Vaughan Film Festival ready for fourth annual go-round
Yorkregion.com
April 21, 2016
By Tim Kelly
You’ll want to grab your popcorn - and peanuts and crackerjack - to enjoy Dr. Baseball: The Ron Taylor Story at this year’s upcoming Vaughan Film Festival (VFF).
The short film, made by the Canadian baseball Hall of Famer’s sons Drew and Matthew, tells the tale of how a young man combined a two-time World Series winning lengthy pro career and a medical degree. And it does so in a snappy 17 minutes at that.
A slick VFF launch at Vaughan Mills Tuesday evening hosted by Breakfast Television’s Frankie Flowers kicked off the fourth annual VFF.
Mayor Maurizio Bevilacqua, Ward 4 Councillor Sandra Yeung Racco and reps from producing sponsors Roy Foss Motors and Scotiabank were also in attendance Tuesday night.
VFF founders Antonio Ienco and Mark Pagliaroli are excited they’ll show 18 short movies that span the globe over two evenings at Cineplex Vaughan Cinemas, 3555 Hwy. 7, Vaughan, on Monday, May 16, and Wednesday, May 18.
Dr. Baseball winds up the offerings on May 16 and it’s quite a story.
Taylor is probably best known for his long association as doctor with the Toronto Blue Jays, but before that he was quite an athlete and has the rings to prove it.
In 1964, he earned a save as the St. Louis Cardinals beat the mighty New York Yankees in seven games to win the championship.
Then in 1969, he was on the so-called Miracle Mets, as New York upset the favoured Baltimore Orioles in just five games to win Taylor his second World Series. He had a save in that series too.
Wearing his ’64 ring, Taylor talked about his career and life Tuesday evening.
“We had a lot of fun in the ‘60s. I turned professional at 17, dropped out of high school, won 17 games first year in the minors, then finished my engineering degree at U of T and started playing baseball full time,” Taylor said about his unusual baseball career arc.
How he became a doctor is another story entirely.
“I made a trip touring Vietnam for a couple of weeks, nothing dangerous, but then went to Vietnam in the off-season for two years; then I decided I wanted to go to medical school,” he said.
Apparently, the dean of the medical school didn’t like his chances.
His son, Drew picks up the story.
“They asked him what he’d been doing for the past 10 years and he said ‘I’ve been playing major league baseball.’ And the dean said. “What’s that?”
Taylor said: “They didn’t think I had much of a chance.”
The med school made him take extra courses to prove he had the right academic stuff, but five years later, he was Ron Taylor, M.D.
Drew Taylor has made other films, most notably, Our Man In Tehran, the documentary about Ken Taylor, the Canadian ambassador famous for getting members of the American embassy in Tehran out of the country during the Iran hostage crisis in 1979. The fictionalized version of the same incident was made into the Academy-award winning Ben Affleck-directed movie Argo.
“My brother and I are getting a reputation for making movies only about Taylors,” he joked.
Also on Tuesday night, there was a video message from actor William Baldwin who will receive the VFF Independent Leadership award for 2016 at this year’s VFF gala Thursday May 19, at 7 p.m. at the Parmaount Convention Centre, 222 Rowntree Dairy Rd. That black-tie event will be followed by an afterparty at Aloft Vaughan Mills at 151 Bass Pro Mills Dr.
Finally, there will an industry seminar on success in acting at 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 17, at Dave and Busters Showroom, 120 Interchange Way.
