A Prayer for Owen Adams Apple rendering his every In- Isnt dose to the work that tonation a chilling scream Owen was was- Irving himself shows an unchar- mesmerizing figure When in lack of confidence in the his bat sent a baseball straight at the y continually informing the head of Johnnys saintly mother kill- that Johnny or Owen already her instantly Owens life seemed something that the reader will I 360GuelphSIUnlt51A KNOLCREST CENTRE Georgetown OPEN TuesSun 10001000 PRICES INCLUDES WEEKENDS RETURNS 600 PM NEXT DAY APRIL IS LOBSTER MONTH WHOLE LOBSTER Choice of Potatoes Rice or Vegetables 8731409 GEORGETOWN DBs PICK OF MADONNA THIS YEARS MOST CONTROVERSIAL ALBUM TuwdayWdriaday SirBfTthlraday Friday 110000 Saturday ftllcl rtuci di MAEnaAnnuni ConwretHwy7andHMWUlMle have to wait to ha je revealed Tie in sularity of vision opens the doors to some unusually dry sections WifM QUALITY STEREO ACCESSORIES FOR TOUR MOW ft RECORDS TAPES MotinMUnrlni M Unit drop In at Tfi Harald Oualph St to claim II not a woo aoap on looking Wait wear It may your turn to win GEORGETOWN CINEMAS 235 GUELPH STREET 8731999 CINEMA 1 CHEVY CHASE Americas favorite multiple personality is back Retch lives Evenings at pm Sat SunMatlnooat pm CINEMA 2 are out to rob one bank Disorganized Crime Evenings at 5 pm Sat Sun Matinee at pm CINEMA 3 T I r o M HOFFMAN CRUISE RAINMAN Evenings pm Sat Sun Matinee at 200 pm