The Natural
From BR Bullpen
The Natural is a 1952 novel by Bernard Malamud that was made into a film of the same name starring Robert Redford as the books' protagonist Roy Hobbs.
Though the film changed the novel's conclusion, in both the book and the film Hobbs is shot as a teen by a deranged woman while en route from his native northern-US Rocky Mountain region to a tryout with the Cubs. Due to his injury, Hobbs leaves baseball and does not make it to the majors until he's 34 at which point Hobbs is signed off the semi-pro Oomoo Oilers by a scout for the fictional New York Knights but languishes on the bench from his Memorial Day arrival until his summer solstice pinch-hit appearance in which he literally knocks the cover off the ball and ties the game. In the Knights' next game (after a drought-ending three days of rainouts), their starting left fielder Bump Baily, feeling the pressure to reform his defensive habits with Roy around, crashes into the outfield wall and eventually dies. Roy assumes Bump's position in the outfield and as the league's leading hitter, and the Knights rocket from last place to a one-game playoff for the pennant.
Contents |
[edit] Allusions to Baseball History in the Book
The shooting of Hobbs' character echoes the shooting of '50s baseball player Eddie Waitkus. But his characterization also recalls several others.
- Ted Williams: When his soon to be shooter asks him "what will you hope to accomplish?", Hobbs responds, "Sometimes when I walk down the street I bet people will say, 'there goes Roy Hobbs, the best there ever was in the game,'" an assertion the shooter asks him to repeat just before shooting him.
- Joe Jackson (or maybe Hal Chase?): Roy accepts $35,000 to not "hit safely" in the playoff game. While in both the movie and the film, he has second thoughts during the game, in the book he strikes out in the game's final at bat with some ambiguity about what his final intentions are; in the film he hits the heroic home run.
- Walter Johnson: Hobbs is spotted as a semi-pro teenage pitcher somewhere in the upper-Rocky Mountains of the US.
Sam "Bub" Simpson, the scout who travels to Chicago with Roy for the teenage tryout, dreams that he gets lost on a scouting expedition, and stumbles upon a remote game played by men with long beards -- House of David? Indeed, Hobbs is described as appearing in the Knights dugout for the first time sporting a dark beard.
Sam, an alcoholic who drank himself out of a catching career, later dreams as he's dying that he's been thrown off a train and into a river. He tries to make his way to a bridge he sees, but eventually can't find the bridge hears the roar of waterfalls approaching as he floats down the river. The allusion to Ed Delahanty's death is clear.
Knights manager, Pops Fisher, is said to have fallen while scampering around the bases on a clear inside-the-ballpark homerun opportunity in a blunder that cost his team the pennant. The moment became known as "Fisher's Flop" and he became the laughing-stock of the nation for a while.
There are clear spoofs of the more fanatical of Ebbets Field's denizens including a female fan who brings a "Chinese gong" to the park every day.
[edit] Differences between the Book and Movie
- Hobbs strikes out and the Knights lose the pennant in the book. He homers and they win in the movie. The book concludes with Hobbs throwing the $35,000 he's been paid to lose back at the Judge who's arranged the fix, but with the reporter Max Mercy releasing the story that a fix may have been in -- clearly Hobbs' career is over.
- In the book Hobbs wears #45, bats right and plays left field, in the movie he wears #9, bats left and plays right field.
[edit] The Movie
In addition to Redford, the cast also included Robert Duvall, Glenn Close, Kim Basinger, Wilford Brimley, and Barbara Hershey. Joe Charboneau, the 1980 Rookie of the Year with the Cleveland Indians, also had a small role as a teammate of Hobbs.
Parts of the movie were filmed in War Memorial Stadium in Buffalo, NY.
