The Natural

This novel by Bernard Malamud focuses on Roy Hobbes, a spectacular baseball player. Due to an unlucky turn of events, Roy isn't able to enter professional baseball until his late 30s, but he still manages to have a great season. He single-handedly brings his team from last place to first place in the league. However, throughout the season, he is plagued by regrets of his past and other circumstances that conspire to bring him down.

The Natural was made into a movie starring Robert Redford and Glenn Close in 1984, and I much prefer the movie to this novel. In the book, Roy is a bit of an arrogant jerk who chases after the ladies all the time, whereas movie Roy is much more likable. Plus, I liked the ending of the movie more.

Here is a clip of Roy when he first starts batting practice, and nobody knows what he can do:


I don't really like watching sports on TV, perhaps for the following reason:

Actual football played in a 60-min NFL game: about 11 minutes.

So what do the networks do with the other 174 minutes in a typical broadcast? Not surprisingly, commercials take up about an hour. As many as 75 minutes, or about 60% of the total air time, excluding commercials, is spent on shots of players huddling, standing at the line of scrimmage or just generally milling about between snaps.

However, I enjoy a lot of sports movies, and there are quite a few great baseball movies. Here are a few of my favs (click on the title to watch the video trailer):

1) The Natural
2) Field of Dreams
3) The Sandlot
4) A League of Their Own