Save Ferris!

With the start of the baseball regular season just around the corner, we suddenly realized something: the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off turns 20 years old in a couple of months, and we now officially feel old. The film that brought us Matthew Broderick, Charlie Sheen and Jennifer Grey, as well as Alan Ruck (who was close to 30 years old, by the way, when he played Ferris' buddy Cameron Frye), also gave us the best movie scene depicting a day at Wrigley Field; complete with gratuitous Harry Caray. Quite simply, it's the film that made it cool to skip school and check out a baseball game for thousands of teenagers. "He can't hit, he can't hit, he can't hit SUH-WING batter!"

Trivia: When Mr. Rooney is in the sports bar where they're showing the Cubs game on TV, and the camera cuts from Ferris catching a foul ball, which player is shown at bat? Who remembers? Come on, it's driving us nuts!

Ferris Bueller's Day Off [Fast-Rewind]

(UPDATE: Thanks, readers: It's Leon (Bull) Durham. We should have guessed.)

(SECOND UPDATE: Nope, not Bull either. From a reader: "I have the Ferris Bueller DVD handy, so I've got a correction: Leon Durham (No. 10) of the Chicago Cubs was playing first base in that scene, with a runner at first during some game against the Atlanta Braves. The batter who hit the foul ball "caught" by Ferris was Claudell Washington (No. 25), an outfielder for the Braves. The runner on first for the Braves is wearing No. 18. I think it's Paul Zuvella, who wore that number for Atlanta in 1984 and 1985 as a utility infielder. The game couldn't be from 1986, because the Braves didn't visit Wrigley in 1986 until about two weeks before the movie came out.")

(THIRD UPDATE: Apparently Joe Sheehan at Baseball Prospectus wrote about this once and traced the game down to this one. God we love the Web.)