“Booze and broads. Booze and broads. You can’t live like that and play baseball. No man alive can.”
—Miller Huggins
“I can.”
—Babe Ruth, The Babe
There is both anger and frustration in Yankees manager Miller Huggins’ voice. The Great Bambino, the greatest player the game has ever seen, has arrived late for another Spring Training. Soaked with booze, overweight, and with the swagger of a man who knows full well he is the greatest player the game has ever seen, Babe Ruth has yet to learn the lessons that will eventually transform him into a true baseball hero. For now, values such as hard work, humility and sobriety are not among the Babe’s repertoire. And his path to Cooperstown will not be easy.
In Chapter 3, we examined the principal vision of baseball films, that of an ideal community characterized by caring, nurturance, support, equality, and solidarity; a community in which players/citizens willingly place the good of the team/community above their own interests, and in doing so achieve their own individual fulfillment and happiness. In this chapter, we explore the characteristics of the ideal individual within that exemplary community, the cinematic baseball hero. For, in the end, it is through the collective commitment and efforts of its individual citizens that the baseball film’s idyllic community is achieved. Consistent with that idyllic vision of community, therefore, baseball films present prototypical icons who exemplify the virtues advocated by baseball’s ideologists since the early 1900s. These films offer us images of the hero that was meant to be; a hero who lives the values of hard work, humility, and purity of body and soul.
John Goodman (left) as Babe Ruth in The Babe (Universal Pictures, 1992).
Given baseball’s perceived role of teaching youngsters the “traits that would be important in the business of life” (Riess, 1980, p. 22), it is not surprising that a commitment to the values and benefits of hard work has been central to baseball’s ideology, nor that cinematic portrayals of the baseball hero have often served as a celebration and reaffirmation of the American work ethic. In both subtle and not so subtle ways, audiences are reminded that the true baseball hero/citizen achieves his greatness only through hard work and dedication. The Pride of the Yankees (1942), a film which has served as the template for baseball films ever since its first release, provides one of the more blatant celebrations of the heroic work ethic. Lou Gehrig’s commitment to hard work is documented by a montage of newspaper headlines chronicling his minor league season in Hartford: “Gehrig Tireless Worker Says Manager,” “Human Dynamo Never Takes It Easy,” “Strives for Perfection By Endless Effort.” Later in the film, Gehrig attributes the early symptoms of the illness that will kill him to a need for greater effort. “You can’t try too hard,” he tells a coach. “I need a lot of work.”
The importance of hard work is a lesson young Roy Hobbs (The Natural, 1984) learns early in his life. The Natural opens with a scene of the idyllic pastoral vision, a boy and his dad playing catch. We see the boy running through waste-high waves of golden grain to catch a soaring fly, shattering a board on the side of the barn with a fastball—dead center in the circle his father has drawn for him to aim at—and tossing the ball back and forth with Dad in front of the tractor. Gently, approvingly, with just enough of a hint of underlying threat to insure his message will haunt Roy throughout the rest of his life, the father tells the son, “You’ve got a gift Roy, but it’s not enough. You’ve got to develop yourself. Rely too much on your own gift and you’ll fail.” It is a message not lost on Roy, who, years later, will leave his sickbed on the eve of his final game to take batting practice.
The importance of a never-failing commitment to hard work is also firmly established in Bull Durham (1988); although considerably more subtly. After walking out on love interest Annie Savoy early in the film, Crash Davis, the minor-league journeyman who knows he is near the end of his career, pauses in his melancholy wanderings to pull a cardboard tube from a dumpster and practice his batting swing in the reflection of a hardware store window—a quiet testimony to the true hero’s obsession to always work at being the best. The message in these films is clear. One’s individual talents, no matter how great they may be, are not sufficient to insure success.
A similar lesson emerges in both cinematic portrayals of the person many consider to be the greatest talent the game has ever known, Babe Ruth. In The Babe Ruth Story (1948), the audience learns that it is hard work and a rededication to the game that revive the Babe’s fading career at age 32. When he is reminded by his mentor, Brother Matthias, that “the crippled children you visit so often ... never give up,” Ruth stages a dramatic comeback. And, after his final game as a player, the Babe takes a Boston rookie aside and passes along the wisdom of hard work, instructing him, “Give (baseball) everything you’ve got and baseball will be good to you.” Almost fifty years later, even the less flattering re-make of the Sultan of Swat’s career (The Babe, 1992) features scenes of an overweight and struggling Ruth returning to his Massachusetts farm during the off-season, where he works out, chops wood, and tempers his hedonistic lifestyle, enabling him to revitalize his career.
Resurrection through hard, honest toil is also a principle theme of Mr. Baseball (1992). When fading superstar Jack Elliot quits attempting to get by on his past accomplishments and talents, begins taking the advice of his manager, and dedicates himself to getting back in shape, he recovers his past form and starts to hit again. As in many baseball films, evidence of his newfound work ethic is dramatized through scenes of the born-again athlete working out, running up and down stadium stairs, and running wind sprints until he is on the point of collapse. It is not until Elliot regains both the discipline and the physical conditioning that comes through hard work that he is able to begin hitting again. Similarly, only when “Downtown” Anderson is humbled by being sent back to the South Carolina Buzz after a disastrous, short-lived trip to the majors, and commits himself to the hard work and daily grind—the “sweat, sweat, and more sweat”—of really learning to hit, is he able to revive his career (Major League: Back to the Minors, 1998).
In addition to developing and sustaining one’s natural abilities, a commitment to hard work is also presented as a means of achieving the respect of one’s teammates. Lou Gehrig, of course, was revered by his teammates as well as fans as “the iron horse” of baseball (The Pride of the Yankees, 1942). In Mr. Baseball (1992), when Jack Elliot finally does commit himself to hard work, he regains the respect of his fellow Chunichi Dragons, who join him in running wind sprints as a means of showing their support and providing encouragement to him. As bat-boy for the Bisons, young Christy Cooper quickly gains the affection and admiration of the team with his hard work and enthusiasm, winning the ultimate compliment from a ball-player: “You’re all right. You’ve got a lot of hustle” (The Kid from Left Field, 1953). Later, as manager of the Bisons, Christy stays up late into the night, spending long hours developing strategies, to the point that he finally becomes ill and physically collapses. In Major League (1989), prima donna third-baseman Roger Dorn is able to win back the respect of his teammates, as well as regain his form, only by taking ground ball after ground ball in extended workout sessions.
In baseball’s morality plays, the rewards of hard work are often made more dramatic through the portrayal of the humble beginnings of the dedicated, hard-working baseball hero. Babe Ruth is shown as a boy laboring in the family saloon on the rough Baltimore waterfront. Mistreated by his father and in trouble with the law, Babe leaps at the chance to return to a Baltimore orphanage, where he will be allowed to play baseball (The Babe Ruth Story, 1948). The Pride of the Yankees (1942) opens with a scene in which young Lou Gehrig, the poor son of struggling immigrants, plays sandlot ball in a declining New York neighborhood. When he breaks a merchant’s window with a long home run, the Gehrigs cannot pay the $18.50 to fix it. It is through hard work, together with their natural, God-given talents, that these cinematic heroes are able to rise above their impoverished beginnings. Similarly, Monty Stratton is depicted walking several miles to and from games. And, when he finally gets home in early evening, after pitching nine innings and walking the several miles home, he finishes the chores on the farm where he lives with his widowed mother (The Stratton Story, 1949). In The Winning Team (1952) Grover Cleveland Alexander is shown working as a telephone lineman, trying to scrape together enough money to buy a farm and get married, and pitching in local games whenever he can. Perhaps not as dramatically as in these earlier films, the notion that hard work can serve to elevate individuals from their limited beginnings is also validated in Major League (1989). Motivated by the machinations of evil owner Rachel Phelps, the various misfits, losers and ex-cons who now comprise the Cleveland Indians are shown in a series of scenes buckling down and working hard to become a real team, and exact their revenge on Phelps, by winning the American League East. In the end, through their solidarity, commitment, and hard work, this team of misfits and losers does just that.
While baseball films generally adhere to Lou Gehrig’s philosophy that “you can’t try too hard,” there are some notable exceptions. In Fear Strikes Out (1957), for example, driven by an ambitious father, Jimmy Piersall works relentlessly throughout his entire childhood to become a major leaguer. The constant pressure eventually leads to a mental breakdown. And, as we shall explore more fully in Chapter 5, a number of films of the 1980s and 1990s tempered the emphasis on a strong work ethic with an equally strong emphasis on the idea that baseball is supposed to be fun, and that players should have a good time playing the game. Nevertheless, the lesson of baseball films is clear. It is the lesson taught throughout the culture of industrial America; America and baseball are fields of opportunity. If one works hard enough, she or he can rise from the slums of Baltimore to the life of an America hero.
“Aw, cut it out.”
—Babe Ruth, The Babe, Ruth Story, 1948
If, as Crash Davis tells Nuke LaLoosh (Bull Durham, 1988), baseball players are supposed to play the game with fear and arrogance, to remain cocky even when they’re getting beat, baseball heroes are also expected to be paragons of humility. The cockiness and arrogance referred to by the aging Durham Bulls catcher is contained and disciplined; the confidence tempered by a humble recognition of one’s place in the larger scheme of things. And, by the standards of the real world of modern baseball, at least, even the confidence, cockiness and arrogance of cinematic baseball heroes are nothing short of genteel. You will never see a baseball film hero holding a freshly-stolen second base above his head shouting “I am the greatest.” Nor is there is any gloating over beaten opponents; no high-fiving, forearm-bashing, finger-pointing, homerun strolls, or home plate dances. Such is not the way of heroes. The true baseball hero, these films tell us, possesses a quiet, dignified humility.
The Pride of the Yankees’ (1942) Lou Gehrig is the proto-type of humility, as well as every other heroic characteristic, as the film’s prologue makes clear, describing Gehrig as “a lesson in simplicity and modesty to the youth of America.” Later in the film, Lou’s pal, sportswriter Sam Blake, lectures a colleague (and cynics in the audience) about the value of Lou’s character: “Let me tell you about heroes. I’ve covered a lot of ’em and I’m saying Gehrig is the best of ’em. No front page scandals, no daffy excitements, no horn piping ... but a guy who does his job and nothing else.” Lou Gehrig epitomizes the myth of the common man.
In similar fashion, The Natural (1984) proclaims the humility of fictional protagonist Roy Hobbs. The narrator of a newsreel reports, “although embarrassed by praise and shy of the press, Hobbs is always there for an autograph.” And, not only does the modest Hobbs never display untoward delight in his own personal accomplishments, he noticeably bristles at the conceit of others and invariably triumphs over the arrogant antagonist. Likewise, Bull Durham’s (1988) Crash Davis is also offended by what he considers excessive or inappropriate arrogance displayed by other players. And, like Lou Gehrig and Roy Hobbs, Davis shies away from publicity about his own personal accomplishments. He refuses publicity for hitting a minor-league record 247 home runs, calling it “a dubious honor.”
This sense of quiet humility characterizes nearly all of baseball’s cinematic legends. Despite being the greatest player in the game, Washington Senator Joe Hardy (Damn Yankees, 1958) remains extremely polite and reserved; his newfound status as the Senators’ savior never goes to his head. (Perhaps selling one’s soul to the devil encourages an extra degree of humility and sense of place in the larger scheme of things.) Similarly, Grover Cleveland Alexander (The Winning Team, 1952) displays a gentle, often joking, typically Reaganesque humility throughout the film. In one scene, he faces a struggling Rogers Hornsby. Hitless all game, Hornsby is probably going to be sent down to the minors if he goes 0 for 4. Alexander, whose Philadelphia Phillies are well ahead, floats a fat one to Hornsby, allowing him to get a hit. His own achievements are not the only things that matter to Alexander; a striking contrast to the image presented by many modern real-life players, who often appear concerned about nothing else.
Humility comes less easily for Babe Ruth, however, who spends the better part of The Babe Ruth Story (1948) and The Babe (1992) learning the virtues and rewards of humility. In the 1948 version, for example, the initially arrogant and undisciplined Great Bambino is a constant aggravation to manager Miller Huggins, who even suspends Ruth for two weeks during the 1925 season. It is only as Ruth acquires, through bouts with alcohol, age and baseball’s institutions, a more humbled evaluation of himself and a subsequent concern for the feelings and well-being of others, that his public persona shifts from one of admired player to that of beloved American icon. Indeed, it is the learning of humility that salvages the Babe’s professional and personal life, and elevates him to true heroic status. Thus, at the end of the 1927 season, and the film, a now matured Ruth has resurrected his career by hitting a record-setting 60 home runs. And when a dying Miller Huggins says to Ruth—who is at this point still unaware of his manager’s condition—“Babe, I never dared tell you this before. But you’re the gosh-darndest, greatest ballplayer that ever entered the game,” the now humble and heroic Ruth responds with the natural modesty of a true baseball hero. “Aw, cut it out,” he gushes. This is a Babe Ruth we can now all truly admire.
A similar process of enlightenment occurs in Little Big League (1994), when young Billy Heywood, owner/manager of the Minnesota Twins, begins taking himself much too seriously, eventually becoming the same sort of mean, arrogant, egocentric manager that he had earlier fired. Soon no one—his team, friends, not even his mother—wants to be around him. It is only when he recognizes what he has become, and is able to regain his humility, and the easy-going commitment that baseball should be fun, that he is able to regain the love and admiration of those around him. It is only then that the slumping Twins resume their winning ways. Humbled by the murder of rival Juan Primo, which “puts it all in perspective,” San Francisco Giants’ slugger Bobby Rayburn regains his hitting form, as he comes to realize true fulfillment comes from the quiet joys of family, not through the arrogant power trips of a baseball prima-donna (The Fan, 1996). As mentioned earlier, before he can commit himself to becoming a true major-league hitter, Major Leagues: Back to the Minors’ (1998) “Downtown” Anderson must first become humbled by failure. Once he accepts that he still has much to learn, apologizes to manager Gus Cantrell for his arrogance, and dedicates himself to learning what Cantrell has to teach, Anderson is able to fulfill the promise and potential of his natural ability.
In Back to the Minors (1998) and Mr. 3000 (2005), Leon Curtis and Stan Ross are presented as caricatures of the contemporary egoistical, trash-talking sports superstar. In Back to the Minors, Curtis, the Minnesota Twins slugger who has proclaimed himself a religion, is finally put in his place, backing down in a confrontation at the mound with a minor league pitcher. In Mr. 3000, Stan Ross eventually does learn the lesson of humility, thus achieving things he never had before—the respect and admiration of his teammates, true love, and election to the Hall of Fame.
Learning the lessons of humility is one of the most common themes in baseball films, as we witness the growth of the talented player into the full bloom of a true baseball hero. It is the process of coming to learn that talent is not enough, and that it is such virtues as humility which enable the individual with great, natural talent, to fully develop his or her abilities, and to achieve true heroic stature. Because of the centrality of humility in baseball’s moral code, in nearly all baseball films, the hero either possesses a strong sense of humility, or acquires it in the process of becoming a “true” baseball hero. In only a few films are we presented with central characters who seem genuinely arrogant or conceited, and who apparently maintain those characteristics throughout the film. In these cases, that self-centeredness is typically tempered by other characteristics or circumstances. In both Elmer the Great (1933) and The Pride of St. Louis (1952), for example, the central characters—Cubs’ pitcher Elmer Kane and Cardinals’ pitcher Dizzy Dean—are not at all shy about assuring everyone around them that they are the best. Elmer Kane, for example, who has just arrived from Gentryville, Illinois, where he delivered groceries and played for a semi-pro team, stalks off the playing field during spring training, shouting “I ain’t gonna play with no rookies,” when he learns the only players in camp to this point are the rookies, like himself. Dizzy Dean assures the St. Louis Cardinals that they are making a big mistake when they decide to start him out in the minors, rather than bringing him straight to the major leagues after signing him (The Pride of St. Louis, 1952). This confident braggadocio is a characteristic both players maintain throughout the film. In both cases, however, their cockiness and apparent conceit is presented as part of their country charm and naivete. Both are of “rural” backgrounds, in the purest sense of the word. And both are presented as endearing, likable characters. While Kane’s conceit initially offends some of his teammates, they come to see that his behavior is more a result of a lack of refinement, and apparently forgive him for his initial abrasiveness. Dean’s lack of humility does not seem to offend anyone in The Pride of St. Louis (1952). Quite the contrary, Dean’s country-style self assuredness quickly endears him to his future wife, Patricia.
Typically, however, a cinematic baseball hero’s apparent lack of humility is explained away as a protective cover for other, more forgivable personal weaknesses. In The Big Leaguer (1953), pitcher Bobby Bronson initially appears extremely arrogant and self-centered. He is the kind of kid the director of the Giants’ tryout camp, Hans Lobert, knows needs to be taught a lesson. In the end, however, Bronson’s arrogance is recognized as a cover for his own insecurity. We learn what kind of person he really is during a crucial intra-squad game, in which Bronson is getting hit pretty hard. Adam Paluchek, the one real major league prospect in camp, realizes this, and has decided to let Bronson strike him out. After Paluchek takes two pitches right down the middle, Bronson senses what is going on, and knocks Paluchek down with a high, tight fastball. This apparently brings Paluchek to his senses. As Paluchek gets up, he quietly says, “Thank you, Bobby,” and hits the next pitch out of the park. Bronson would not allow Paluchek to sacrifice his chances for him, even if it meant he, Bobby, would probably be cut himself. Indeed, he is cut. But, as he walks out the door, even Hans Lobert comments to one of his coaches, “You know Mac, I might have just booted one.” In Fear Strikes Out (1957), Jimmy Piersall’s apparent arrogance, evidenced by his constant taunting and riding of his Red Sox teammates for not working hard enough or not playing as well as he thinks they should, turns out to be the early manifestations of a mental breakdown, brought on by his own father’s treating him the same way throughout his childhood.
The most notable example of a lack of humility, however, is represented in the film biography of one of baseball’s cockiest and least humble superstars, Ty Cobb (Cobb, 1996). There is little endearing about the Ty Cobb depicted in this film, who is portrayed as a dirty, vicious player, as a racist and misogynist, and as generally deranged in all respects. No one in this film likes Ty Cobb. Even when the dying Cobb tries to visit his sister near the end of the film, she pulls her curtains and will not allow him in the house. Cobb is presented as the antithesis of everything a true baseball hero should be. Indeed, the central purpose of the film is to document that the real Ty Cobb was nothing like the heroic image of him that has prevailed in much of the popular media. But, even here, Cobb’s poisonous personality is explained as a result of childhood traumas; seeing his mother’s lover kill his father, and then lying to protect his mother in court. If, for whatever reason, a baseball hero turns out to be something less than the humble, virtuous ideal, there must be a good reason.
Such depictions of a less than humble central character are rare, however. Overwhelmingly, the central characters of baseball films reflect the quiet, genuine humility characteristic of the true baseball hero. True arrogance is typically reserved for minor characters who serve as foils for the hero’s righteousness, such as the bit-player Barnett who, extremely confident he will make it to the show, is meanly derisive of players who get cut. His manager calls him a “pain in the ass” (Ed, 1996). In Major League II (1994), the villainous slugger Jack Parkman’s vicious arrogance makes him immediately disliked by fellow players, as well as by film audiences. Pitcher Eric Van Leemer’s self-centered arrogance is held up as the antithesis of the baseball way in Summer Catch (2000), and eventually gets him into enough trouble that he is kicked off the team.
Baseball’s cultural vision attempts to strike a balance between the values of individualism and community. Consistent with this ideological project, the humility exhibited by the cinematic baseball hero serves to temper the “excesses” of individualism which may accompany star status, and to reassert the primacy of the larger community. Despite their own personal accomplishments true baseball heroes recognize that, ultimately, the good of their team, the game, and the fans matters more than their individual achievements. Consistent with baseball’s emphasis on community, it is a humility which reminds them—as it serves to remind other citizens/workers throughout American culture—that the good of the organization/team comes first, and that what is good for the team is, in the end, what is best for the individual hero, as well. Humility, along with hard work, baseball films repeatedly tell us, is the stuff real baseball heroes are made of. Not to mention an heroic level of moral discipline.
“I was a fool. A grand-slam, double-barreled fool. Breaking training, hitting the bottle, you don’t stay up there very long. And by the time I learned my lesson, I was out.
—Barney Wiles, The Stratton Story, 1949
The ideology of baseball places considerable emphasis upon the game’s role as a purveyor of strong moral values to American youth. As Riess (1980) has noted in his review of the historical development of baseball’s ideology, boys during the early 1900s were encouraged to model the behavior of their baseball heroes, who were presumably clean-living out of necessity, since a strong mind and body were critical for continued success. Despite the reality of drinking, venereal disease and other violations of the game’s moral code, pulp novelists and the press portrayed baseball players as virtuous men, who abstained from such vices as smoking, drinking and carousing with wild women. Young boys were offered such heroes as the hard-working Ty Cobb, and the wholesome Christy Mathewson. According to Riess, the clean-living Mathewson, who “started playing ball at the YMCA and almost never pitched on the Sabbath” (p. 23) was particularly idealized. Following his death from tuberculosis in 1932, Commonweal wrote,
Certainly no other pitcher ever loomed so majestically in young minds, quite overshadowing George Washington and his cherry tree or even that transcendent model of boyhood, Frank Merriwell ... Such men have a very real value above and beyond the achievements of brawn and sporting skill. They realize and typify in a fashion the ideal of sport—clean power in the hands of a clean and vigorous personality [cited in Riess, 1980, p. 24].
Given the centrality of clean-living and moral conduct within baseball’s cultural vision, it is not surprising that baseball films reflect a moral code clearly Puritan in origin. The evil of such moral vices as drinking and womanizing are illuminated in no uncertain terms. And the linkage between moral virtue and heroic status is clearly established. As noted earlier, The Pride of the Yankees’ (1942) Lou Gehrig serves as the exemplary cinematic baseball hero; the ideal to which others aspire. Lipsky (1981) characterizes Gary Cooper’s portrayal of Lou Gehrig as that of an idol with no known vices or deficiencies; a good son, good student, good husband, and good provider.
Other cinematic heroes, however, have not been so blessed. For many of them, overcoming their moral transgressions has been a long and difficult process; part of the long path toward the status of hero. Babe Ruth, for example, liked to party. In the original, more timid version of his life story (The Babe Ruth Story, 1948), Ruth’s excessive drinking is lightly broached. There is one crucial scene, however, in which a joyful Babe who, on his way into a children’s hospital to deliver gifts after having had a bit too much Christmas cheer, is reproached for his transgressions by moral savior and future wife Claire. She attempts to shame the Sultan of Swat into moral virtue by reminding him of his position as role model for America’s youth. “How you act, they act,” she tells him. Otherwise, Ruth’s penchant for late-nights and lots of beer is more inferred than directly stated. And, his reputation for womanizing is never mentioned. Nevertheless, without dwelling on the issue, the impression is clearly established that Ruth had a tendency to enjoy his nightlife—and that he needed to change. But, it is not just the drinking that threatens Ruth’s career and future heroic status. In this film, his lifestyle is presented as part of a larger pattern of irresponsibility and lack of discipline. It is only when Ruth reforms himself, by giving up this way of life, and rededicating himself to the game and the hard work it demands, that he is able to revive his sagging career and find true fulfillment through his marriage to Claire, who wanted little to do with baseball’s greatest player ever, until he had matured.
The Babe (1992), nearly 50 years later, portrays Ruth’s violations of baseball’s moral code much more graphically. Unlike the “pulp novelists and obsequious press” cited by Riess (1980, p. 23), who, during the early decades of this century portrayed all ballplayers as paragons of moral virtue, at least some film makers of the 1990s were more willing to bare the less virtuous sides of baseball’s heroes. Thus, the 1992 biography of Babe Ruth is much more open in its depictions of Ruth’s drunkenness, gambling, and adultery. But, although more graphic in its depiction, the message in 1992 was still much the same as it was in 1948. It is only when Babe Ruth finally realizes the truth in manager Miller Huggins’ advice, that no one can “live like that and play baseball,” that he is able to revive his career and, more importantly, find the peace and fulfillment he has been seeking. And while the 1992 version of Ruth’s life and career is much more direct in representing his moral transgressions, it is also much more direct in providing an explanation for those transgressions, attributing Ruth’s behavior to a desperate grasping for family and community, the result of his own childhood abandonment.
Similar to Babe Ruth, fictional New York Knights superstar Roy Hobbs also finds his career threatened by his descent into the night life (The Natural, 1984). Having made a miraculous return to the game at age 35, Hobbs is literally knocking the cover off of baseballs, and leading the Knights to the pennant, until he becomes involved with the unsavory Memo Paris, and begins regularly breaking curfews as he frequents nightclubs with her. Scenes of Hobbs and Paris spending their nights on the town drinking champagne, among other things, interspersed with scenes of a tired Roy Hobbs slumping, make clear that not only is Hobbs jeopardizing his own career, but that he is also taking the Knights down with him. And, this is not the first time Hobbs’ career has been jeopardized by temptation. It was his attraction to the mysterious and seductive Harriet Bird, sixteen years earlier, that brought a sudden and tragic end to his baseball career then. As with Ruth, it is only when Hobbs abandons his nightlife, and refocuses his attention and energy on the game, that he is able to regain his earlier abilities. He, too, has learned that booze, broads and baseball don’t mix.
While for Babe Ruth and Roy Hobbs the demon rum is a recreational temptation that eventually impairs their abilities and threaten their careers, for others, alcohol is a refuge, a place to hide and seek solace when their careers appear to be at a premature end. During an early scene in The Pride of St. Louis (1952), Dizzy Dean tells his future wife Pat that he doesn’t smoke or drink—he quit moonshine when he was 7. Unfortunately, when a series of injuries finally result in an early end to the Diz’s career, Dean seeks consolation through drinking and gambling. It isn’t until his wife finally leaves him that Dean pulls himself back together, quitting his drinking and gambling, and beginning a second career as a baseball broadcaster.
Similarly, when his career is threatened by recurring double-vision and fainting spells, the result of being hit in the head by a ball in his first Triple-A game, Grover Cleveland Alexander (The Winning Team, 1952) also resorts to the bottle for comfort. His drinking, of course, only compounds the problem, as everyone attributes his dizziness and blackouts to alcoholism. Alexander’s career comes to an end, and he ends up in a carnival sideshow. Thanks to the support of his wife Aimee, who had earlier left him because of his drinking, and friend Rogers Hornsby, Alexander is eventually able to make a comeback, leading the Cardinals to victory in the 1926 World Series.
Whether the baseball hero drinks for enjoyment, or for solace and escape, the effects are usually severe, threatening his career, his marriage, and his life. In films prior to the 1980s, there is usually no middle ground. Most cinematic heroes, such as Lou Gehrig (The Pride of the Yankees, 1942) do not drink at all. Those who do drink serve to impart the moral lesson by exhibiting the consequences of drinking. Inevitably, alcohol and failure, both professional and personal, are intertwined. For those who fail to take this lesson seriously, there is the haunting specter of Barney Wiles, an ex-major league catcher, now a disheveled drifter sneaking rides in boxcars (The Stratton Story, 1949). The morality lesson is unambiguous. Don’t let this happen to you.
In the films of the 1980s and beyond, however, reflecting a greater social tolerance and acceptance of drinking, as well as the realities of the real world of baseball itself, portrayals of drinking have been somewhat looser, with occasional scenes of ballplayers drinking socially and in moderation, and without tragic consequences. In A League of Their Own (1992), for example, the Rockford Peaches sneak out to a speak-easy, to enjoy a beer and some dancing, with no disastrous results. Bull Durham’s (1988) Crash Davis enjoys an occasional beer or glass of scotch, as do some of the Cleveland Indians (Major League, 1989; Major League II, 1994). However, even in contemporary films, ballplayers are rarely shown as drinking to the point of intoxication. And, when they do, the portrayal is critical. In Cobb (1994), the vicious and psychotic Ty Cobb drinks constantly; just one more symptom of his completely diseased personality. And in The Slugger’s Wife (1985), when Braves slugger Darryl Palmer’s wife leaves him, as a result of his unwillingness to allow her to pursue her own career as a pop singer, he immediately gets sloppily drunk. After spending some time commiserating with his dog—telling it not to fall for some good-looking cocker spaniel and to never get married, because all women care about is their careers—he goes to the stadium to practice his hitting. When his manager and a couple of teammates arrive to take him home, he comes completely undone, degenerating into a pathetic tantrum of sobbing, screaming and whining, eventually bashing the pitching machine with his bat.
Probably the mildest portrayal of drinking to the point of drunkenness occurs in Ed (1996), when the Santa Rosa Rockets get together in a bar to toast those who didn’t make the cut. They are so hung over the next day that their manager, Chubb, cancels practice, telling them “You’re all useless.” While none of the Rockets experiences the same sort of descent into a long-term state of moral decay as Babe Ruth, Roy Hobbs, Dizzy Dean, or Grover Cleveland Alexander, the moral lesson is still the same. Booze and baseball don’t mix.
While the moral admonition against alcohol has been somewhat tempered in more recent films, the portrayal of smoking, to the degree the issue has received any attention at all, has been consistently negative. For the most part, baseball films have delivered their anti-smoking message by portraying role models who lead by example. In contrast to the game’s historic affinity for tobacco, we virtually never see a ballplayer smoking in these films. When the issue is broached, the references are consistently negative. As mentioned earlier, Dizzy Dean tells us he has never smoked (The Pride of St. Louis, 1952). In Alibi Ike (1935), the naive Ike Farrell warns a group of gamblers and thugs, whom he mistakenly thinks are members of a “young men’s high ideals club” against the dangers of smoking. Similarly, in The Babe Ruth Story (1942), Babe Ruth sternly tells a group of young autograph seekers, “Now kids, I want you all to remember what I said about smoking. It’ll stunt your growth.” Then, pointing to manager Miller Huggins, standing next to him, “Look what it did to him.” This earlier version of Ruth’s life stands in stark contrast to the 1992 depiction of a morally decrepit Ruth shown frequently with a cigar in his mouth; yet one more symbol of his moral failings.
The strongest anti-smoking statement comes in Angels in the Outfield (1994), in which we regularly see aging pitcher Mel Clark smoking. Near the end of the film, Al, the angel who has been communicating with the boy, Roger (the only person in the film to actually see the angels), appears in the California Angels’ dugout. He is there, he says, to check on Mel, who will soon be “one of us.” “He smoked for years,” Al tells Roger. “It’s always a mistake. He’s got 6 months left, doesn’t know anything’s wrong yet.”
Interestingly, in light of the popular history of chewing tobacco in baseball, baseball films virtually never show ballplayers chewing tobacco, or make any reference at all to this vice. One film which does broach this touchy subject is The Sandlot (1993). The team leader, Benny Martinez, manages to get some chewing tobacco and gives a wad to each of his teammates. They then go to a carnival and, while riding the ferris wheel, proceed to get sick to their stomachs, raining this lesson in clean living down on innocent bystanders on the ground below. The audience is left assured that chewing tobacco is not a habit these kids will be likely to adopt.
Although baseball films have consistently adhered to the moral decree that true baseball heroes do not smoke or drink, noticeably lacking in these films has been any reference at all to drugs other than alcohol or tobacco; marijuana, LSD, crack, cocaine, speed. As far as baseball films are concerned, these drugs do not even exist. And, to date, steroids have yet to be mentioned as well. While one might argue that the complete avoidance of mentioning these drugs in baseball films serves to deliver the message that, obviously, real ballplayers don’t do drugs, the failure of baseball films to even refer to this issue—in light of the attention focused on this issue within the culture at large, not to mention the well-publicized drug problems of a number of real-life players—is curious, at best. As far as drugs other than alcohol or tobacco are concerned, the moral vision contained within baseball films is one shielded by blinders. In the idealized community constructed by these films, such problems do not even exist.
“Without you, I’m just half a man, waiting to black out. God sure must think a lot of me, to have given me you.”
—Grover Cleveland Alexander,The Winning Team, 1952
Grover Cleveland Alexander’s loving devotion to his wife, and her equally powerful and unwavering devotion to him, represent another crucial moral imperative in baseball’s cultural vision. The true baseball hero is married—and monogamous. Indeed, a common theme in baseball films is that marriage to a good and loving wife is one of the rewards of maturity; of acquiring the other characteristics of the baseball hero, such as honesty, humility, and selflessness. In Alibi Ike (1935) for example, Cubs’ pitcher Ike Farrell initially jeopardizes his romance with the manager’s daughter, Dolly, by his tendency to concoct alibis for everything. When he shows up late for spring training, he claims it is because his calendar didn’t work. After losing a game, his excuse is that he doesn’t pitch his best on Wednesdays. When Dolly overhears Ike explaining to his teammates that he’s only marrying Dolly because he feels sorry for her, because he is too embarrassed to admit he really loves her, she walks out on him. All is resolved, however, and at the end of the film, as Ike and Dolly stand at the alter, Ike, having matured enough to win back Dolly’s love, vows never to tell another alibi. Similarly, it is only when Babe Ruth abandons not only his nightlife, but also his self-centeredness and arrogance, that he is rewarded with the hand of his long-love, Claire (The Babe Ruth Story, 1948). In the 1951 version of Angels in the Outfield, when Pirates manager Guffy McGovern, known for his tendency to swear at and abuse his players, sports writers, and just about anyone else, finally overcomes his anger and bitterness, he is rewarded with the love of and eventual marriage to reporter Jennifer Page. Together, they adopt the orphan, Bridget White who, as the only person to actually see the angels, served as the vehicle for both the Pirates’ and McGovern’s transformations. At the end of the film, McGovern is shown standing with new wife and daughter, proudly proclaiming, “Look at what I got.”
The list of such examples of true love and marriage as the ultimate reward for the acquisition of moral virtue goes on and on. In virtually every baseball film the hero settles down, at least by the end of the film if not before, with his true love. By the end of Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949), for example, shortstop Eddie O’Brien, notorious for his way with the ladies, eventually finds true love and marriage with the Wolves’ new owner, K.C. Higgins. Although he wakes up at the beginning of the film in what appears to be a teen-age girl’s bedroom, once Mr. Baseball’s (1992) Jack Elliot learns to replace his arrogance and self-centeredness with humility and a commitment to the team, he is rewarded with the love and hand of his manager’s daughter, Hiroto.
A subtle variation on the theme of true love as the reward for maturity is the theme of regaining lost love through that same process. In The Pride of St. Louis (1952), for example, it is only when Dizzy Dean quits wallowing in self-pity at the end of his career, gives up the accompanying drinking and gambling and begins a more responsible and respectable life as a broadcaster, that his wife, Pat—who had finally walked out on him—returns, and their marital bliss is restored. In Major League (1989), catcher Jake Taylor is able to win back the love of his ex-wife by demonstrating that he is no longer the irresponsible and unfaithful adolescent she divorced. And, of course, The Natural (1984) Roy Hobbs is able to regain the long-lost love of his childhood sweetheart only when he abandons both his nightlife with Memo Paris and his own self-pity. With his lessons finally learned, Hobbs is able to not only lead the Knights to the pennant, but finish the film back on the farm, united with his life’s true love, and the son he never knew he had. In For Love of the Game (1999), Billy Chapel’s often stormy, on-again off-again relationship with Jane Aubrey finally comes to a happy resolution, with the two finally getting back together for good, only after Chapel realizes he needs her more than anything else in his life, including the game of baseball.
Consistent with baseball cinema’s definition of true love and marriage as the ultimate rewards for the baseball hero’s moral maturation, the related concepts of marital loyalty and fidelity are, not surprisingly, particularly important in the moral code of baseball films. Once he has found his true love, the ideal baseball hero does not violate his life-long commitment. Real baseball heroes do not sleep around. The ideal marriage of course, is that of Lou and Eleanor Gehrig (The Pride of the Yankees, 1942). In fact, the film was originally billed as a love story. This film serves as the model relationship and moral order to which other baseball couples will aspire. The Gehrig marriage is so perfect, in fact, that the film makes a point of scoffing at the slightest possibility of disharmony or infidelity. In a scene that takes place not long after Lou and Eleanor are married, Lou is late for his own birthday celebration, a quiet dinner with Eleanor and his pal, sportswriter Sam Blake. Eleanor informs Sam she knows where the tardy Lou is, that this has happened before and that she intends to go get him. Sam, wondering if Lou might be up to something indiscreet, begs her not to go (“you can’t just bust in on him this way”), but she will not relent. To drive home the seriousness of such a transgression, on the way to Gehrig’s secret rendezvous, Blake threatens to bash the superstar’s head in with a baseball bat for the wrong he has done to the “true-blue” Eleanor. And find him they do, just where Eleanor knew he would be—umpiring a children’s baseball game on a sandlot. Eleanor makes a fool of Sam and anyone in the audience who might for a moment entertain the notion that Lou Gehrig is anything less than thoroughly virtuous and faithful to Eleanor or that Eleanor is anything less than utterly trusting of Lou.
So powerful is baseball ideology’s commitment to the moral values of monogamy and marital fidelity, the commitment to one’s partner is considered more important than even the game itself. In Damn Yankees (1958), when the devil, Applegate, attempts to seduce Joe Hardy with the temptress Lola, Hardy does not succumb. Even though he is now 20 years younger, as a result of his pact with the devil, Hardy still loves and is still loyal to his wife, Meg. Eventually, Hardy breaks his pact with the devil, deciding to give up his life as Joe Hardy, superstar for the Washington Senators, and return to his life as middle-aged real estate salesman Joe Boyd. In the end, he comes to understand that the love of his wife, Meg, is the most important thing in his life. The film ends with the devil foiled; his final temptation avoided by Joe and Meg holding one another, singing about their life together.
Even in difficult times during a marriage, the true baseball hero remains faithful. In The Slugger’s Wife (1985), for example, when Darryl Palmer’s wife walks out on him, because he is not willing to allow her to continue her own career, the Braves’ manager, Burley, decides that some good sex might help pull Palmer out of his depression. He orders two Braves players to set Palmer up for the night. The two players and Palmer go out drinking, and eventually end up back at Palmer’s house, with three women all willing to do their part to help the Braves win the pennant. Palmer is unable to have sex with any of them, however, because every room in the house that he and one of the women go to, including the kitchen, reminds him of his beloved Debbie.
As The Slugger’s Wife (1985) demonstrates, while some more recent films, on the surface at least, may appear to challenge traditional moral values, these values are eventually upheld and preserved. No film serves as a better example of this pattern than Bull Durham (1988). Despite the film’s explicit language and sex, and apparent initial endorsement of a much looser set of sexual values, in every important respect both the baseball hero of this film, Crash Davis, and the independent Annie Savoy eventually embrace the same conservative moral virtue of earlier cinematic baseball heroes. Early in the film Annie Savoy takes both Crash Davis and Nuke Laloosh home with her. She explains to them both that she chooses one player to hook up with every season, that they appear to be the most likely prospects, and that she would like to know a little more about them. She is immediately challenged by Crash Davis, who wants to know why she gets to choose. Crash leaves, explaining that after 12 years in the minors he does not try out. He will not play the game by her rules. As he leaves, however, he delivers a long soliloquy on what he believes in. Despite the explicitness of some of the language, the sermon is a recitation of rather conservative and traditional values. Annie’s “Oh my,” as he walks out the door is a clear indication of what is to come. Indeed, it is precisely this outburst of a traditional and nostalgic view of life which seems to attract the feminist Savoy to Crash Davis. At the end of the film, they sit side-by-side on the front porch swing, making plans for their life together. In the end, they too discover and choose baseball’s ideal. They, too, do what true cinematic baseball heroes have done for more than 70 years. They settle down with their one, true love.
Subsequent films, of course, have been even freer and more open in their portrayals of sexual relationships, reflecting to a degree the changing values and standards of American culture. But even in later films such as For Love of the Game (1999) and Summer Catch (2000), in which casual and/or multiple sexual relationships are portrayed as a common, natural part of life for single men and women, the central plot line is still that of the film’s baseball hero discovering and eventually settling down with his one true love. Monogamy is still the norm—the ideal to which all baseball heroes aspire.
Since the 1930s, the cinematic image of the true baseball hero has remained strikingly consistent—a testament to the enduring appeal of that vision. Hardworking, courageous, yet also humble, honest and clean living, free from vice, the cinematic baseball hero reflects unambiguously traditional Puritan values. In film, at least, baseball’s ideal community is populated with heroes who conform to traditional values without question. And, most significantly, such moral virtues are not simply qualities that true baseball heroes possess and live, they are the qualities that make them heroes. In baseball films, a player who beats his wife, uses drugs, or carries a concealed weapon would never be accorded heroic status. For in baseball films, being a true baseball hero means much more than being a great player, or posting record-breaking statistics. It also means reflecting in every way the personal characteristics and moral values that are so much a part of baseball’s cultural vision. Ultimately, it is the humble, virtuous, devoted and hardworking family man, rather than the arrogant, undisciplined, morally uncontrolled loner, who is more suitable to the needs of industrial civilization. It is the model husband Lou Gehrig, the reformed Babe Ruth, and the matured Crash Davis and Billy Chapel who are, within the ideology of baseball, deemed most suitable as role models for American youth.
The ability of contemporary film makers to preserve the heroic images of their characters, however, has become more difficult given the nature of contemporary sports journalism. Unlike sports writers of earlier eras, modern sports writers do not hesitate to detail the less than heroic aspects of the private lives of today’s stars. Thus, cinematic portrayals of modern players in the same heroic mold as Babe Ruth or Lou Gehrig become more difficult to sell to an increasingly cynical public. The result has been a marked shift to the use of fictionalized, heroes in modern films. Contemporary baseball films have adopted the “designated” hero. While eight of the 21 baseball films produced between 1940 and 1962 were either biographies of, or starred, real baseball players of that era, only five of the 35 baseball films made since 1973 have been about real baseball players. And of those, four were stories not of contemporary baseball heroes, but of historical figures. Eight Men Out, produced in 1988, told the story of the 1919 Chicago “Black Sox” scandal. The Babe, released in 1992, was another version of the Babe Ruth story. A League of Their Own (1992) told the story of players in the women’s professional baseball league in the 1940s, and Cobb (1996) finally attempted to portray the real Ty Cobb. The only recent film to tell the story of a real-life, contemporary baseball player was The Rookie, released in 2001. And, this film did not tell the story of one of the game’s modern-day superstars, but rather of an unknown high-school baseball coach who made the Tampa Bay Devil Rays roster as a relief pitcher. The truly big-name stars of the modern era have not seen their careers reflected on the silver screen, and for good reason.
As Wenner (1989) suggests, the contemporary media focus on the escalating salaries of modern athletes undermines the traditional association of sports with such values as unselfishness and self-sacrifice. Humility and devotion to the game are characteristics which many fans find increasingly difficult to attribute to the modern sports star. In addition, the increasing proliferation of media sports coverage, particularly on television, has brought more focused attention to such off-the-field activities as gambling, alleged drug or steroid use, and other unseemly behavior by such well known stars as Pete Rose, Darryl Strawberry, Jose Canseco, Jason Giambi, Mark McGwire, and Barry Bonds. While the press of the early 1900s tended to portray all players as virtuous (Riess, 1980) and attempted to whitewash the less virtuous activities of heroes such as Babe Ruth (Voigt, 1976), contemporary journalists provide full, and often critical, coverage of the transgressions of current stars. Thus, even though the heroes of the early 1900s engaged in many of the same sorts of behaviors as current stars, the lack of a constant media focus on such activities made it easier for proponents of the baseball ideology to maintain the illusion and made the heroic cinematic portrayals of these players more believable.
The glare of an increasingly critical media spotlight renders the manufactured images of heroes in the mold of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig less and less plausible. The image of the baseball hero painted in baseball’s preferred ideology, and the images of the modern, real-life baseball star painted daily in the press, are simply too divergent to permit contemporary film audiences to accept as credible a modern cinematic portrayal of a “real” player in the mold of Roy Hobbs or even Crash Davis. While the popularity of films about real baseball stars in the 1940s and 1950s may also be reflective of a greater trend toward biographies in general during that era, we suggest that the dominance of fictionalized heroes in contemporary baseball films, and the complete absence of more contemporary stars, is also in response to the increasing contradiction between the ideology of baseball and the realities of baseball in contemporary America. The shift to fictionalized heroes in contemporary films reflects an attempt to legitimize that ideology in the face of this contradiction. Rather than abandoning an ideology of baseball which is inconsistent with the realities of the sport in contemporary society, however, Hollywood film makers and their audiences have abandoned contemporary athletes, who are inconsistent with the ideology. Given the inability to mesh reality with ideology, modern-day America has chosen to hang on to the ideology. Films such as The Natural (1984), Bull Durham (1988), Mr. Baseball (1992), Little Big League (1994) and Ed (1996), whose heroes continue to reflect the traditional values and characteristics of the cinematic Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth of the 1950s, permit us to believe that, indeed, the one constant through all the years in America, is the game of baseball and all that it stands for. Contemporary baseball films, like their predecessors, attempt to reconcile the contradiction between the ideology and the reality of baseball, and thus, the contradiction between the ideology and reality of contemporary America itself. The fictionalized heroes of contemporary films permit us, as a culture, to maintain the belief that despite the momentary domination of the game by men whose personalities and actions both on and off the field suggest otherwise, the game of baseball continues to embody traditional American values such as honesty, selflessness, humility, teamwork, and devotion to the game. At the same time, these films continue to comfort us with the assurance that these values do, indeed, reflect the true America, and offer audiences longing for a return to these more basic and purer values the hope that such a return is indeed possible.