For as long as I can remember, my dad has been bringing home movies from the library that he thinks I’d like. He’s the one who introduced me to movies like Gone With the Wind, West Side Story, The Maltese Falcon… always encouraging and fostering my love for old movies. One day, in spring of sixth grade, he came home with The Natural. I just fell in love with it. It settled into my heart and rested there contentedly. There was a steady comfort that came with it, and I knew it was here to stay.
My dad and I have been watching it together every March since then.
This is one of those movies I find difficult to explain the plot of without giving too much away. But the story follows Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford), a gifted baseball player who gets “sidetracked” on his way to try out with the Chicago Cubs. He returns to the major leagues 16 years later, joining the washed-up New York Knights.
The cast is superb, with Wilford Brimley as Pop Fisher (the manager of the New York Knights who is at his wit's end), Robert Duvall as badgering sportswriter Max Mercy, and Glenn Close as Iris, Hobbs' childhood sweetheart. For my fellow Anne of Green Gables fans, Richard Farnsworth (Matthew Cuthbert) also has a very sweet role.
The Natural is based on the book by Bernard Malamud, which in turn was very loosely inspired by a true story. On June 14, 1949, Eddie Waitkus, the first baseman for the Philadelphia Phillies, was shot by 19 year old Ruth Steinhagen. Steinhagen was a stenographer for a Chicago insurance company, and a devoted fan of Waitkus. She told newspapers it was her infatuation for the man that drove her to shoot him, “so no one else could have him.”
“I wanted to do something exciting in my life,” she said. “I didn’t want to go back to being a typist.”
While the film uses elements of this stranger-than-fiction event, the overall tone is much more uplifting. In fact, The Natural symbolizes home for me. I’m more of an autumn and winter girl, but this film encapsulates the comfort of the spring season. It reminds me how spring can feel warm and welcoming, yet wakes me up to the world in all its beauty and its flaws.
The film itself has those themes as well. After leaving home, Roy Hobbs quickly learns that the world is cruel, and how easy it is to trip and fall and make mistakes. He becomes a bit of a wanderer, never revealing his roots to those he meets. But throughout his journey, his character remains deeply grounded in where he came from. That foundation becomes the guiding force that sets him back on track, returning him to the people and places that really matter.
At its core, The Natural is about finding home. Perhaps that’s why when I sit down to watch it with my dad over a bowl of his special popcorn with extra butter and salt, it seems as though I am settling down for a long chat with an old friend.
The Natural is available to watch through subscriptions or pay-per-view options via various streaming services.
You may also be able to find the DVD at your local library, or you can buy it on Amazon. View subtitle options for the DVD here.
There’s another movie that makes me feel a similar way, and funnily enough, it’s also a baseball movie. I still remember my mom picking me up from school and handing me the VHS of Take Me Out to the Ball Game I’d asked her to pick up from the library. What a treat that was! Along with The Natural, it’s one that I have fond memories of watching in the house I grew up in. Sometimes I yearn to be a kid again in my childhood home, sitting on the couch in our converted garage watching those movies. I’m grateful to have many wonderful memories of that house, but I think those are the moments that make me miss it the most.
Even though Gene Kelly has been my favorite from a very young age, I never had the heart-eyes for him—he always just seemed like an old friend. FRANK SINATRA, on the other hand, was a different story. Take Me Out to the Ball Game was my first Sinatra movie, and I thought he was the cutest thing in the world. The epitaph on my gravestone one day may very well be the oft-uttered quote from my long-suffering mother: “Do you really need another Frank Sinatra book?” (The answer is yes, by the way.) I showed the Kelly/Sinatra film trio to friends when we had sleepovers, and none of them got it. (Sigh.) Needless to say, I’m grateful to have joined the Old Hollywood community on Instagram, where I’ve found lots of fellow Sinatra admirers.
ANYWAYS, Ball Game is very dear to my heart—so much so that when I went to see Patricia Ward Kelly’s one-woman show about her late husband in 2019, I brought my copy for her to sign. She was so gracious and patient with me, despite my being a nervous wreck and barely being able to answer the simple question “where on the DVD would you like me to sign?”
Wherever I go, Ball Game follows me, in both the figurative and literal senses. I now live in Florida, where we get a couple hurricane evacuation warnings a year. Whenever we get those notices, I pack a bag of valuables to take with me—and Ms. Kelly’s signed DVD is always among them. When I was little, anytime I went somewhere that had a pool, whether it was a hotel or a friend’s house, I pretended I was Esther Williams, wishing I had that darling bathing suit and swim cover-up. (I still do.) Everything about this movie is nostalgic—from the menu music and the opening titles, to Williams’ and Betty Garrett’s costumes (I want them all!) and that glorious clambake.
But there’s one scene that always stands out to me, even more than the others. O’Brien (Kelly) and Ryan (Sinatra) have taken a train to meet up with their team in Florida. As they enter the diamond, their teammates shout in surprise and delight and come running to greet them. As a kid, that was already a joyous moment, but now it also makes me tear up a little—because no matter where I am, as O’Brien and Ryan walk through that archway, I feel I have returned home, too.
Take Me Out to the Ball Game is available via pay-per-view options on various streaming services.
You may also be able to find the DVD at your local library, or you can buy it on Amazon. View subtitle options for the DVD here.
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