Last Good Friday, I YouTube’d the final scene from The Natural, one of the best movies ever (good for you, baseball!), and realized that it’s the Easter story.
The New York Knights pitcher has lost faith and is throwing the game, bought off by the silver dollars of the corrupt co-owner who can’t stand bright lights and wants the team to lose. And yet the game is close.
Roy Hobbes picks up Wonderboy, the bat carved from the wood of a lightning-struck tree (mystical Christ-child allusions). Wonderboy splits in two — His body, broken for us — on the first pitch. Roy tells Young Bobby of Cyrene, the Bat Boy of Arimathea, to go “pick me out a winner,” and comes back with his own creation, the Savoy Special. (John 14:12: “I tell you the truth, you will do even greater things than these.”) Wilford Brimley looks on, the Nicodemus of the dugout.
Next pitch, another foul. Two strikes. Two days. If he truly is the greatest, let him step up to the plate and hit a home run. The umpire offers him vinegar wine —Roy, you ok fella, can you go on? Roy turns his head away, back toward the mound. “Let’s play ball.”
Blood issues from his side, pierced with an ancient bullet. It soaks his uniform. The catcher sees it and readies the demon knuckle ball.
Third pitch, the crack, the earthquake, the eyes toward heaven… and with the shattering lights, the falling sparks, the winning run guaranteed, corrupt co-owner cowering in the shadows of the owner’s box, the Magdalene of his youth weeping with joy in the stands, the hands outstretched to hi-five his wounds with belief as he rounds the third day base, defeat loses its sting.
He touches home plate. Ascension.
Goodbye Mr. Spalding, truly this was the Son of God.
…
Keep Reading:
* Awesome old video shows Auburn (and Chewacla) of yesteryear
* Harvey Updyke in high school
* Could Bieber Fever save the Toomer’s Oaks?
* Toomer’s Corner after Punt, Bama, Punt
* Bo and Me
* Actor’s memoir sheds light on integration of Auburn football
* Bear Bryant’s lost year at Auburn
* The Secret History of Pat Dye Field
* Erin Andrews at Toomer’s Corner
* In the time of “Got 13″ she was a Tiger
* The Auburn player who played for Bama… and Busey
And irony of ironies, Malamud is a Jew.
I love the movie version of The Natural. But I must warn you, if you love the movie, do NOT read the book.
The Natural is part of the naturalist tradition. So, like Melville and London, Malamud’s forces of nature overpower man and show him he is not in control of his destiny. Roy does not win in the book.
I thought the movie was filled with a number of symbols from King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table and also many religious symbols. The director beautifully filmed Iris (Biblical/Greek reference to the rainbow and faith) standing to show her faith, and she even says “I believe in you” at one point. As she stands draped in white like a Greek goddess, a ray of heavenly light illuminates the brim of her hat like a halo. That is pure magic. Roy hits his firt homer and smashes the clock, thus stopping time.
Whenever he opens the bat case, thunder sounds to signify the intervention of the gods.
He carves his bat (sword) from the tree struck by lightning (sign from the gods), under which his father died. Thus passes the reign of power from father to son.
Awesome movie which is filled with symbolism. My favorite baseball movie.
It could also be argued that it more resembles the Odyssey. Roy is Odysseus, Iris and her son are Penelope and Telemachus, the Judge is Poseidon (with Memo and Gus as Calypso and Polyphemus – he even has one eye to complete the allegory), Barbara Hershey’s character is Circe the witch.
Of course, the other side is that heroic stories and myths sinply have common origins and traits, but that is the realm of Joseph Campbell (The Hero with a Thousand Faces)
See: Monomyth
Are you freaking kidding me? A X-tian allegory!? Why do X-tians feel the need to make everything theirs? Why do they have to take something so far removed from their faith and assimilate it unabashedly and mercilessly into something they claim is exclusively theirs?
The movie, much like the book, is based on the epic, Ulysses. Hobbs crosses over into Elysium.
“Fields of gold!” Hello!?
It’s friggin’ Greek! It predates the entire X-tian religion!
@TigerEyez13, Nice post. I loved the movie but hated the book. Not the same character at all. Barely recognizable as the same story! Of course I also hated Catcher in the Rye and On the Road. So maybe I just don’t get it.
@Logical Guy, Amen! As Sullivan says heroic stories mirror each other and it is no great stretch to overlap them. Though I don’t think this is even a very good job of that.