Breakfast with Pandora

Razzball: Tiramisu for a guy that steps up to the plate

Late news flash: I am so going to crush my opposition in my fantasy baseball league.

And what's the reason for that? An Internet expert who calls himself Grey Albright.

Wait. Before you move on to the next blog in your queue, understand that this post is more than about fantasy baseball. It's about generosity in the digital age.

Image from here, with a chuckle for any of you trying to decide on a name for your fantasy baseball team.

For any who are new and still interested: Fantasy baseball is a sport where you and your friends pick a team of players you think will do well in the real world. The players accumulate their real statistics (home runs, batting average, stolen bases, etc.) and you count them in your fantasy world. The team with the best stats, and, in general, the player with the best predictive ability, wins.

Fantasy baseball is universally considered to be the most difficult of the fantasy sports to do well. There are so many games, so many players, so much unpredictability. You've got to spend quite a bit of time on research, daily, to do well.

Hence the need for experts who sum it all up for you, and hopefully in an entertaining way.

For my first four years of fantasy baseballdom, I was mostly a fan of Matthew Berry. He is the most recognizable star in the fantasy world, and he is a funny, opinionated guy who makes it fun to follow the game and the stats that go along with it. But he is now a happily married man, and he is kind of over being right about his predictions. He is, for this sport, an emeritus.

Enter Grey.

Grey is the owner of Razzball.com, a fantasy sports blog that showcases his considerable writing talents and his formidable fantasy baseball acumen. 

Grey is hungry to get his predictions right and prove others wrong. He writes hilarious pieces that have a clear chip on the shoulder. To like Grey, you have to like outrageous puns, sly pop culture references, and name-drops of old-school ball players who were fun to watch back in the day.

You also have to like good advice.

In addition, Grey has developed a large tribe of contributors and followers who write, comment, and hand out fun apps and tools (such as Excel spreadsheets) to help the rest of the tribe win.

Even better-- probably the best part of the site-- Grey strives to answer every commenter's fantasy question himself. Even the dumb ones (as I raise my hand).

All of this, by the way, is free. There is a ton of fun, information, advice, entertainment, and enjoyment on the site, and Grey charges nothing for it except that there are some advertisements on the left and right column of the blog. A la public radio, you can make a contribution if you want, but it's not in your face.

I appreciate the heck out of that.

It is now widely becoming accepted that content, on the Internet, is king. The people who win in Internet business are those who actually have something interesting to say or show, rather than just sell. Gary Vaynerchuk, Internet marketing guru, just came out with his latest video saying, once again, that the people who are generous with their talent are going to succeed in the long term. If Mr. Vaynerchuk is right, I see big things for Grey.

So a slice of tiramisu goes out to Grey Albright, guy who still has something to prove. All fantasy baseballers (<-- his mom's term) are in your debt.

Tebow time, resurrection moment

Today America watches the most important football game of the year.

No, it's not the Super Bowl.

It's the game where we get to see whether God still loves Tim Tebow.

This is a great story, American myth at its finest. Because it is not a story about authentic Christianity, or even Tim Tebow himself.

Photo found here.

It's a story overlaid on the resurrection template followed by most if not all American stories.

What do I mean by "resurrection template"? That there is a story pattern in American myth-- mainly Hollywood stories, but lots of others-- lifted directly from the gospel stories of Jesus' resurrection in AD 30 or thereabouts. The pattern goes like this: the good guys start out hoping for a great victory over evil, and there is some promise it will happen. Unfortunately, things go from bad to worse, and suddenly you're staring at defeat.

But somehow, out of nowhere, a miracle occurs and the good guys win anyway.

Just like the resurrection of Jesus after his death and three-day stay in the tomb.

I saw this pattern most recently in the 1999 movie "Never Been Kissed" starring one of my very favorite actresses, Drew Barrymore. It's not a spoiler to say that the resurrection moment in this movie (a romantic resurrection) takes place on an athletic field, the prime place for American miracles to occur.

So far, so good. But what makes Tim Tebow's potential resurrection any different from that of the other seven quarterbacks who will be vying for glory this weekend?

Tim Tebow himself is a supremely gifted athlete who grew up a missionary kid. That type of combination usually results in a very successful person. The athletic ability confers confidence, decisiveness and courage. The MK background makes for a mature, humble, resourceful and resilient Christian. MKs go in the same maturity category as military brats, who also spend a lot of time having to sacrifice their own wishes and desires for the good of others-- and travel a lot to boot.

But this story goes way beyond Tebow the person.

Tebow is already an underdog with a history of miracles achieved. He took over a mediocre team at mid-season, won 6 straight games in dramatic fashion, then lost 3 in a row, then won his most recent game with a dazzling 80-yard touchdown on the first play of overtime. He will be playing against the hated New England Patriots with their rock star quarterback, Tom Brady, and the devil incarnate coach Bill Bellichick (who has been actually convicted of cheating).

That might be enough to make this the biggest game of the year.

But Tebow, through his public confession of faith in Christ, has also made the specific connection between God, Christianity, and the generic resurrection story pattern, which is not thought of a Christian by most Americans. 

This high octane mix of faith and myth combusts American imaginations. We are romantics. We are resurrectionists, as a people. Even non-Christians want to believe that God really does exist and resurrection is real.

Many of us will go into this game hoping that Tim Tebow will win, against all odds. Some of us will be rooting against him (mostly Patriot fans). And the rest of us will at least be curious.

Some people might believe this game is a referendum on evangelical Christianity. If Tebow loses, somehow God is against people who are in your face about Jesus their Lord and personal savior. Or maybe there's no God at all and it was just random what Tebow was doing.

Folks. It's just a game. Really, it's a story. A live, unfolding by the minute story. It will be entertaining and energizing. But it's not about just Tebow. He has 50 teammates, including a phenomenal field goal kicker, Matt Prater, and a receiver, Demaryius Thomas, who can catch a pass and take an 80-yard broken-field run.

And whether God is there or not is not dependent on the outcome of this story. Those who believe have already heard The Story, and that is enough for us.

INTPs I have known

BwP gets a fair amount of traffic from web surfers interested in the Myers-Briggs personality type indicator (MBTI). Some time ago I did a whole set of posts on Greek divinities and Myers-Briggs. Myers-Briggs chatrooms are among the few places my blog is linked elsewhere on the web.

Delphi: Apollo's home.

Here is a good summary of the system. Go there and come back if you are not familiar with MBTI.

I like Myers-Briggs. Some people think it's as reliable as astrology; others consider it reductive and not reflective of the variety of human personality. I think it's true that if you stick to the basic 16 personality types not everyone is going to fit in. But if you use the "X" option, where a person straddles the line between the four basic opposites, things get extremely various. Some people believe, for example, that Jesus Christ would have tested out as XXXX.

But sometimes Myers-Briggs is dead, straight on. I was reminded of this recently when my son posted to Facebook his annual college football bowl winner predictions. There are 35 bowl games, and he spent a large number of hours analyzing each matchup, then crafted capsule summaries of his analysis with a predicted winner for each game. I don't doubt he will be very accurate with his predictions. He got no remuneration out of this process (his mother pointed out the pro journalist at Sports Illustrated only disagreed with him in 5 games). He did it for its own sake.

This type of behavior is totally characteristic of the INTP, or Apollo in my mythological typology. INTPs are often extremely gifted intellectually. They have a singular ability to concentrate. Their intellectual output is detailed and finely considered. They live to analyze, deduce and explain. Sports statistics are male INTPs' Garden of Eden.

Reading through my son's predictions, I was immediately reminded of another INTP I knew very long ago, about whom I once posted. Ted was a precocious sports journalist, and when he was 13, in the 8th grade, he wrote an analysis of a college football game between the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Southern California that was published in the student newspaper at Cal. He predicted the Trojans would win, but as well we know, all the logical analysis goes out once the chaos of life intrudes. Berkeley won, behind the heroics of quarterback Joe Roth and running back Chuck Muncie.

Ted and I went on to write at student newspapers throughout high school, and as he went off to college I thought he would be a broadcaster some day, one of my predictions that did not come true. Recently my son has expressed an interest in broadcasting. Last year he was the play-by-play announcer for his high school's Powder Puff football game. He was brilliant, in my humble opinion.

Apollo is often seen as the perfection of Greek manhood, the eternally shining youth. This is a fiction of 19th century romantics. Apollo was an excellent athlete (another INTP, Tiger Woods, is an example of the extreme athletic potential of INTPs), but he is mainly a geek-- interested in such complex and theoretical arts as music, poetry, medicine, and prophecy (e.g. bowl game predictions).

This is the INTP. Yes, a reductive way of classifying the variousness of human beings. But useful for those of us "N" types who love to see the big picture.

The utility of studying Latin and Greek

Over here a mini-controversy on the utility of studying Greek and Latin, sometimes called Classical Studies, or (as I prefer) Classics.

(Image: Cicero orating against Catiline)

My position on that is summed up in the following: 

My ideal primary school would have the following four core subjects: Art, Music, Physical Education, Latin and Greek.

Yes, students would take Latin and Greek in kindergarten and they would learn to read English like demons. In fact, they would devour books. Guaranteed.

Middle school would retain the four core subjects. English and history would be combined into one cross-disciplinary class, and math and science would be combined into another single class, and they would be electives.

In the upper school, students could opt for a more conventional subject smorgasbord, including modern foreign language with immersion in target language nations for up to a year.

Post-secondary education would focus on training students in specific skills, except for the next generation of teachers, who would be further educated in a liberal arts and sciences track.

My sense is that education means equipping the brain to think broadly, liberally, humanely, critically, and deeply. Training, by contrast, is equipping a human being to do a specific needed skill.

Therefore, we should have students study at a young age those subjects that form the brain in the most comprehensive way possible. And it has been shown scientifically that the four core subjects of my ideal school are those that do that. Music is probably best in this area, but I think Latin and Greek are a close second.

Once students get older and have an established foundation for critical thinking, they can easily acquire all the skills they need, or study further the subjects that interest them.

So I think Classics is very important to education.

But I am not so thrilled with Classics as a university research subject. Classics is a very old subject and has been studied thoroughly. In the mid- to late-twentieth century there was a flowering of interpretive studies that were the happy result of hundreds of years of painstaking philology-- that is, scholars making sure the surviving manuscripts of ancient texts were as readable as possible.

Nowadays we do not need another book about the Iliad, and we most certainly do not need more books on the less important authors such as Silius Italicus. My sense is that we could do without any more research on Classics for the next 50 years and we would not be the poorer for it.

I would encourage the next generation of Classics Ph.D.'s (of which, I am told, there are too many) not to pursue a tenure-track job (of which, I am told, there are too few) at a college of university. Teach high school, middle school, elementary school Latin and Greek. You will be happy, your students will be happy, and the nation will thank you.

Violence and the good story

Summer's here and with a bit more leisure and focus on writing, I'm considering good stories and what they need in order to be good.

On the front of the burner right now, my online interactive novel, "Forward in a Strange Land" (working title, you can suggest another), which is about an American who follows his dream of playing ice hockey professionally to the mysterious, hockey-mad nation of Borschland and finds more than checks and pucks waiting for him.

Ice hockey is a violent sport. One of my Boston-bred friends once called it "an ancient blood sport," and I'm fine with that characterization. In Borschland, in the novel, ice hockey is more ballet and drama, and the anticipation of violence without its literal fulfillment is what makes Borschic fans so passionate for the game. In Borschland, the biggest cheers come from a player avoiding a collision rather than being leveled by one.

I realize this is contrary to human nature, especially male nature. Give us some beer and thousands of like-minded, reptile-brained dudes next to us, and we will roar and shake our bone clubs when grown men smash into each other with brutal intent.

I am coming to dislike this type of sport, and not just because recently one of my favorite baseball players was badly injured by the unnecessary violence of one of his opponents. And I am coming to dislike violence in stories as well.

One night about a week ago I pulled a random book from my son's bookshelf-- he is a much more avid reader than I-- and came out with "The Silmarillion," the compilation of myths and tales that J.R.R. Tolkien wrote as backstory to "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings."

Oh, good. I thought. When I was younger I could hardly wade through the stuff. I was much more impatient and undiscerning. It will be fun to see what my younger self missed.

The book tells the history of Middle Earth, Tolkien's master creation, from the beginning of the world to the "Lord of the Rings" era. And despite my aged wisdom, it was still pretty hard going with all the names and unfamiliar geography. Son's paperback edition only had one map, and you needed an atlas to keep up with all the places mentioned.

But that wasn't really the problem. 

I found my older self much less willing to be interested in the endless parade of kings, jealousies, intrigues, battles, wars and finally, armageddons, that the book chronicled. Is there anything else in fantasy writing besides climactic and cataclysmic violence?

Also in the past week I gave in to Netflix promptings (this is what you like, isn't it, isn't it?) and watched the Cohn Brothers' flick, "Barton Fink." I was creeped out and mesmerized by the first half of that film, which was almost entirely a study of what it feels like to have writer's block. Then the whole tone changed drastically because of an unexpected and ugly act of violence, and the thing went down the tubes for me.

Finally, in my continuing attempts to find common ground with stepson, I ordered the 1935 Errol Flynn classic, "Captain Blood," because I figured there'd be some fun sword-fighting in it for stepson, whose passion is fencing. He got bored and did not appreciate the presence of the porcelain-skinned Olivia de Havilland, Flynn's love interest. He finally walked away an hour or so in and just before the sword play began and the cannons started booming and the guys with the knives in their teeth were boarding the French ships.

I don't know if the film could've been saved for stepson if all of that action had come earlier-- after all, it was a black and white film with special effects that were spectacular for its time but lame compared to today-- but to a generation raised on first-person shooter video games, it feels like you've got to have violence now, continuously, and to the end if you're going to engage the young male attention span.

I, on the other hand, loved the de Havilland-Flynn scenes. Good writing.

So I feel out of step with the world and with popular storytelling, and wonder about the novel I just finished, "Healing Knowledge," which is about the peoples living in the islands of the Aegean Sea in the 20th century BC. It tells a story about strong emotions that are mostly not expressed in violence. I hope that the magic, sea travel, kidnapping, gold, and love in the novel can carry the day without having to resort to that cataclysmic battle scene at the end.

Maybe it's telling that this type of painting, by Genie Maples, is the kind of cover I see for my novel. There are no people in it and no swords, boats, or violence of any kind. Yet I feel as if it captures the spirit of the world I create in "Healing Knowledge," of sky, water and land pushing themselves together and in that tension creating every kind of possibility.

The all-time, all-Olympus, all-star, all-everything baseball team

In honor of the newly-minted 2011 baseball season, a light-hearted look at the Olympian pantheon, if they were a baseball team.

Your starting battery: at pitcher throwing the thunderbolts that put a charge in the ball, it's the father of gods and men himself, Zeus. At catcher, the mistress of hearth and home plate, the keeper of the eternal flame, Hestia. She's a light hitter but she's got that internal fire a catcher needs, and she always makes the batter welcome and keeps up relations with the umpire.

At first base, the power-hitting sea god Poseidon. He's big, he's powerful, and at the tap of his trident, the legendary "Earth Shaker" can make it dicey for the runner coming into first. 

At second base, we have the robot automaton built by the god of creative fire and technology, Hephaestus. Heph was born lame, but he's a whiz with metal, and he's made a helper who can really make the turn at second. Lays down a mean sacrifice bunt, too. 

At shortstop, that paragon of manliness, Apollo. If there's a ball deep in the third base-shortstop hole, the "Far Shooter" will get it to first base on time. 

At third base, who better to man the hot corner than the hot man himself, Helius, the sun god. 

In centerfield, the guy with the winged sandals who's fast enough to catch everything hit his way, Hermes. 

In left field, you've got the goddess of the wilderness, Artemis. She covers almost as much ground as Hermes, and if a stray cat emerges from the grandstand or bird alights in the outfield, she can take care of them, too. 

In right field, the teenage phenom Persephone is platooning with the aging veteran, Cronus, father of Zeus. Persephone's bound to spend part of the season in the Underworld, so who better to preside in the pastures of the outfield than the King of the Golden Age, Cronus. 

The designated hitter, big dummy who hits it a ton but can't add two and two, we've got the war god, Ares. You can get him out with the curve, because he can't think ahead, but if you make a mistake over the plate, he'll kill it. 

The middle reliever is Hera, wife of Zeus, who's always cleaning up the messes he makes and scheming about one day getting to start in his place. 

As for our closer, you've never seen a guy shut the door on a team's hopes until you've seen the god of death, Hades, serve up his sinker ball. When Hades goes in, the batter's going down. 

The utility man: Heracles, the only mortal ever to earn his way into the "big" leagues by hard work. He can hit it a ton and whatever you ask him to do, he does. "I'm just glad to be here," says the deified hero. 

This unbeatable crew is managed by the goddess of military strategy, heroes and generals, Athena herself. 

The umpiring is done by the Furies, who definitely have a thirst for justice. Don't try to scuff the ball or put any hair gel on it, because they'll take you out.

And now, for your off-field personnel:

The groundskeeper is the goddess of the harvest and the growth of plants, Demeter.

The official scorer and beat writer is the blind poet, Homer.

Dionysus, god of wine, drunkenness, and temporary madness, is the head of concessions. 

Cheerleader, Aphrodite. Rumor has it she's been having an affair with the designated hitter. The mascot: Eros. A lovable little guy who can make you fall in love with the team. 

The general manager is Prometheus. His name means Foresight, so he's one of the shrewdest baseball minds out there. Who do you think signed Heracles? 

The ownership group: the Fates, Clotho, Atropon, and Lachesis. They pull all the strings, and believe me, what they say, goes.

Don't miss their next game-- against the famous Hundred Handers. It's going to be a real barn-burner.

The World Cup and the American ethos - II

I guess I should've seen it coming.

For about 90 minutes during the USA's last World Cup soccer game, I kept waiting for the Americans to score a goal. They had many chances. Algeria, their opponent, was very obliging. Time after time, our guys would kick, or head, or nudge the ball somehow at the goal, sometimes from ridiculously short distances. And after about 90 minutes these professionals, who do nothing but practice putting the ball in the net, couldn't do so.

For sure earlier in the game they had scored a goal that the referee waved off questionably. So it wasn't as if they hadn't scored at all. But the point was, they could've scored multiple goals, if only they'd actually put their mind to it.

Then, in "injury" or "stoppage" time (after the first 90 minutes-- "overtime," as a student of mine aptly put it), Algeria finally committed some people forward and almost scored themselves. Tim Howard, the American goalkeeper, threw the ball out to Landon Donovan, the American star soccer player. He passed ahead to striker Jozy Altidore, who gave it to the much-talked about Clint Dempsey right in front of the goalmouth. Dempsey didn't have much time and he kicked it right at the goalkeeper. It rebounded out and Donovan was there to bash it over the prone goalie and into the net.

The announcers went wild, calling it a "fairy-tale ending, a Hollywood ending."

It was as if the American team had conspired to write a myth that would be sure to thrill their American audience. How many movies end this way, with the amazing finish that lifts an underdog to the status of a champion?

And everyone bit on the storyline. In a baseball chatroom I sometimes frequent, the normally jaded and cynical participants were saying, "I thought soccer was supposed to be boring" or "I'm committed to the World Cup now" or "That was the best game I've ever seen."

Later, American goalkeeper Tim Howard summed up the mythological impact on the nation: "That's probably going to capture more people's attention than if we won the game 3-0 and it was easy. That emotion, that passion is what American sports fans thrive on."

Perception is everything. This was a pretty simple game against an opponent the USA should beat. And it had the chance of being an easy 3-0 game. The fact that eventually the Americans got the job done, to me, is more like the propensity in American business of procrastinating until the last minute and then finally delivering the service that could've been done and finished hours or days before.

I am a fan of USA soccer and I would've loved to see another "Miracle on Ice" type of game. This wasn't the moment or the opponent. But the team kind of conspired with the broadcasters to manufacture some myth. Nice for them, nice for the status of soccer in the United States.

PS: for a real "Miracle on Ice" story from the World Cup, try Italy versus Slovakia. The Italians were the reigning world champions, and tiny Slovakia (independence 1992, population 5 million, area the size of Vermont and New Hampshire combined) beat the pants off of them, 3-2.

At World Cup, signs of the American ethos

If you didn't see it or you don't follow soccer, then the Blunder means nothing to you.

If, however, you were even a casual soccer fan yesterday, you witnessed something that never or almost never happens: a soccer ball kicked straight at a tall, muscular, trained, professional goalkeeper that somehow managed to bounce by him, over the goal line, and into the net.

It was something my brother, a lifelong soccer player, coach, and fan, said he'd never seen "in professional soccer in my life."

I have seen it many times, of course, while hacking around on a soccer field with, say, seventh-graders. A ball gets kicked at a goal, and it hits a guy and trickles by into the net.

But this goal was at the World Cup Finals, the event in soccer that happens only every four years and means about 10 Super Bowls to everyone in the world but us.

And this goal was scored by the USA. We have a team, and they're pretty good by world standards, though yesterday against their opponents, England, they looked like eighth-graders playing against actual men, so tall and broad was England, and so tiny and wiry were we.

England was already ahead 1 goal to none, and by all rights with their tradition and physicality and all-starness they should've blown us away. But then this (little) guy by the name of Clint Dempsey, who comes from Texas, a hotbed of soccer, kicked a ball towards the goal, and it went in.

After that, England still should've blown us away, but they didn't. They kept on kicking balls straight at our goalie, Tim Howard, who didn't let the ball by. The game ended up 1 to 1.

After, Clint Dempsey explained, "It was one of those things where other people score goals like that and you say, 'why doesn't that ever happen to me?'"

I don't know if a non-American would've put it exactly that way.

The American ethos is defined by hope. Other countries say, "At least that didn't happen to me" of unfortunate outcomes. We always say, "Why doesn't that ever happen to me" when it comes to positive outcomes.

Alexei Lalas, a TV commentator, alluded to this national quality after the game: "The Clint Dempsey goal, that's luck, but it also comes from a belief and a confidence that this team has, and that Clint Dempsey has individually."

Dempsey himself is an American success story. He comes from "humble beginnings" as the video below explains, and he credits his parents and his hard work for getting him where he is.

America doesn't have a corner on the market of the "glass half-full" and "land of opportunity" way of thinking, but heck, we sure tell the story well. Congratulations, Clint, for believing that if you kick the ball on goal, it will go in.

Why I watch golf on TV

 Now that my weekends are often spoken for, I watch a lot less golf on TV than I used to.

Is it better? It must be, though a small (no, make that microscopic, my dear) and wistful place in my heart sighs a sigh of longing.

Lincoln Park golf course, San Francisco, a nice place to play.

I played golf as a teen, with my father and older brother, with a few clubs from Goodwill and nary a greens fee. We just played a few holes during off times, never held up others, always replaced our divots.

Every form of competition was gold to me in those days. Baseball, basketball, football, hockey, tennis, Monopoly-- we played it. I never was good at golf, but I loved to compete.

My brother continued on with it and is a low handicapper with a yen hone his iron play mid-week, to the dismay of his wife.

The residue of my relationship with golf is an appreciation of the game on TV. To an outsider, the experience is worse than maddening: what could be the appeal of such repetitive, boring activity?

And to an extrovert that has to be chattering all the time, watching someone quietly watch a game where spectators must be quiet while the players silently go about their business in the slowest of fashions-- well, it must be torture.

But this is meditation in pure form, and beauty. It is the turning off of the mind, to enter into a world of deep green and sky blue, mediated by a sphere of white. So very Zen.

The fact that there is competition makes it all the better, and a delicious paradox. It's not just meditation for the sake of giving up all desires. Golf is desire. So you are totally quiet and contemplative, and yet totally full of adrenaline and expectation.

It's a big, silly, metaphysical waste of time is what it is.

Ah, well.

And now, the best player of all time, who always made the game a pleasure to watch, has been exposed as something similar to most famous athletes and politicians. We thought he was perfect because he played as meticulously close to perfect as he could. But we know, as the Greeks knew, that those who soar high always find themselves smashed to the ground.

It isn't a surprise to me, in other words.

In fact, I wrote an op-ed about it in 1997-- how it was going to be very difficult for him to remain the paragon of the American ethos we all wanted him to be after becoming the first African-American and the youngest to win the Masters, that prestigious event held at a segregated country club.

I've currently submitted another op-ed and if it gets accepted, I'll let you know.

In the meantime, I will spend time with my beloved. Because golf is not important.

Labor Day weekend movie notes, II: The Natural

There are a few movies I watch over and over again: Defending Your Life, when I need a boost of encouragement; Vertigo, when I'm nostalgic for the old San Francisco; When Harry Met Sally, when I need to be guaranteed a laugh; The Princess Bride, when I need to quote along some funny lines; Sideways, when I need to be reminded I am not as bad off as some people.

Movie poster from here.

Another one of these movies is The Natural, the self-consciously mythological baseball movie by one of my favorite directors, Barry Levinson, with one of the best performances Robert Redford has ever given. It tells the story of the ultimate underdog, Roy Hobbs, a 35-year old rookie who once had the chance to be "the best there ever was" but now just wants to get a piece of his dream 16 years after a near-fatal moral error.

Back when I had ambitions of publishing a scholarly book on Greek mythology and American cinema, I wrote a 6000-word chapter comparing the movie with Pindar's Fourth Pythian Ode, which is an extended telling of the myth of Jason and the quest for the Golden Fleece.

I liked the idea of Roy Hobbs as Jason, his teammates as the Argonauts, and the Golden Fleece as the championship of the league, which is symbolized by a "bit of cloth," the pennant.

Over the weekend I popped this one into my VCR because there were no decent sports on television, and did a little pleasure research with it. Apparently Barry Levinson used Arthurian legend as a template for the story, which he adapted from the much darker-- and brilliant-- Bernard Malamud novel. But now I read that on a DVD extra feature someone is comparing the movie to the Odyssey.

The movie is Arthurian because the team Roy Hobbs plays for is the New York "Knights." And it is Odyssean because of the character of Iris Gaines (Glenn Close, a smashing cast), Roy's long-lost faithful Penelope who hasn't seen him for 16 years.

But I shouldn't go on with these pedestrian insights. My 6000-word chapter is absolutely the last word.

<grin>

Well. It's been nine years since I wrote that chapter. Let me excerpt something from it, the poor thing:

There is nothing more entertaining than a good sports story. An exciting finish, unlikely turns of momentum, all of these get our blood racing. But to be good, that kind of story must also have a moral dimension. We must be able to root honestly for an individual or a team. It seems that we consider victory satisfying only when the worthy person or team achieves it. And in the stories we've just considered, it seems that the worthy person must be someone tied intimately to the family, to the things of civilization. If all these ingredients are present, it almost obligates the storyteller to cast his tale in a positive light.

It was a first draft.

Nine years later, I think of The Natural in a more postmodern light, as a story told by a certain author in a certain time. The mythological elements-- which include lightning bolts, special bats (swords, to bring back Arthur for a sec), the death of the father, the unknown son who comes to light, the good woman and the bad woman, good and evil generally, the quest, the moral error, the death and three-day wait for the resurrection moment, the fireworks, the redemption (just to name a few things)-- are put in there on purpose, partly as a way of telling a good story, but mostly as an affectionate tribute to those elements and to the sweetness of American mythology overall.

American cinematic mythology is what I really mean, and that post-Depression, I think. We got addicted to stories with happy endings during that prolonged economic tragedy, and we never got off of them. Barry Levinson is acknowledging that in The Natural.

I finally realized that The Natural wasn't going to be mythology for others as it is for me when one recent academic year I showed the clip of the climactic scene to a bunch of teenage heroes. It is, for me, a baseball and mythology fan, one of the greatest moments in cinematic history. To them, it was a random bit of celluloid without context or interest.

No one in the class had seen the movie, and not very many were interested in baseball. I think if they were to see the entire movie, it might move some of them. But there is something antique about it now that I don't think would translate.

It has been, after all, 25 years since the movie was made. Few things last that long in today's Internet daze.

I wonder if you saw it, and what you thought of it. If you weren't alive in 1984, did you see it on VHS or DVD? Did you know it even existed before this blog post? These are the questions that old scholars need to answer.