“You mean I’m gonna get paid to play baseball?”
—Babe Ruth, The Babe Ruth Story
It is a cold winter’s day in 1914 when Brother Matthias calls a young George Herman Ruth into his office at the St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys in Baltimore. Brother Matthias introduces the young Babe to Jack Dunn, manager of the Baltimore Orioles, who offers Babe a $600 contract to sign with the Orioles. “You mean I’m gonna get paid to play baseball?” the wide-eyed Babe exclaims. “Yeah,” says Dunn, “ain’t we the crazy ones?” “$600!” whistles the Babe. “There ain’t that much money in the whole world” (The Babe Ruth Story, 1948).
One of baseball’s most enduring myths is that those who play the game, even professionally, do so for no other reason than a pure love of the game itself. This has also been one of baseball’s most challenged myths in recent years, as baseball salaries have escalated to over $20 million a year. In baseball films, however, the real-life contradictions between the game as business and the game as a game disappear. Love of baseball is the only motivation, and the true baseball player will play whenever and wherever he can.
The true baseball player is driven by something inside, an essential part of his or her being. From the early days of childhood, the heroes of baseball cinema have wanted to do only one thing—play baseball. The opening scene of The Babe Ruth Story (1948) for example, shows the young Ruth playing ball in the streets of Baltimore. When he is chased back to his saloon-home by an irate businessman whose window he has just broken, his father threatens him with a return to the orphanage in which he has already done time, if he doesn’t learn to behave. Fortuitously, Father Matthias, from the orphanage, appears at that moment to see how the young Ruth is doing. When he learns that he would have the opportunity to again play baseball back at the orphange, the young George Ruth literally pleads with Father Mathias to take him back then and there.
William Frawley as Jack Dunn (right) and William Bendix as Babe Ruth in The Babe Ruth Story (Allied Artists, 1948).
The opening scene in Pride of the Yankees (1942) shows Lou Gehrig as a boy attempting to buy his way into a sandlot baseball game with his meager collection of baseball cards. Later in the film, Gehrig will tell his mother that he is a ballplayer, and no one can make anything else out of him. We are told in the opening narration of The Jackie Robinson Story (1950) that, like all boys, the young Jackie Robinson looked forward to spending his summers playing baseball. And for young Benny Martinez (The Sandlot, 1993), who goes on to a career with the Los Angeles Dodgers, baseball, as we are told in the film, “is his life.”
But it is not just as children that baseball players can think of nothing other than finding a game. In The Winning Team (1952), a young Grover Cleveland Alexander decides at the last minute to go pitch in a local semi-pro game, forgetting about his promise to meet his fiancée, Aimee, and future father-in-law at the farm he and Aimee hoped to buy. Aimee’s father had intended to surprise the couple with the down-payment on the farm as a wedding gift, but withdraws the offer after being stood up. He further tries to convince Aimee to dump the irresponsible Alex, saying Alexander doesn’t want to do anything but play games all his life. Like the young Grover Alexander, Monty Stratton (The Stratton Story, 1949) also was clearly meant to be a ballplayer and not a farmer, regularly walking several miles to pitch for a local team, and then the several miles home again to do the chores.
The conflict between the baseball player’s drive to do what she or he was meant to be and the expectations by others that the ballplayer pursue more “responsible” pursuits is a theme central to a number of baseball films. Grover Cleveland Alexander (The Winning Team, 1952) and Monty Stratton (The Stratton Story, 1949) are expected to become farmers. Adam Polachuk (The Big Leaguer, 1953) is expected by his father to become a lawyer. In fact, Adam deceives his father, who thinks his son is at law school, when he is actually at the New York Giants’ spring tryout camp. The idea that the drive to play baseball is natural and inborn is perhaps most succinctly expressed in The Pride of the Yankees (1942), when Lou Gehrig explains to his mother, who had envisioned her son as an engineer and not a ballplayer, “Mom, people have to live their own lives, nobody can live it for you ... nobody can make anything but a ballplayer out of me.” Fifty years later, manager Jimmy Dugan tells catcher Dottie Henson, who has decided to leave the team just before the AAGPBL World Series to go home to Oregon with her husband, who has just returned wounded from the war, “Baseball is what gets inside you. It’s what lights you up. You can’t deny that” (A League of Their Own, 1992). Henson proves him correct, by returning for the seventh and final game against the Racine Belles.
The cinematic baseball hero’s deep devotion to baseball is just as persistent, even at the end of his or her career. In Bull Durham (1988), Crash Davis’ initial reaction to his demotion to the Class A Bulls, so he can help tutor rookie pitcher Nuke LaLoosh in both baseball and life in general, is to storm out of the manager’s office, proclaiming in a flurry of expletives his intention to quit. But, he returns seconds later to ask, “Who do we play tomorrow?” Soon after the Bulls release him near the end of the season, Crash is on the road to another minor league city, chasing a possible opportunity to catch on with another club. As his lover, Annie Savoy, puts it, “You have to respect a ballplayer who’s just trying to finish the season.” Davis’ devotion to the game is further emphasized through his lack of patience with those who do not share his reverence for baseball. When he is asked by Nuke why he does not like him, Crash replies, “Because you don’t respect yourself, which is your problem. But you don’t respect the game, and that’s my problem.”
The true rewards of the game, at least according to the official ideology of baseball, are not monetary, but rather the fulfillment of pursuing one’s true passion. Indeed, the issue of money is made to seem almost irrelevant in these films. An example is the scene described at the beginning of this chapter, in which an awestruck Babe Ruth, when offered $600 a season to play in the minors, gasps, “You mean, I’m gonna get paid to play baseball?” (The Babe Ruth Story, 1948). In The Natural (1984), Roy Hobbs responds to the team owner’s offer of a new contract with the comment, “If you want to pay me more money, that’s up to you.” Lou Gehrig (The Pride of the Yankees, 1942) signs his initial player contract with the Yankees without bothering to read it. Although his decision to leave engineering school and sign with the Yankees is presumably promoted by his desire to help pay for his mother’s hospital expenses, it is clear that Gehrig is little concerned with how much he will actually be paid. And, in Field of Dreams (1989), the returned spirit of Shoeless Joe Jackson, banned from baseball for life as a member of the 1919 Chicago “Black Sox,” tells Ray Kinsella, “Man, I did love this game. I’d have played for food money. It was a game. The sounds, the smells ... I’d have played for nothing.” This juxtapositioning of a pure devotion to the game against individual material interest is even further accentuated in the portrayals of gambling, and of baseball’s ownership, which we address in the following chapters.
Even when abused by the corporate interests of baseball, the cinematic baseball hero never abandons his devotion to the game. Although the New York Knights’ corrupt majority owner attempts to have him bribed, poisoned, seduced and blackmailed, Roy Hobbs refuses to quit before the crucial playoff game with the utterance, “God, I love baseball” (The Natural, 1984). And when Babe Ruth is callously fired from his position as club vice-president by the Boston Braves when he decides to retire as a player, a young teammate suggests he file a lawsuit. Babe replies incredulously, “Sue baseball? Why, that would be like suin’ the church” (The Babe Ruth Story, 1948).
The most striking portrayal of players who play not for love of the game, but for the money, is Eight Men Out (1988), the story of the 1919 Black Sox scandal, in which self-interest and materialism lead to tragedy for all. What sets this film apart from other contemporary baseball films is the unbridled greed and the absence of devotion to the game evidenced by the players. The consequences are nothing short of tragic. In failing to adhere to baseball’s moral code, these players not only fail to overcome their wealthy, exploitative owner, Charles Comiskey; their greed destroys their own careers, diminishes their lives, and threatens the national pastime.
In more recent films, in response, no doubt, to the controversies over modern player salaries, the theme of playing the game for love rather than money is developed through an even more explicit juxtapositioning of the two values. In Major League II (1994), the heroic figures of the miraculous season in the original Major League (1989) have, during the off-season, all signed million dollar contracts, and become caught up in their own success. Star pitcher Rick Vauhgn has abandoned his motorcycle, leather jackets, and punk hair style for a limousine and business suits—and lost his fastball. Speedster Wille Mays Hayes has starred in a movie, taken to wearing gold chains, and doesn’t want to play, because of a sore leg resulting from stunts for his movie. No one is having fun, the team is losing, and the stands are empty; until, following an on-field brawl amongst themselves in the first game of a double header—precipitated by a clash between Vaughn and Hayes—the Indians are lectured by their new catcher, Rube. “I love to play baseball,” he tells them. “And I’ll bet, somewhere along the line, you all did too” Even though he can barely walk, a result of being hit in the foot by a pitch in the first game, Rube tells acting manager Jake Taylor to put him in the lineup for the second game. “A day of playing ball is better than whatever most people have to do for a living.”
Although greeted with cynical groans and grimaces from most of the players, Rube’s speech is, in fact, the turning point for the Indians. In the bottom of the ninth in the second game, Rube hits a single and hobbles to first base, barely making it with a head-first slide. Willie Mays Hayes, who has spent much of the season on the bench nursing his sore leg, takes off his gold chains and hands them to interim manager Jake Taylor, symbolically giving up the superficial adornments, and his obsession with image and money, to return to the game, purified and committed. He immediately steals second, third and home to score the tying run, revitalizing the entire team. Following this, slugger Pedro Cerrano, whose new devotion to Buddhism has, until now, replaced his devotion to baseball, rekindles his spirit for the game, and hits the game winning home run. The Indians finally begin playing as a team, having fun, and focusing on the game itself. Once they abandon their concerns with the tangential aspects of the game, most notably the obsessions with status and money, they are able to once again “love playing baseball,” and, once again, succeed. In an especially interesting twist, in the final game of the championship playoffs against the New York Yankees, reliever Rick Vaughn abandons the clean-cut corporate image he has maintained throughout the film, and returns to his true, essential being as the “wild thing,” just in time to get the crucial final strike-out, and win the American League Championship for the Indians.
While the conflict between the values of greed and love of the game has not been as central to the plot lines of baseball films since Major League II, it has become somewhat of a standard feature; an ongoing undercurrent helping to define the desired values and characteristics of the true baseball hero. In Summer Catch (2000), for example, the egocentric Eric Van Leemer, who is obsessed with the size of his anticipated signing bonus, is contrasted with the humbler, working-class star of the film, Ryan Dunne, who plays the game simply for the love of it. The tension between these values is presented much more subtly in For Love of the Game (1999), when Billy Chapel chides his friend and former teammate Davis Burch for leaving the Detroit Tigers for free agency and the New York Yankees. “It’s your team, too,” Chapel tells Burch. “How much money we gotta make?” In Hardball (2001), the seemingly outlandish contract provisions of modern-day major leaguers is satirized when Kofi, the team’s shortstop who left the team after being yelled at by his coach for fighting with a teammate, says he will come back to the team if his contract demands, which include a free pizza if he hits a ball over the gate in the outfield fence, are met. Contemporary films thus continue to reflect an awareness of the fiscal realities of the modern game, while at the same time letting viewers know this is not the way of the true baseball hero.
In their history of American sports, Gorn and Goldstein (1993) chronicle the rise of “the amateur ideal” in the late 1800s. “The amateur ideal,” they write, “purported to defend sport as a realm of pure competition that money-grubbing professionalism threatened to destroy. True sport was sullied by those who played for pay, because they were not motivated by uncontaminated love of the game” (p. 133). It is this ideal, of course, that is reflected in the “devotion to the game” ethic that is so central to baseball’s value system. And, just as in the late 1800s, contemporary controversies over sport reflect the tensions between this ideal and the impetus to use sports as means of material gain. Stylistic differences notwithstanding, the remarks expressed in this letter from a veteran baseball player to a baseball weekly paper, in 1868, could just as well have been written last week:
Somehow or other they don’t play ball nowadays as they used to some eight or ten years ago.... I mean that they don’t play with the same kinds of feelings or for the same objects they used to.... But it’s no use talking like a father to you fellows, you’re in for “biz” now, and have forgotten the time when your club’s name stood higher as a fair and square club than it does now” [Gorn and Goldstein, 1993, p. 223].
Baseball films consistently adhere to the amateur ideal. Clearly, the players in these cinematic visions of the game are professionals; they do get paid, and often plenty, for what they do. But, in baseball films, at least, we are allowed to believe that true baseball heroes do what they do—play the game—simply out of love for the game itself. The money, we are told, really doesn’t matter. And, when it does matter, the fabric of the baseball community itself is threatened.
As Riess (1980), Betts (1974), Jhally (1984) and other historians and social theorists have observed, the lessons of baseball were intended not simply to teach one how to play the game, but also how to live within an urban, industrialized American culture. The “true” baseball hero is an ideal citizen, as well. One of the critical functions of baseball’s ideology, as it was constructed during the early years of the 20th century, was to temper the increasing individualism in American culture which accompanied the processes of industrialization and urbanization, and to locate that individualism within the context of the larger community. It is in the interests of protection of the larger community that “devotion to the game” has been elevated to commandment status in baseball’s ideology. Greed—playing the game motivated primarily by the pursuit of wealth—is viewed through baseball’s ideological lens as essentially a selfish impulse, incompatible with the ideals of team and community. The individual who plays the game out of love, rather than in hopes of furthering his or her own individual financial interests, is more likely to be willing to sacrifice his or her own interests for the greater good of the team/community. Additionally, the individual who plays out of devotion to the game, rather than devotion to self, is presumed to be less susceptible to corruption from gamblers or other sources of evil that might threaten the integrity, and financial stability, of the game. In baseball’s cultural vision, the dangers are clear; when players become concerned about money, when they become motivated by their own financial self-interest, they tend to place those interests above those of the larger community. The result is not simply a violation of the integrity of the game at the individual level, but a breakdown of the harmony of that larger community. This is why the incompatibility of baseball and greed is such an enduring theme in baseball cinema, and why the moral imperative so consistent. The true baseball hero plays for the joy of playing and has little interest in the monetary rewards baseball might have to offer.
There is a second significant ideological function served by this emphasis on “playing the game for its own sake,” in these films, however. Playing simply for love of the game, rather than for any material rewards, provides a justification for continuing to “play the game” even when success is not guaranteed. In his analysis of the similarity between the ideological values of the workplace and those of baseball, Gelber (1983) cites Max Weber’s definition of the capitalist work ethic as labor “performed as if it were an end in itself, a calling” (Weber, 1958, p. 62). Like baseball players, those workers who are motivated by this work ethic value the process of work itself more than the reward (Gelber, 1983). They, too, “play the game for its own sake.” Gelber argues that the promotion of such a work ethic serves to legitimize and protect an economic system in which success is not guaranteed, no matter how hard one works. Given the increased likelihood of failure in a complex economy, an ethic emphasizing work for its own sake, rather than the financial rewards it offers, functions to “buffer psyches against the shocks of an increasingly volatile marketplace. When work was its own reward, failure was less important” (Gelber, 1983, p. 11). From this perspective, the value of “devotion to the game,” playing the game for its own sake, can be viewed as providing a rationalization for continuing to work within an economic system which is neither necessarily fair nor democratic in terms of its rewards, thus ameliorating the incentive to challenge dominant interests within that economic system.
“Maybe the problem is you guys forgot how much fun this is ... You guys get to play baseball every day ... From now on, let’s stop worrying about winning and losing. Just go out and play and have fun.”
—Billy Heywood, Little Big League, 1994
As we noted in Chapter 4, baseball films have always emphasized the importance of hard work. Lou Gehrig, the “iron-man of baseball,” epitomized this ethic with his constant hard work, and philosophy that “you can never try too hard” (Pride of the Yankees, 1942). Babe Ruth revived his career by buckling down, getting back in shape, and focusing on the game of baseball, rather than on his nightlife (The Babe Ruth Story, 1948). Christy Cooper, the “kid from left field,” stayed up well past his bedtime, developing strategies for the next day’s game (The Kid from Left Field, 1953). And big-leaguer wannabes at the New York Giants’ tryout camp were advised to “give it all you’ve got,” whether 4 runs ahead or 10 runs behind (The Big Leaguer, 1953). Mr. Baseball’s (1992) Jack Elliot revived his sagging career by lifting weights and running wind sprints up and down the stadium steps. More recent baseball films, however, have tended to emphasize a somewhat different dimension of baseball’s ideological vision—the idea that the game should be fun. While it was always clear that Lou Gehrig (Pride of the Yankees, 1942), Babe Ruth (The Babe Ruth Story, 1948), Monty Stratton (The Stratton Story, 1949) and Grover Cleveland Alexander (The Pride of St. Louis, 1952) all truly loved playing the game of baseball, the idea that baseball should be fun received explicit attention in the 1980s and 90s, emerging as a central theme in a number of films. Even Jack Elliot (Mr. Baseball, 1992), who had to re-learn the value of hard work, also realized that baseball was still supposed to be fun. Indeed, while it is his manager’s re-instilling of the work ethic in Elliot that helps salvage Elliot’s career, it is Elliot’s teaching his manager, Uchiyama, that he needs to lighten up and let his players have some fun, that helps the manager succeed as well. When Uchiyama learns to not be so strict and to allow his players to enjoy the game, the team begins to play better. Together, Elliot’s hard work and Uchiyama’s willingness to allow his players to have some fun produce the championship-winning success of the Dragons. And, while Lou Gehrig proclaimed that “you can never try too hard” (The Pride of the Yankees, 1942), the lesson that young pitcher Jack Cooper (Ed, 1996) learns, along with he understanding that there are more important things in life than baseball, is precisely the opposite; yes, you can try too hard.
As Cooper leaves the family farm for a tryout with the Santa Rosa Rockets, he asks his dad if he has any advice. His dad tells him, “Work hard,” to which Jack responds, “Aw, dad!” Dad smiles, and says, “Have fun.” “It’s baseball,” Jack tells him. “How can I not have fun?” Despite this theoretical commitment to the joy of baseball, however, Jack proceeds to have anything but fun. After being signed by the Rockets, Cooper begins to struggle. His control is lousy; he hangs his curve ball. Driven by the desire to succeed, Jack dedicates himself to nothing but baseball—even spending his time away from the park reading books on pitching by Nolan Ryan, and throwing baseballs through a tire outside his apartment. When Liz, Jack’s neighbor, asks him why he hasn’t asked her mom out, yet, Jack tells her playing baseball is like doing homework. “There’s stuff you have to do before you can have fun.” Liz tells him his “priorities suck,” but Jack doesn’t listen. In a later scene, the day after the team has been out drinking, toasting those who didn’t make the cut, their manager, Chubb, tells his seriously hung-over ball players to forget practice, and go home and sleep it off. Cooper, however, heads out to the mound anyway, telling Chubb he needs the work. Chubb tells him to lighten up and to take the day off and have some fun. Cooper finally takes this advice, goes home and begins a romance with Liz’s mom. It is at this point that his career finally begins to turn around.
In Ed (1996), Jack Cooper’s problem was that he was taking the game itself too seriously; he was working too hard to succeed. It was only when he realized that, as his manager told him, it’s only a game, and that he needed to allow himself to have fun both on the field and off, that he achieved the balance in his life that allowed him to finally succeed. In this sense, the lesson Jack Cooper learns is similar to that learned by earlier cinematic baseball heroes, such as Monty Stratton (The Stratton Story, 1949) and Dizzy Dean (The Pride of St. Louis, 1952). What separates Ed from these earlier films is the explicit critique of working too hard at the game itself. The problems faced by Stratton and Dean were not a result of working too hard to play the game well. Indeed, they both loved playing baseball and were successful from the very beginnings of their careers. Rather, these earlier heroes had to learn what the paradigm example of baseball heroes, Lou Gehrig (The Pride of the Yankees, 1942) knew all along: there is more to life than baseball. Jack Cooper (Ed, 1996) was forced to confront this philosophical truth as well, but also the New Age insights of the 1990s; all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, and a mediocre baseball player, at best. A similar lesson is delivered to the young Scotty Smalls, by mentor Benny Martinez (The Sandlot, 1993), who instructs the serious young academic to stop thinking so much, and to just have fun.
In Little Big League (1994), having more fun is presented as the antidote to the intrusion of materialistic values into the game. When Billy Heywood, who inherited the team from his grandfather, takes over as manager of the Minnesota Twins, the team is struggling, to say the least. They are in last place. The stands are empty. Furthermore, they’ve just gone from being managed by an abusive jerk, to being managed by a 12 year old kid, who also happens to own the team. There’s not much life on the field or in the clubhouse, where players seem more concerned about multi-year contracts than anything else. In short, their attitude is about as negative as it can get. That’s when Billy Heywood delivers the speech. The problem with the Minnesota Twins, he tells them, is that they have forgotten how to have fun. But all that is going to change. Win or lose, they are just going to try and have a good time. It works. They try a few trick plays, the players loosen up, and the Minnesota Twins are suddenly pennant contenders. When Heywood re-introduces the concept of fun, the negativity, cynicism, and selfish concern with the material rewards of the game all disappear. The Twins begin playing as a team, and they begin winning. Later in the film, when Heywood forgets his own lessons, and begins taking himself and the game too seriously, becoming precisely the same type of abusive manager he replaced, the Twins once again stop having fun, and stop winning.
Baseball, at least according to its ideologists, is a game of balances between the conflicting values of individualism and teamwork; and of competition and cooperation. It is also, as baseball films of the 1980s and 1990s especially suggest, a balance between hard work and having fun. Within these films it is often the failure to have fun which results in the individual’s inability to play well, and the team/community’s inability to succeed. Hard work is essential to success, these films tell us. But, so too is the enjoyment of one’s work. Like all workers, baseball players are supposed to work hard, but they are also supposed to have a good time doing it. In giving voice to this vision, these films also uphold the notion that pure devotion to the game is the only reason to play baseball. In baseball’s cultural vision work provides its own, intrinsic satisfactions and rewards, not simply a paycheck. There is no alienation of labor in this world view. When one ceases to play the game for any other reason than the pure love and enjoyment of it, one fails. And no amount of money, no long-term contract or guarantee of endorsements, can compensate for that failure.
This emphasis on the importance of having fun in more recent films serves as a response to the increasing intrusion of material values into the game; an intrusion which has tarnished the image of purity and innocence associated with the game which baseball’s ideologists have long sought to preserve, and in which millions of fans desire to believe. Issues such as the labor strife between owners and players, the escalating costs of attending a baseball game, the multi-million dollar salaries of individual players and the $100 million dollar (and climbing) payrolls offered by owners seeking to buy a pennant, have dominated much of the public discourse about the game in recent years. These conflicts challenge the most fundamental value of baseball’s ideology; people play the game solely out of devotion to and love of the game itself, and for no other reason. It is the centrality of this value in baseball’s ideology that accounts for the depth of the reaction against both players and owners by fans who increasingly feel the individual financial interests of both parties have diminished the integrity of the game. Increasingly, many have come to feel that a devotion to the game has been replaced by a commitment to individual self-interest. To many Americans, this is a violation of all that the game stands for. In a culture dominated by the values of capital exchange, baseball films—if not so much the game itself—offer the vision of a world in which people are driven by other, more pure and more human, motives. Beyond serving to legitimize and reinforce these fundamental values, these films may also function to dramatize the gap between the “true” values of the game and the values which seem to motivate many of today’s superstars.
“I mean, come on. Let’s be real here, you know? What are we doing? We’re not curing cancer, you know? We’re playing a game. That’s all. It’s just a game”
—Bobby Rayburn, The Fan, 1996
At the same time that baseball films teach an ethic of pure and complete devotion to the game, they temper that commitment with a healthy recognition that there are even more important things in life than baseball. Indeed, one of the most common lessons learned by that cinematic baseball hero, who so often proclaims “no one can make anything but a ballplayer out of me,” is that there are other aspects of his life and his community that also deserve his attention and commitment.
Most important among those, of course, as noted in Chapter 4, is the love of a devoted wife and family. In The Pride of St. Louis (1952), it is only when Dizzy Dean is able to accept the end of his baseball career, and realize that there is meaningful life after baseball, that he is able to quit drinking and pull his life back together. Similarly, Monty Stratton (The Stratton Story, 1949), whose short career is ended in a hunting accident, spends a good part of the film sitting around the house feeling sorry for himself—withdrawing from his mother, wife and young son—until he is able to recognize and appreciate that his family has even more to offer him than did the game of baseball. Pirates manager Guffy McGovern comes to this same appreciation when, at the end of the 1951 version of Angels in the Outfield, he is shown standing with his new bride and their adopted daughter, proclaiming joyfully, “Look at what I got.” Manager Chuck Knox learns a similar lesson in the 1994 remake of Angels in the Outfield, as he is transformed from an angry, bitter and failing manager, to a kind, caring, and much softer father figure, who ends up adopting the two foster children in the film. In Damn Yankees (1958), Joe Boyd decides to give up his pact with the devil, and his career as a star of the New York Yankees, and return to his life as a middle-aged real estate salesman, realizing that his life with his loving wife is much more fulfilling than any baseball career could ever be. In For Love of the Game (1999), Detroit Tigers’ superstar Billy Chapel spends the time between innings during the final game of his career coming to the realization that the perfect game he is pitching means little to him without the presence of his lover, Jane Aubrey, in his life forever.
One of the most dramatic expressions of the “it’s only a game” theme is the 1996 psycho-thriller, The Fan. At the film’s open, life is looking good for Bobby Rayburn—a National League MVP, coming home to play for his boyhood idols, the San Francisco Giants, with a $40 million salary. Expectations are high all round. But, things soon begin to unravel for the cocky, arrogant Rayburn. He can’t get “his” uniform number 11 from Juan Primo, the Giants’ other superstar. He starts the season in a massive slump. The press and fans are getting ugly. In steps superfan Gil. He knows what will get Rayburn back on track—his uniform number. So Gil murders Primo in a sauna, solving the problem. Rayburn gets his number back and, sure enough, begins hitting. But Gil’s work is not finished; a little thank you from Bobby would be nice. In a fortuitous opportunity available only to the most dedicated stalker, he finds himself in a position to save Rayburn’s young son from drowning in the ocean, at the player’s beach house. The grateful Rayburn invites Gil in and offers him a change of clothes. How can he thank the man who saved his son’s life? He can let him hang around the house all day. He can give him his old Braves’ uniform and a Giants’ hat. He can let Gil pitch to him on the beach. He can thank Gil for knocking off Juan Primo, perhaps. Fishing for a bit of recognition on Bobby’s part that it was his timely execution of the rival Primo that made the difference, Gil asks Rayburn why he thinks he’s suddenly hitting again. Rayburn, unfortunately, does not give the answer Gil seeks. Rayburn says he just stopped caring—caring about being the best, about trying to be a perfectionist. Primo’s death did indeed make a difference. It changed Rayburn’s whole perspective. “There’s more to life than just baseball,” he tells Gil. The agitated Gil presses Rayburn. “Like your house? Like your big-ass car? Like your forty-fucking million?” What does Rayburn care about? Gil wants to know. “I care about my son,” Rayburn tells him. “That’s what I care about.” It is not the answer Gil was looking for. He promptly kidnaps Rayburn’s son.
While true love, marriage, and a family are the most common goals portrayed in baseball films as more deserving of the true baseball hero’s commitment than the game itself, there are others, as well, which have served to provide a healthy balance to the baseball player’s devotion to the game. In the film Ed (1996), pitcher Jack Cooper must learn to not only take time for romance and to “smell the roses,” but he must also learn that being there for his friends—in this case rescuing the team’s chimpanzee mascot and third baseman, Ed—are more important than his own career. In fact, it is only when he does come to these realizations that he begins to achieve real success as a pitcher, and as a human being. He is signed by the Los Angeles Dodgers, and is shown in the final scene driving to L.A. with his new wife, daughter and, of course, Ed.
In Field of Dreams (1989), Ray Kinsella goes back in time to the 1970s, to meet Doc “Moonlight” Graham, who had played half an inning for the New York Giants in 1922, in the final game of the season. He then left baseball to become a small-town doctor in Minnesota. While he had only been a major leaguer for five minutes, and never had an at-bat in a major league game, he refused to feel any regrets, telling Kinsella “If I’d only gotten to be a doctor for five minutes, that would have been a tragedy.” His contributions to his community as a doctor far outshone anything he might have achieved as a ball player. This greater commitment to serving others as a doctor dominates Graham’s life once again, when he is given a second chance at a baseball career on Kinsella’s field of dreams. Having been transformed back to his youth to join the other spirits playing ball on Kinsella’s magical baseball field, Graham chooses to give up his dream when he steps across the foul line—and becomes an old man once again—in order to save the life of Kinsella’s daughter.
Even leading a “normal” life is presented in baseball films as being more important and desirable than the status or rewards of being a baseball hero. In both Rookie of the Year (1993) and Little Big League (1994), the two children who have been central to their teams’ success—Cubs pitcher Henry Rowengardner and Twins manager Billy Heywood—decide to give up their baseball careers (although Heywood does retain ownership of the Twins), because they simply want to spend time with their friends, doing the things kids normally do.
While the admonition that “it’s only a game,” might at first glance seem contradictory with baseball ideology’s emphasis on devotion to the game, the recognition that there is more to life than baseball serves much the same function as the devotion-to-the-game ideal—subordinating the interests of the individual to the community. While the value of devotion to the game emphasizes the proper motivations for playing the game of baseball, the recognition that baseball is still, in the end, only a game locates the individual baseball hero within the even larger community beyond the game of baseball. Emphasizing the importance of family, service to the larger community, even participation in the “normal” socializations of childhood, baseball films reinforce the centrality of community, and selfless devotion to that community, in the life of the ideal baseball hero/citizen. More specifically, recognition that “it’s only a game,” serves to promote a sense of humility in baseball players, who are often the center of cultural attention, and who are often among the most highly rewarded, in American society. As we noted in Chapter 4 humility, because of its role in tempering excessive individualism and its value in promoting a greater awareness of and commitment to the larger community, is a principle quality of the ideal baseball hero. The oft-repeated mantra “it’s only a game” humbly reminds the baseball hero that what he does is, in the larger scheme of things, really not so important after all. Together, devotion to the game, accompanied by the awareness that baseball is still only a game, remind us all that both the game itself and the larger community in which it is played are more important than the individual; and it is there, in that larger community, rather than with the self, that one’s loyalties should reside.