I still remember the theater: Green Acres Triplex in Valley Stream. I remember it was a matinee. I had to look up 4:35 because I would have been at school for the 2 o’clock showing. And I remember that day, Thursday, June 7, 1984, because the next day, my friends and I joined millions of people who lined up across the country to see “Ghostbusters” on its opening night.
I watched this movie alone because I couldn’t invite any of my sports-loving friends to watch it with me.
That’s how I discovered The Natural.
In the spring of 1984, it was impossible, almost illegal, to get through a weekend without spending a night at the movie theater, as movie after movie classic was playing in various triple-deck, quadruple-deck and multiplex cinemas across Long Island (and probably everywhere in the world, but the world to me in June 1984 was Nassau County).
If you were just looking to binge watch (the word “binge watch” hadn’t been invented yet) and theater-hop (was “hopping” a thing back then?), over the course of a few days that week you could see Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Sixteen Candles, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Splash, Police Academy, Footloose and Romancing the Stone. And that was before Ghostbusters and Gremlins were released simultaneously on June 8th.
The Natural was already doing pretty well, staying at number one for two weeks after its release on May 11th. But it’s easy to lose track of this movie in the whirlwind of blockbuster movies. And somehow, I’d missed it for a month. Also, my favorite English teacher had recommended this book by Bernard Malamud to me, so I couldn’t wait to watch it. It was one of a series he’d informally recommended to me (starting, naturally, with The Catcher in the Rye), but it wasn’t on my reading list curriculum.
I was easily fooled. I was ready to be blown away.
I was shocked.
And 40 years later, I still do.
Forty years later, I believe what sports needs most is a sports movie that will wow audiences in the theater, make them want to see it a second time, and give them a visceral, yet almost inexplicable, understanding of why sports matter so much to us.
And the funny thing is:
One of the great joys of this job is that I’ve had some interesting pen pals over the years. One of them is Barry Levinson, the director of “The Natural” (along with “Diner,” “Rain Man,” “Bugsy,” the list goes on). Whenever we’d talk together, while he was gushing about the Orioles and the Ravens, I’d always tire him out with questions about Shrevy and Boogie. And I once asked him a question that’s been on my mind ever since I first saw “The Natural” on June 7, 1984:
Keep in mind, I read the book first, and many first-time readers had the same problem. In the book, Roy Hobbs strikes out at the end. Did Levinson have a hard time changing the ending?
(Spoiler alert: Hobbs never strikes out in the movie.)
And Barry Levinson looked at me as if I had suggested that Brooks Robinson would have been better at catcher, that John Unitas would have been a superior pulling guard.
“Forget that I spent two hours on Roy Hobbs,” he said. “I just spent two hours. Watch Robert Redford“…Do you really want to see Robert Redford strike out?”
Of course we don’t want that to happen. We don’t want Robert Redford to strike out against Nebraska farm boy John Rhodes, we don’t want Carlos Beltran to strike out against Adam Wainwright, we don’t want Reggie Jackson to strike out against Bob Welch.
Sports in real life are, let’s be honest, an overdose of reality. The Knicks lose Game 7. The Rangers lose Game 6. The Mets lose six games in a month despite leading after eight innings. The Yankees have lost 19 times this year, according to the standings, and it’s hard to remember one of them. The Jets have been the Jets for 56 uninterrupted years. There’s nothing we can do about real life.
So Hollywood balances the books. You want Roy Hobbs to take down the light tower, and he does it. You want Jimmy Chitwood to land the finishing blow, and he does it. You want Reg Dunlop and the Charlestown Chiefs to win the Federal League, and they do it (though they take a different path than most of the others). You want Rocky to win the belt, and he does it in the end. You want Paul Crews and the Mean Machine to beat the guard, and they do it. You want Loudon Swain to get the pinfall shot, and he does it.
yes.
Call the ending corny (it is), sentimental (it totally is), or contrived (every time), but it’s still almost always better than reality, where DeSean Jackson wins a walk-off punt return or the Pacers shoot 117 percent in Game 7. We get through it all for a little happiness. Hollywood makes the process a little easier. Yes, we need another Roy Hobbs. Times two.
