The Natural

On the subject of great baseball players...

The Natural, starring Robert Redford, Glenn Close and Kim Basinger (and many others), is no doubt a favorite film amongst many baseball fans and it is one of the few films from which I can quote movie lines.

As Roy Hobbs (Redford) lies in a hospital bed recovering from emergency surgery, he speaks to his boyhood girlfriend, Iris Gaines (Close) of his life regrets and Iris responds, "You know, I believe we have two lives... The life we learn with and the life we live with after that."

The other line is from the same scene and I choke up every time I see the film. Hobbs is talking of his past and how he came to this point of his life. He recounts to Iris that he'd always wanted to walk down the street and hear people say, "There goes Roy Hobbs, the best there ever was." Iris then tells him that "you've done so much." He pauses, his mind goes back in time and he says, "I wish dad..."; his voice trails off momentarily, then he looks up at Iris and says, "God, I love baseball!"

My eyes water just recalling the scene.

The Natural (the film) was released in 1984. It was a baseball kind of a year for me. It was the year Penny and I moved to Michigan from Toledo (Penny, actually, was moving back to Michigan). On the day we moved, the Detroit Tigers' Jack Morris pitched his first no-hitter as a Major Leaguer – against the Chicago White Sox. (We arrived at our apartment in time to pull out the television and watch the last three outs.) It was the year that the Tigers won 35 of their first 40 games and went on to win the World Series. It was the year that Steve Goodman – one of my favorite musicians and a huge Chicago Cubs fan – died of leukemia. Unfortunately, he didn't live long enough to see the Cubs win their division title that year (they eventually lost to the San Diego Padres, not making it into the World Series).

Penny and I attended the Series with most of her family, and we had probably the worst seats in Tiger Stadium (right centerfield lower bleachers) and watched probably the worst World Series game in history (the Tigers' victory notwithstanding). My son Zachary attended the game as a second trimester fetus – he has been a loyal Tigers fan ever since, despite twenty straight frustrating seasons.

Still... "God, I love baseball!"