If you build it...
I for sure will come. (If you're talking about baseball)
It’s the most wonderful time of the year! No, I’m not talking about the Holidays, I am talking about baseball! Tis’ the Season around here, refers to baseball, full stop.
I’m not sure where my deep love for the sport came from—we were not a baseball family growing up. None of them are particularly fond of the game. I rarely if ever missed a baseball game in high school, but didn’t go to my first professional game until I was married—it was a Cubs game, at Wrigley, doesn’t get much better than that.
But I love everything about it, always have. So much so, that I took a baseball fiction class one summer in college that remains my favorite class –Kinsella gave a lecture on Shoeless Joe—I still have the notes. (A surprise to no one, I am sure. I swear I am not a hoarder. I just keep the important things…)
But that still doesn’t explain where that fundamental love of the sport came from. Maybe, it was the collection of fantastic baseball movies from the Eighties. There was one in every genre—drama, comedy, romance and mystery.
For drama, you had Eight Men Out in 1988. The story of the Chicago Black Sox, who supposedly took money to throw the 1919 World Series. An ensemble cast, with a few familiar Eighties faces—John Cusack and Charlie Sheen among them.. A solid, somewhat heart wrenching tale of acquitted players who were banned from the game they love. It was heavy on the angst which was key for an Eighties film. We loved our angst back in the day. (still do, I am after all, a Cubs fan…)
For comedy, we had Major League in 1989. The story of an owner trying to tank the Cleveland Indians by stacking the roster with head cases and has-beens so he can move the franchise to Miami. Again, an ensemble case, again Charlie Sheen (how many of you forgot this wasn’t his only baseball movie?) It has that whole underdog-fight-against-the-man vibe that we LOVED in the Eighties. And the jokes hold up, for the most part.
Romance? Bull Durham 1988. And not just the love triangle between Kevin Costner, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon. This is a love story about baseball, and I can prove it. The most iconic speech of the movie sums it up so I don’t have to, though heads up—it’s spicier than I remembered.
Kevin Costner’s answer to Susan Sarandon asks him what he believes in: “Well, I believe in the soul... the cock...the pussy... the small of a woman’s back... the hangin’ curveball... high fiber... good scotch... that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent overrated crap... I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a Constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve, and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days. Goodnight.”
What else needs to be said?
Mystery? Maybe this will be a stretch for some of you, but if you’re looking for a little baseball mystery, I give you, the Natural from 1984. Was Roy’s bat magical? Who shot him and why? How is he able to perform at such a high level at his age? This movie is one of the most beautifully cinematic baseball movies of all times, which is a bonus. Plus Robert Redford, while to old to be in the Brat Pack, was a pretty compelling hero. This movie also had the distinction of playing nonstop on HBO in its early years, which means most of GenX has seen it at least fifty-seven times.
All of these are fantastic. All of them show the complexity of the sport-the beauty, talent, humor and perseverance it takes to play it.
But for the love of the game? None of them holds a candle to Field of Dreams from 1989.
Am I biased? Probably. From the mind of a literary great, written while he taught at the University of Iowa (my alma mater) and filmed in Iowa? Yes. All of those things are factors. But that movie just really gets to the heart of baseball. How it connects families and communities. Kevin Costner (again, though he isn’t a player in this one.) Is perfectly cast, and don’t get me started about James Earl Jones. That voice! That sly humor. That speech!
How can you not be romantic about baseball?
(I know, I know. Moneyball isn’t a baseball movie from the Eighties, but it’s still pretty great…)
Have you had the pleasure of reading the brilliant writers in the Iowa Writer’s Collaborative? They write on a variety of topics, all engaging and informative. Check it out here.
What was your favorite baseball movie, 80s or otherwise…