Baseball Stories Yet to Be Written as Movies

As I was heading out to lunch yesterday, I heard Ray Didinger and Glen Macnow on 610WIP about sports stories that would make good movies. It sounds like a crazy idea considering the plethora of sports movies that come out every year. Most of them are bad (Summer Catch, Fever Pitch, Racing Stripes), some are average (Cinderella Man, Days of Thunder, The Wrestler), and very few go on to win Oscars (Million Dollar Baby, Rocky, Chariots of Fire). So I started thinking, why are so many sports related movies each year? Since the original Rocky won the best picture Oscar in 1976, there have been 35 boxing related movies released in theaters. That’s the equivalent of one movie for every year! The worst part of the explosion of sports movies is that they very rarely turn a profit in markets outside the United States. In 2009, the highest grossing sports movie was The Blind Side with $256M in domestic revenue (good for 58^th all time) but only $309M worldwide. Compare that with Ice Age: Dawn of The Dinosaurs that brought in $197 domestically, but a whopping $885M worldwide (good for 19^th all time). People outside of America simply don’t care about our sports movies. Whether based on a true story, or written as fiction, sports movies are churned out year after year for no apparent reason. That said, there are a few baseball related stories that I think would make excellent movies…

Hank Aaron Chasing Down Babe Ruth’s Homerun Record

Hank Aaron was a monstrous hitter in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. By the time his career was winding down, he had already amassed numbers that put him up there with baseball elites.  3,000 hits, 500 HRs, 2,000 RBI, etc. In 1973 Hank Aaron hit his 40^th HR of the season at age 39 to come within one of Babe Ruth on the second to last game of the season. Everyone had hoped that he would tie or break the record the next day, but it didn’t happen. So Hank Aaron had to endure an entire offseasons worth of hate mail, death threats, and unwanted attention from the press. Tensions soared during the offseason and each and every day let to another story of racial wars surrounding the record. Aaron once even said that he was “just hoping to live long enough to see the 1974 season.”When the season began, Aaron went right back to work and on April 8^th 1974 hit his record breaking homerun in front of the largest Braves crowd in history. As he rounded the bases, two white college students charged the field and ran along side Aaron congratulating him. This infamous image is plastered in all sports fans mind. Two white guys patting the back of an African American ballplayer who just broke the most historic record in all of sports? How would that not make a tremendous movie? Denzel as Hank Aaron maybe?

The Introduction of Free Agency into Baseball

Prior to the 1970s, baseball players were little more than pieces of meat. Owners could pay them whatever they wanted, they could retain their rights forever, and they could dump them at will. Then in 1966, Marvin Miller formed the Major League Baseball Players Association and players made the first step in negotiating contracts. Finally, in 1969, someone stood up to the commissioner of baseball when Curt Flood refused to be traded to the Phillies on the basis that their team was horrible, their park was in disrepair, and their fans were racist and angry (pretty much all true). He challenged that the system baseball had in place for treating players like trading cards was a violation of his rights as a citizen. Though his argument was eventually turned down in the Supreme Court, his challenging of the reserve clause led to its demise in 1975. While Flood had to sit out a year of baseball and never again returned to his prime, his defiant actions changed the game and all professional American sports as we know them.

Sammy Sosa vs. Mark McGwire For the 1998 HR Record

In the same way movie producers portrayed the Roger Marris versus Mickey Mantle record chase in 61, the Sosa-McGwire battle was equally compelling. While Marris and Mantle were friendly teammates, Sosa and McGwire were opponents in one of the biggest rivalries in baseball. Cardinals and Cubs fans despise one another.  As the homeruns started flying out of the ballpark at a record pace, the entire nation was captivated. ESPN would cut out of their original programming in September to show each and every Sosa or McGwire at bat. The two battled down to the very last weekend of the season. There are dozens of story lines here; Sosa, a Dominican hero, versus McGwire, an American power slugger. The pressure of daily press conferences never before heard of in professional sports. Androstein, steroids, and other performance enhancers. The subsequent congressional testimony and neglect from baseball for both of these players.  Most importantly, though, this was the event that brought baseball back into American households following the 1994 players strike. Old men soured by the idea of millionaires complaining about money came back to see a record they never thought would fall be broken. Young kids realized for the first time that chicks really do dig the long ball. I’m thinking someone like Bill Goldberg could play the role of McGwire.