Let’s begin with last week’s Pop Quiz question, which comes to us from Gary Mintz of South Huntington:
In a 1963 episode of “Car 54, Where Are You?,” the 53rd Precinct helps a Yankees player after he locks himself in the bathroom. Name the player.
A week ago today, about seven other sportswriters and I, most of us specializing in baseball, met with Jon Hamm, the actor best known for his portrayal of morally ambiguous advertising executive Don Draper on “Mad Men.” We were given this audience because Hamm is starring in a baseball film, “Million Dollar Arm,” that gets a wide release today.
I can’t vouch for “Million Dollar Arm.” But after spending about an hour with Hamm, I can validate this: The guy knows his baseball.
This isn’t Ted Danson relying on his acting guile to portray a former pitcher in “Cheers,” or John C. Reilly stumbling his way through “For Love of the Game” as a catcher.
Hamm is a diehard Cardinals fan. He played high school baseball in the St. Louis area, and he still plays in a wood-bat league in Los Angeles. He has participated in multiple Celebrity Softball Games as part of All-Star weekend and will do so again this year in Minneapolis.
Since he’s 43, his peak Cardinals-cheering years came in the 1980s, which explains this sentiment: “I hated the Mets with a passion. Still do.”
He attended 2006 National League Championship Series Game 7 at Shea Stadium, he said, and when Adam Wainwright caught Carlos Beltran looking at the nastiest curveball ever for strike three, he stood up and screamed … then quickly realized he was the only person in his section doing so, and quickly sat back down.
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Hamm passed the smell test because of his specific memories. That he confused some of them — he referenced Joaquin Andujar’s World Series meltdown from 1985 World Series Game 7, except he had it occurring two years later, when the Cardinals again lost a seven-game Fall Classic — gave him even greater credibility to me. After all, it isn’t his job to memorize precise years. But all the data is in his head.
Born in 1971, his earliest Cardinals memories came with not particularly good St. Louis teams.
“The ’70s, they were kind of a disaster,” Hamm said. “They had a lot of colorful characters on the team. Al Hrabosky, Ted Simmons, Keith Hernandez, a lot of guys like that. Dane Iorg. Kenny Reitz. But my dad would take me to games. And it was fun. Busch Stadium was one of those concrete donuts, with 60,000 seats. Into the ’90s, bleacher seats at Busch were $5.
“And then at a certain point in the ’80s, when Whitey Herzog came, the whole culture shifted. And he kind of cleaned house, brought in his own guys. Everybody was kind of taken aback for a second until they started winning. It was a brand new kind of baseball. It was that ’80s speed game that nobody played.”
As a pre-teen, Hamm became best friends — and is still best friends today — with Jon Simmons, the son of former Cardinals catcher Ted Simmons. They found themselves on opposite sides when Simmons’ Brewers took on (and lost to) the Cardinals in the 1982 World Series, which he calls “to this day my best baseball memory.” Of course it is. He was 11.
After the disappointing ’90s, when “Joe Torre was a bad manager for us,” Hamm cracked, it has been quite a smooth ride for Cardinals fans. Hamm follows the team from wherever he is working.
Speaking of his work … I am about five minutes into the “Mad Men” pilot episode, so unlike some writers in the group interview, I couldn’t speak with literacy about Don Draper. It’s clear, though, Hamm liked the idea of acting in a Disney film after participating in such a dark TV series.
“There’s a reason I chose a contemporary story, a true story, a story about redemption and inspiration,” he said. “Things that aren’t associated with Don Draper.”
In “Million Dollar Arm,” Hamm plays scout J.B. Bernstein, who searches for baseball talent in India. It’s based on the true story of the Pirates signing a pair of cricket players to professional contracts in 2008. Neither of the pair, Dinesh Patel and Rinku Singh, came close to making the majors. The triumph came in getting to organized baseball in the first place.
Hamm, Disney and Major League Baseball (which blessed the film) are hoping this joins “Moneyball” and “42” as hit baseball movies and continues a trend. It won’t be easy, not with “Godzilla” also opening today. Hamm smiled as he said his industry’s conventional wisdom used to be, “Never make a show about advertising. The stakes aren’t high enough. No one gives a [bleep]. It’s got to be doctors, lawyers or cops.
“It doesn’t work until it works. There used to be a corollary: Baseball isn’t international. People don’t give a [bleep].”
We’ll see whether people give a bleep about this movie. All I know is, baseball is in Hamm’s blood, and that can’t hurt the endeavor.
Just call him Dr. Tino Martinez. On Saturday morning, the beloved former Yankees first baseman — the dude is getting his own plaque in Monument Park later this summer, for crying out loud — will deliver the keynote address at Fordham University, and he’ll receive an honorary doctorate of humane letters. Pretty, pretty, pretty good for Tino.
Best wishes to Louise Martone Peluso, the longtime Mets fan whom I referenced in a column last year. Louise suffered a stroke recently and is on the mend. She has been listening to the Mets games in her hospital room.
Your Pop Quiz answer is Yogi Berra. If you have a tidbit that correlates baseball with popular culture, please send it to me at kdavidoff@nypost.com.