Craig Calcaterra attended a very interesting baseball film festival:

And last, but certainly not least was “Baseball vs. Drugs”: Outside of the murderous gaze of Charlie Gehringer, this was by far the most disturbing thing I’ve seen in months. In what I can only assume was intended for distribution in schools, Baltimore Orioles’ reliever Pete Richert is filmed in a grade school classroom, talking about the perils of drug use. What makes it so disturbing is that the children — who are really young; like maybe 7 or 8 — were obviously fed highly-specific questions to ask Richert about drugs, which he answered in wildly inappropriate detail that, in reality, came off more like a how-to seminar. Things like “how do you take marijuana?” to which Richert replied “well, it can be smoked in cigarettes called ‘joints’ or in a pipe or a device called a bong, or sometimes it can be eaten in brownies.” Or “what does smack make you feel like?” (and the kid did actually say “smack”), which was followed by a description of a heroin high from Richert that sounded so blissful and enticing that I felt like putting a spike into my vein right then and there. The best part: Richert was accompanied by some Colts’ football player whose name I forget, who when asked “what happens if you mix booze and ludes,” said “it can really mess you up. In fact I once knew a guy who did that, and he died . . . I just had to leave him there in the alley.” I wish that clip had gone on longer, because it was the sort of answer that really just led to more questions.

I also love Craig’s description of Clark Griffith’s wife from the 1955 Senator’s highlight reel.