Kierst is protective of his posters. When he leaves Florida each spring, he turns off the lights and locks the door to his office knowing no one will enter it again until he returns in the fall. At Citi Field, the lights automatically turn off when he is out of the room for 10 minutes to ensure the posters’ colors don’t dull.
“Some have holes or dents in the middle of them, and that’s fine. I’m O.K. with that,” he said. “I just really don’t like them to fade.”
Bedrooms double as showrooms in his house, as well. When his son, Kyle, was still sleeping in a crib, his wall was decorated with posters from “Rookie of the Year,” “Angels in the Outfield” and “The Sandlot” — a clear ’90s theme. In his home office, he also has a poster from the 1969 film “A Boy Named Charlie Brown,” with Peanuts characters gathered on the field.
“Technically probably not a baseball movie,” he said, “but it’s a cute poster.”
Kierst can be as subjective as an umpire about which movies belong in the genre. To him, “Brewster’s Millions,” the 1985 movie starring Richard Pryor as a minor league pitcher, is not a baseball movie. But a poster of another Pryor film, “The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings,” hangs on his office wall in Florida.
“There are some borderline ones,” he said. “For me, a baseball movie is a baseball movie.”
A holy grail exists. It is “The Pride of the Yankees,” the 1942 biopic that stars Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig. On eBay recently, he said, an original full-size movie poster was selling for $7,995.
“I’m not going to go that high,” Kierst said. “I would like to, but I’m not going to go that high. That’s crazy.”