This Post Was Written On My Magic Computer, WonderDell

Yeah, and I got my enchanted jock strap!

- Carl Carlson, in response to Homer Simpson’s claims of owning a magic bat.

Perhaps the worst thing about The Natural, the 1984 Robert Redford vehicle, is the sports-talk radio nonsense that it seems to support. In the world of The Natural, striking out isn’t just bad luck or a lack of talent; it’s a moral failing. This is how far too many fans view their local baseball players, and it’s as idiotic in real life as it is on film.

The Natural has a lot in common with your typical misogynistic 80s horror movie in which only the chaste have any hope of surviving. Roy Hobbs is gunned down in the opening scene of the movie for having the temerity to pick up an attractive young lady. Moreover, this incident apparently haunts him for almost two decades as Hobbs both blames himself for being shot (which is idiotic) and feels embarrassed about the situation (which allows him to be blackmailed. “Hey, Hobbs, throw the game or I’ll show the pictures of how you were shot 30 years ago.” Uhm, Ok.). It is no small irony that besting a thinly veiled Babe Ruth figure known as The Whammer, a man who never met a drink or a floozy he didn’t like with apparently no impact on his quality of play, led to this allegedly embarrassing situation.

We will return to the role of women in The Natural in a moment, but first we should discuss magic. There is a place for magic in movies, and even in sports movies, but it helps if there is some internal logic to that magic. Roy makes a magic bat out of a tree that was struck by lightning. This tree has special significance as Roy’s father died underneath it. The story of the bat (known as Wonderboy) is one of the movie's strong points, but that strength is undercut later when other forms of magic seem to trump the magic of lightning and dead fathers. (Wonderboy also inspires the immortal line, “I boned it so it wouldn’t chip.”)

The magic of the bat is apparently shareable, as the team adds lightning-bolt patches to their jerseys which inspire a long winning streak, and the bat itself allows Hobbs to shatter the clock in the scoreboard at Wrigley Field. The New York Knights should have been unstoppable; however, it turns out the magic bat only works if you’re not hanging around with harlots.

One would think that after being shot by a crazy hot chick at the age of 19 that Hobbs would show some skepticism towards being seduced by another one, but he quickly falls for Memo, the coach’s niece despite ol’ Pops warning him that she's “bad luck.” And boy, is she ever. Memo is set up with Roy when Roy won’t take a bribe from “The Judge”, the team’s evil owner. You can tell he’s evil because he sits in an unlit office all day in the dark probably strangling puppies. The Judge wants Roy to throw games so that he can force out Pops the manager, and providing Roy with easy tail was apparently his best idea. It’s probably a good thing he’s not an owner anymore.

The only cure to Memo's curse is Glenn Close who shows up wearing white and being lit by the sunlight in an angelic manner, and takes Roy to the Soda Shop to reconnect. It’s all very symbolic. It’s also a little strange as it turns out they have a son together. (Interestingly, in the book version (at least according to Wikipedia), Roy rebuffs Iris (the Glenn Close character) because she is a grandmother, going so far as to discard a letter from her without reading it because it mentions that she is a grandmother. What a jerk.)

The whole movie is basically a series of slumps and hot streaks based on who Roy is currently hooking up with, scenes of threats from the judge, and Roy looking all stoic and noble.

Eventually he’s poisoned by a donut with makes his old bullet wound start to bleed through his stomach. If that sounded crazy to you, well, just pretend that the poison donut was baked by a guy using sugar from the burned sugar cane field where his father died. That’s what I do.

You’ve certainly seen the final game before along with the iconic scene where the lights explode. Before all of that happens, Roy breaks his bat. In the book version Roy is acting like a dick before the game and when his bat breaks he strikes out. He then goes on a bit of a rampage and (sort of) admits to throwing the game a la Shoeless Joe. In the movie version he breaks his magic bat which – remember – is imbued with the power of both lightning and his dead father, and instead switches to a bat made by the batboy in his spare time. This apparently imbues bats with a similar magical force as Roy crushes an enormous home run even though his poisoned donut bullet hole is profusely bleeding in an entirely non-Christ-like way.

The Natural is not without redeeming features. The soundtrack is pretty solid. Just like Major League, it involves both Randy Newman and an owner who wants to lose on purpose, and you can’t go wrong with Major League. Though hokey, the ending has become a classic cinema moment as has Bump Bailey’s untimely death.

However, all of the good will you may from the feel-good ending, the overcoming of adversity, the dumping of slutty blonds, and the turning down of bribes, will be lost when you get a look at The Natural’s kid throwing a baseball. If Roy Hobbs is The Natural, I think this kid's throwing motion puts paternity into serious doubt.

I mean, where did they find this kid? This makes Kathy Ireland’s field goal kicking in Necessary Roughness seem completely plausible. In the world where the son of the greatest baseball player ever throws like this, the Mighty Ducks trick formations all work, C. Thomas Howell and the guy from 30-Something really can beat the entire 1984 US Olympic Volleyball Team, Rocky doesn’t need to block, and Cole Trickle can really pass like 50 cars in one lap. It’s just terrible.

“The Natural” tries too hard in every respect. It beats you over the head like an old western. Good guys wear white, bad guys wear black, screwing people will get you shot or take away your feel for the curveball, umpires are routinely against the team you’re rooting for, as is the media, and the only reason you ever fail is because you didn’t have the fire or the passion or any of the other nonsense that meatballs complain about on the radio.

That said, there are some good things about The Natural:

1. I think it’s filmed well. There are a ton of memorable shots in The Natural.

2. Tearing the cover off the ball, and throwing it so hard that it gets stuck in the netting.

3. Bump Bailey’s untimely demise.

4. The last scene, if you ignore the stupid bat boy.

5. The fact that Roy succeeds without his magic bat, perhaps implies that there was no magic bat after all.

6. The New York Knights logos and uniforms are actually pretty sweet.

7. Roy hits the reporter during his secret batting practice.

"Field Of Dreams" Sucks

I really have problems with Field of Dreams. I’ll probably come off as the kind of baseball fan that is untouched by nostalgia for the game, but that’s simply not true. The fact is that Field of Dreams attempts to co-opt nostalgia for its own insidious purposes. Where love of the game is earned by fans over time by going to the park and occasionally witnessing some statistically unlikely hit, or diving catch, or some other big moment that may be smaller than a game winning homerun, but just as significant to the observer for personal reasons, Field of Dreams cheapens what is very real by pairing it up with nonsensical garbage.

Field of Dreams is meant to be a tribute to the game, but I see it as leeching rather than enhancing. And I think you can do “baseball fantasy” right. I’m not against fantasy or “magical realism” in general. Mark Helprin’s “Winter’s Tale” is one of my favorite novels, and Michael Chabon’s Summerland isn’t a half bad attempt at a baseball fantasy novel.

So what specifically is wrong with Field of Dreams?

1. At one point in Field of Dreams, Shoeless Joe jokes that they didn’t let Ty Cobb play because he was such a bastard in life. There is a certain irony in Joe Jackson willfully excluding someone else from baseball heaven, even if he was a bastard.

2. Where are the Negro League players? If Joe Jackson is allowed into baseball heaven because of an allegedly unfair exclusion from the game, perhaps Josh Gibson should be allowed in as well? Does Jackie Robinson have to break the Heaven color barrier first?

3. Kevin Costner is apparently riverdancing on this promotional poster. We may never know why.



4. The idea of sacrifice. I dislike sacrificing based on sabrmetric principles. But I also disdain sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice. Sacrifice can be noble if it saves a life or makes the world a better place, but sacrifice for no reason is pointless. Ray acts like a crazy person in the movie, endures Job-like trials, puts his family into financial hardship, all because he hears voices in his cornfield. His faith (and don’t get me started on faith) pays off, but what was the point in putting him and his family though hardship to get a mystical baseball field? God couldn’t have provided some land? I here he does that occasionally. There wasn’t a barren parcel around? There wasn’t some soil with a messed up PH level around that could have been turned into a field? Or maybe a Superfund site? Why was this so hard for Ray and his family? What was gained? If Ray had been familiar with Stephen King’s “Children of the Corn” would this story have happened?

Also, Moonlight Graham is a young ghost when he’s on the field, but when he steps off the field he ages into an elderly doctor and becomes visible to unbelievers. The theological questions are mind-boggling. Do ghosts age? Or do they age only if they let themselves be observed by unbelievers? And what’s bad about being an old ghost? Can you die again? Do you feel pain in your non-body? If Joe Jackson stepped off the field would he become an aged liquor store owner ghost?

5. The belittling of miracles. When the comic book character Superman first came about before the advent of Super Villains, Superman spent most of his time preventing petty theft in Metropolis. He did this even though he was basically invincible and apparently very efficient at converting sunlight into energy. Superman probably would have been put to better use running on a giant hamster wheel and generating electricity, or plowing fields in poor nations or doing any of million other things that would be more valuable than fighting petty crime in what appears to be a fairly well-off city.

Field of Dreams falls into a similar trap. Let’s think about the implications of a baseball field where the spirits of dead baseball players continue to play baseball. What does this tell us about the world? There is an afterlife, apparently. Is there a God? Do the players know? If we plow under an office on Wall Street will the spirits of legendary floor traders start posthumously investing for all to see? What other breaches of the laws of nature are possible with this knowledge? Is creationism actually true? And does God really care so much about baseball that his first recorded miracle in 2000 years involves a haunted baseball field?

And why is no one suitably impressed? Terrence Mann tells Kevin Costner that “people will come” to watch the players. That’s the extent of his vision? You know who else will come? Physicists, priests, photographers, the New York Times, Fox News, and ESPN4 – The All Ghost Sports Channel. And Terrence, I think they’ll plunk down more than a 20 for the privilege. Instead we get “Ray’s farm is saved because he can charge admission for his ghost baseball field! Hopefully we can compete with the Wonder Spot down the road.”

6. “Have a catch”. I’m from the Midwest, and it may very well be that most of the rest of the country asks their dad to “have a catch.” If it is, please feel free to correct me. I have never heard anyone say “have a catch” outside of this movie. Kevin asks at one point, “Can you imagine that? An American boy refusing to have a catch with his father?” There’s only one activity that people routinely “have” and it has little to do with baseball.

7. Assuming that Terrence Mann was allowed to leave the corn again, wouldn’t his subsequent writing on the subject be the most important thing ever in the history of the universe?

8. While much of my analysis has been spiritual so far, is it possible that time travel is involved? Since Joe Jackson reveals the mysterious voice to be Kevin Costner’s own, it is logical to assume that there is super-cool technology in the future. It also seems likely that Costner has caused some type of rift in the space-time continuum which allows these ballplayers to play again. Moreover, it seems likely that this rift will endanger the existence of the universe. There’s probably a good sci-fi horror tale out there about Kevin Costner accidentally destroying the universe in an attempt to “have a catch” with his dead father.

9. The concessions at the Field of Dreams appear to be lacking. Couldn’t he plow under some of his soy bean crop to create the ghosts of dead concession employees and beer vendors?

10. Who are the umpires? I think that an unnamed, undead umpire is a terrifying concept. Especially as he appears to be crooked. Shouldn’t an undead umpire be at least as good as PitchFx?

11. Is there a soccer Field of Dreams out there? Soccer is a bigger sport than baseball worldwide, complete with passionate fans and everything. Or does God just love America and baseball. Perhaps this supports the time travel theory? And do minor sports get their own fields? Is there a plowed under Blockbuster Video somewhere where the ghosts of the greatest badminton players of all time still beat the shuttlecock?

Field of Dream is an ill-conceived mess. Some suspension of disbelief is always involved in the fantasy genre, but this movie seems to be about a complete change in civilization so Kevin Costner and his dad can make up. That, after all, is the conclusion. If the movie is intended as a paean to baseball, shouldn’t the conclusion focus on baseball instead of using baseball and inter-dimensional time-travel as a means to solve Costner’s longstanding familial issues?

Major League gets closer to the spirit of baseball for me. It’s ostensibly a brainless comedy, but it’s far more real, and more evocative than anything in Field of Dreams. As far as I’m concerned Kevin Costner and Roy Hobbes’s son can go and have a catch together and never besmirch baseball again.

Also, Shoeless Joe did it.

The Last Play of “Major League.”

I like the last play in “Major League” quite a bit.

The last play is a tough spot for a sports movie. The big home run is too cliché, as is the big strikeout. Football generally resorts to some mix of crazy laterals (the hook and ladder in “Varsity Blues”, the Annexation of Puerto Rico in “Little Giants”, etc.), or improbably long field goals (the flubber-aided kick in the old-school “Son of Flubber”, “Gus”). Other sports feature the ridiculous (any movie about figure skating or diving), the implausible (The Scout), or a Teen Wolf (Teen Wolf, Teen Wolf 2, How I Met Your Mother). Basketball has the “last second shot”. (Hoosiers, Blue Chips, Teen Wolf again. By the way, the last second dunk by Shaq in Blue Chips is awesome. First of all, you shouldn’t dunk when the clock is running down, because if the ball is still in your hand when the buzzer goes off, it’s no good. Second, if you re-watch Blue Chips you will notice that the dunk takes place in slow motion while the clock runs in real time, almost costing Western the game.)

The last play in Major League is exciting without being cliché, and just plausible enough to remain grounded in reality. (What is not plausible is the Indians’ lineup which apparently has a washed up catcher on an AL team hitting second instead of buried in the 9 hole. In fact, I’m pretty sure the Indians lineup makes no sense at all, but we’ll leave that for another post where we have some time to watch the game more closely.)

Anyway, Willy Hayes is supposed to be one of the fastest guys in the AL, so it’s entirely plausible the he could score from second on a bunt with a big enough head start, especially considering that Yankee first-baseman Clu Haywood does not look to be a “defense first” player. As the AL triple crown leader that year, he’s on the team for his offense. In fact you can really question the Yanks for not DHing Haywood in this game, though perhaps he is more skilled than he appears.

The scouting report on catcher Jake Taylor would indicate a slow player with bad knees, and with two outs a bunt would be supremely unlikely. As such, the third baseman would be playing back, giving Taylor a decent shot to beat it out. (Quick question: Is “The Duke” a lefty or a righty? If he’s falling off towards first base this is an even better idea.) Calling his shot was just icing on the cake for Taylor.

Would a manager call this play? Probably not, but keep in mind that at some point in the 2009 playoffs Derek Jeter tried to bunt with two strikes on him with no one out, so anything is possible. And what if you had, say, Jason Kendall up there in this situation? Sure he might get a hit, but pulling something like this might cross your mind as “not a bad idea.”

The play itself is has all sorts of drama and excitement. The Yankee 3rd baseman makes a great barehanded play on the ball just barely missing a hustling Taylor. (It is the third baseman, right?) Ironically, if Taylor isn’t such a slow player he might just put it in his pocket and hold Hayes at third, or possibly even get him in a rundown. Hayes gets a great jump, and when the bunt draws in the 3rd baseman it removes any need for Hayes to slow up when rounding third, as he has been taken out of the play. The throw from Haywood to home is strong and on target.

Hayes’ slide always bugged me. He has to go outside to avoid the catcher and just catches the plate with the outside of his trail leg, narrowly avoiding a tag, but had he take a more direct route to the plate he would have easily beaten the throw. Still it creates an excellent moment of drama at home. All in all, on this play we have:

1. A stolen base. (Note: I wish they had a better shot of this, because it looks like a really close play. Hayes may have been out.)

2. A “hit and run.”

3. Not one, but two bang/bang plays (1st and home) which lead to dramatic call from both the umpire and from Harry Doyle.

4. A stellar defensive play from the Yankee third baseman.

5. A pitcher intentionally throwing at the batter.

6. A totally unexpected game-winning play with a great call from the booth.

7. We avoid the standard home run or strikeout and we avoid the supernatural.*

It may not be the smartest play ever designed, but the Major League writers did a great job with their conclusion. Too bad about Major League 2.

*Yes, they did both a HR and a dramatic strikeout earlier in the game.