Baseball Movie Binge: Kevin Costner Baseball Flicks
by Mike “Crash” Lunsford, Editor
I made a joke in my Major League series review that Dennis Haysbert seems to hang around movie sets where baseball is being played. A little research showed that he was actually hitting those bombs in Major League. That is super impressive because hitting a baseball in of itself is difficult, but blasting one 400 feet over an outfield wall is even more so. If I could get paid to act AND play baseball I would probably jump at every opportunity to do it, too. Another actor who gets ragged on for doing as many baseball movies as possible is Kevin Costner. Now, comparatively to Haysbert, Costner is a much bigger star. In fact, he presumably is telling people “hey, get your stuff. We’re making a baseball movie.” That being said, let’s take a look at Costner’s baseball movies! We’ll start with one I had never seen before; For Love of the Game.
For Love of the Game
There are 2 types of baseball movie: one where baseball is the centerpiece, the other where it’s an afterthought. For Love of the Game is the former as it is centered around baseball, with a love story to boot. Billy Chapel (Costner) is in the twilight of his brilliant pitching career. He’s spent his entire career with the Detroit Tigers and stuck with them through thick and thin. The team has been awful for years and now Gary Wheeler, the owner of the Tigers (Brian Cox, X-2, Super Troopers) will be selling the team. While on a road trip to New York to finish the season against the Yankees, Wheeler visits Billy in his hotel room to inform him that the new management team wants to trade Chapel to San Francisco. Wheeler brings up retirement as an option as well. To further complicate things, Billy’s on-again-off-again girlfriend Jane (Kelly Preston, Jerry McGuire) didn’t show up for a dinner invitation the previous night. After his conversation with Wheeler, Billy gets a call from the front desk that Jane was downstairs and he races down to meet her. She meets Billy in Central Park and informs him that she is leaving to take a job in London. Talk about a lot to deal with right before you last start of the season!
Throughout the movie, we get a first hand experience of Billy pitching his ass off and recalling his relationship with Jane through flashbacks. He remembers when he first met her: on the side of the road in a rental car that wouldn’t start and then invites her to see him pitch in Yankee Stadium. He recalls meeting her daughter (Jena Malone, Donnie Darko), inviting Jane to visit in Florida during spring training, spending a winter with her and more, reliving all the wonderful moments and missteps of their relationship. His catcher Gus (John C Reilly, Step Brothers) mentions his distraction but Billy is also mowing through the Yankee roster with ease.
“I know you’re thinking about that Jane chick, but I’m picturing Jesus with giant eagle’s wings singing lead vocals for Lynyrd Skynyrd and I’m in the front row, hammered drunk.”
Billy, pitching the game of his life, is still preoccupied with Jane and it’s not until the 8th inning that he notices that he is not only no-hitting the Yanks, he’s pitching a perfect game. Exhausted, beaten down, Gus and the rest of the team rally around him and help him achieve his perfect game, an accomplishment that Jane witnesses as she misses her flight to London to watch in the airport. Billy tells Wheeler that he is retiring “for love of the game.” In a truly moving scene, Billy spends the evening sobbing in his hotel room, realizing both of his true loves, baseball and Jane, are now gone.
The following morning he goes to the airport to book a flight to London to find Jane. Instead, she is in the terminal waiting for the same flight Billy would be boarding. The two see each other and embrace, reconciling the past.
The movie is sappy, I’ll admit that up front. However, it’s the right kind of sappy that makes it great. You see that both Jane and Billy are flawed people who make mistakes but they do truly love each other. Billy pushed Jane away when his career was in jeopardy after he suffered a hand injury. He didn’t realize how badly he had hurt her until after the fact and he deeply regrets it. And from Jane’s perspective, she wants to leave for London and knows it’s probably the best thing…but she still loves Billy and stays to watch his perfect game. She understood how much baseball meant to him and in the end, they get back together storybook style. I had no idea Sam Raimi directed this! It’s a decent flick for those who like baseball or are looking for a good love story.
Bull Durham
Often described as the best sports movie of all time, Bull Durham holds up to a recent watching. It is a realistic depiction of what life is like in the Minor Leagues. You see young men and…aging men trying to achieve their dream of making the Major Leagues. Some of them get the chance, others don’t. Both of those stories are on full display in this film.
Costner plays “Crash” Davis: a minor league catcher who has been sent down to Single A Durham. His task: groom and mentor the Major League club’s newest young fireball-throwing pitcher, Ebby Calvin LaLoosh (Tim Robbins, The Shawshank Redemption). Seeing the task as beneath him, Crash initially balks at the prospect but agrees. The two clash immediately, LaLoosh being hot-headed, brash and cocky where Crash tries desperately to teach him the ropes for what it will take to be a big league pitcher.
The x-factor in LaLoosh’s development is Annie (Susan Sarandon, Thelma & Louise), a baseball groupie who is an avid baseball fan and chooses one Bull a year to be her lover and special project to develop. Annie flirts with both LaLoosh and Crash, but Crash declines the “tryout” and walks out of the situation after delivering his famous speech that wows Annie. She chooses “Nuke” (the nickname she gives LaLoosh) and proceeds to have both a relationship with him and a mentorship, teaching him about spiritualism, other cultures, patience, and focus. On the diamond, Crash teaches him not to think and listen to his catcher. Nuke learns the hard way to listen to Crash after he tips off batters what pitches are coming.
The Bulls suck though. Crash is the only bright spot on an otherwise dismal team as he approached the minor league baseball record for career home runs, an achievement he calls “a dubious record.” Eventually, Nuke puts together an impressive string after listening to Annie and Crash’s tutelage. He becomes a dominant pitcher but also, it’s obvious that Crash and Annie are better for each other. He gets the call to the Majors and very unceremoniously, the Bulls release Crash as his task is done. He shows up at Annie’s house and the two have a weekend of passion. He ends up leaving Durham to find a job with the Asheville Tourists much to chagrin of Annie.
After setting the Minor League home run record, Crash retires and returns to Durham, more so to Annie. The two make a quick amends (Annie, as a believer in the “church of baseball” always understood Crash’s decision) and the two discuss their future: Crash says there’s a manager’s position in Visalia and Annie says she’s done with her seasonal flings. The movie ends with the two dancing together in Annie’s house.
What began as a baseball movie becomes more of a love story. It spends a ton of time being a wonderful baseball movie, easily one of the best but the best part of the movie is the love between Crash and Annie. He doesn’t agree with her choice to have a relationship with Nuke, but he also refused to “try out” and compete against him. Their belief structures; hers as a spiritual counselor and cougar with young ballplayers, his a wise veteran who is tired of games and competition and knows who he is; are what keep them apart. Ultimately, they both realize their beliefs are nonsense as their mutual attraction wins out. Also, this is the first time I’ve seen this movie not on cable and MAN there is a lot of cursing! Not that I’m some sort of prude who clutches his pearls when the f-word is used in bunches, but I thought I had seen this movie! Oh, that and the sex scenes between Crash and Annie were much more graphic than I remembered. We’re not talking full-on porno, but be warned if you haven’t seen this movie uncut. Still a fantastic film, easily one of the best baseball movies of all time, but not my favorite. That is reserved for…
Field of Dreams
Ray Consella is a farmer. He never thought his life would bring him to this point, but he fell in love with a girl from Iowa when they were both studying at Berkley, a school he chose to piss his father off. Here he finds himself, growing corn, with a house, a mortgage, a wife, and a young daughter. Then all of a sudden he hears a voice in the corn fields one day that says “If you build it, he will come.” WHAT THE HELL??? Is this an acid flashback? Is it heat stroke? No, because he hears the voice repeat itself and then Ray has a vision that he should build a baseball field where his crop exists. When his wife Annie (Amy Madigan, Uncle Buck), who is indescribably understanding asks him why he thinks he should build a baseball field the answer is simple: so Shoeless Joe Jackson can come back from the dead and play baseball again.
Ray complies with the voice’s request and builds a baseball field. He shakes off neighbors and family members criticizing the move and one night…Shoeless Joe (Ray Liotta, Goodfellas) shows up. Ray throws Joe some batting practice, hits him some flies and they discuss what it felt like for Joe to be banned from baseball. Subsequent days bring more long dead ballplayers magically appearing out of the cornfield to play baseball and Ray is still not sure why it’s all taking place.
I’ll trim up the story for you: Ray is sent on a quest to retrieve a reclusive author of the 1960s named Terrance Mann (James Earl Jones) and to meet a man named Moonlight Graham. After finding out the man had long since passed away, they are somehow transported back in time to when Doctor “Moonlight” Graham (Burt Lancaster) was still around and learn his story: he played in the Majors for a few weeks but never got a chance to bat. He moved on, become a physician and was happy with his life. Ray offers him the chance to join them in Iowa but he declines. On his way home confused but faithful that the voice has not led him astray thus far, Ray and Terrance run across a younger version of Archie “Moonlight” Graham (Frank Whaley, Pulp Fiction) who is looking to catch on with a minor league team. As Archie sleeps in the back of Ray’s van, he and Terrance discuss Ray’s father, John Consella, the name of a character from one of Terrance’s books. They discuss how Ray’s father died before they could reconcile and never got to meet his granddaughter.
They return to Iowa where the ghost players have been waiting for Archie. In the middle of the game, Annie’s brother shows up and lets Ray know that the bank is foreclosing on their home and offers him a deal so they can keep the home and demands he sign. Refusing to sign because he believes that this “voice” hasn’t led him astray and his faith will see him through it, Annie’s brother Mark starts a confrontation that inadvertently injures Ray and Annie’s daughter Karen. Up to this point, Mark can’t see the ballplayers (because he doesn’t believe) but the game stops because of Karen’s injury and Archie comes running. He realizes that if he crosses the chalk line of the baseball field he won’t be able to return. He chooses to help and immediately becomes his older, physician self and saves Karen’s life. Ray realizes that Doc Graham can’t return to his younger self now and feels awful but Doc Graham stops him and thanks him for giving him the chance to achieve a dream.
At this point, Mark can see the baseball players, and is now a believer telling Ray not to sell. The game winds down and the players invite Terrance to join them in “the corn.” Ray, confused that he doesn’t get to see confronts Shoeless Joe and asks him why he’s been tasked with all of this. Joe gestures to the catcher who is taking off his gear and says “if you build it, HE will come.” It’s at this point that Ray realizes that the catcher is his father.
All of the messages: “If you build it, he will come,” “ease his pain,” “go the distance,” were all in reference to his father. The voice? It was Ray’s all along. The baseball field was for the chance to see his father again, to ease the pain of their fractured relationship and to bridge the distance between life and death. Here, watch the final scene. If you don’t tear up at this scene, you’re a cold hearted monster.
A running joke in the movie is the ghost baseball players asking “is this Heaven?” and Ray responding with “No, it’s Iowa.” Ray and his father are talking and he asks the same question. Ray asks a question in response: “is there a Heaven?” His father responds, “oh yeah. It’s where dreams come true.” Ray looks around and sees his wife and daughter up on the porch and says “maybe this is Heaven, then.” But just in that back and forth, you realize that for Ray, he has his Heaven right in front of him, but for John Consella? Heaven is the place where dreams come true. He wanted to be able to play catch with his son one more time. His life ended with the two of them on bad terms and playing catch was the symbolic repair of their relationship. It was Heaven to John as well because he now gets to see the granddaughter he never met.
There are a lot of great baseball movies I’ve discussed in the writing of these articles. Bull Durham and For Love of the Game are better “baseball” movies. Field of Dreams is something completely different. It’s magical. It’s hope. It’s faith. It’s transcendent as it takes baseball beyond just a game and explores what it is at it’s core: for generations, baseball has been a way for fathers and sons to connect through these often larger-than-life players.
It is both the best and worst part about baseball, and on a larger scale professional sports: regular human beings are elevated to Tall Tale characters, and because of those heroic rises, the expectation is that they are infallible. They are very much human though, and prone to weaknesses that all men are subject to. This mirrors the relationship all boys have with their father. He is often elevated to heroic status when we are young but as we age, we see that they’re humans. We then have to come to terms with this and are either impressed by the men our fathers are or disappointed by their mistakes or lack of character. The majority of the ghost baseball players are members of the Black Sox scandal: players who were banned for life from the game because of their involvement with gambling that effected the World Series. Some of them didn’t take any money, like Shoeless Joe, but baseball was taken from them. They all just want another chance to live their dream. The Black Sox players get a chance to play baseball again and live their dreams one more time. John Consella gets to live his dream and see his son and play catch at least one more time. The errors made in life are wiped away as the only thing that matters is erasing the regret both Ray and John have. Making amends with someone while they’re still living is a wonderful feeling, but being able to transcend time and death to do so? Even more fantastic. The movie ends as Ray gets to live his dream and is rewarded for his faith as a caravan of cars is driving towards this magical baseball field.
I really liked Bull Durham, For Love of the Game, and Major League. I love Field of Dreams. As a kid who loves baseball because of his father’s love of the game, it always tugs at my heartstrings. Not only that, my grandfather who passed away about 5 years ago was a Minor League baseball player, in fact, a catcher just like John Consella. The last few years of his life, he was a shell of his former self, the victim of a stroke that robbed him of his larger-than-life personality on most days. Now, I watch Field of Dreams and I picture that catcher is Bernie Lunsford and I’m getting to play catch with a man who had a massive impact on my life and I miss every day. I’m sure my dad sees the same thing, although he says that the ending of the movie makes his allergies flare up. It’s cool dad, I’ll grab the tissues.