A Visit of His Own

Slotnick’s love of baseball dates back to his earliest diamond memories.

“I played in Little League when I was a kid and I was terrible, but I loved it,” he recalled. “It’s that thing where anything is possible – where I can probably do it because I don’t have to be extra tall, I don’t have to be extra big or extra strong. And yet you can’t. Because when you really see a baseball player up close they’re a little taller, they’re a little bigger, they’re a little stronger. It’s elusive, but it’s got enough possibility. I think it’s the possibility that attracts me to the game.”

Born and raised in Chicago, the lifelong Cubs fan had to suffer through one of the most infamous moments in franchise history before finally being able to celebrate the team’s first championship in 108 years.

“I was at the ‘Bartman game’ (Game 6 of the 2003 NLCS vs. the Florida Marlins), which was crazy. The energy outside the ballpark before that game was amazing and palpable,” said Slotnick, who arrived at the Hall of Fame wearing a jacket celebrating Weeghman Park, the original name of Wrigley Field. “I can remember people around me were saying, ‘Five more outs, five more outs.’ I kept on thinking to myself, ‘Just be quiet.’ And then the energy was sucked out of the whole place. And it wasn’t just the Bartman play – there were so many other things that went wrong – but the story was how things can change in an instant.

“And then in 2016, the year the Cubs finally won, I couldn’t attend any of the World Series games because I was doing a play, The Front Page, in New York,” he added. “From offstage, though, I would run down to where the dressing rooms were and there was a television on and I’d watch that. And I had a scooter, so I scooted home afterwards with my telephone listening to the radio in my backpack. It was insane.”

With more than 50 movie and television credits to his name, Slotnick was a series regular on The Single Guy, had recurring roles on Boston Public, Alias, Nip/Tuck and The Good Wife, was a voice actor Family Guy numerous times, and appeared in guest spots on The Nanny, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Entourage, Ghost Whisperer, Boston Legal, The Office, Psych, Blue Bloods and the recent reboot of Murphy Brown.

But it was the 1992 baseball blockbuster A League of Their Own – where he played a fan of Rosie O’Donnell’s character – that gave Slotnick his big break.

“A League of Their Own was my first movie and it was a great experience,” Slotnick said. “I worked for a week on that and director Penny Marshall really liked us, me and this other guy who kinda played brothers, and she asked us to come back for another week. A lot of people still recognize me from that. That was really my first acting break. And everyone was great. That was a really fun experience to do that movie. And it’s a great movie.”