The Natural
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- For the hip hop album, see The Natural (album)
The Natural is a 1952 novel about baseball written by Bernard Malamud. The book follows Roy Hobbs, a baseball prodigy whose career is sidetracked when he is shot by a crazed female fan. Most of the story concerns his attempts to return baseball later in life, when he plays for the fictional New York Knights with his legendary bat, "Wonderboy." It has been suggested that the story closely parallels the legends of Percival and King Arthur.
The film
The Natural was adapted into a film starring Robert Redford as Roy Hobbs in 1984. The movie is not considered to be faithful to the book, since important details are changed, particularly the film's upbeat ending, which differs significantly from the novel's ending. While Malamud wrote a dark satire of a fallen hero, the film version took a traditional "Hollywood" approach.However, the movie, like the book, concerns the experiences of Roy Hobbs, an individual with great "natural" baseball talent. Early in the movie, Roy's father tells him that his success will involve his natural ability less than how hard he works to be successful. The remainder of the movie chronicles Roy's trials and suffering.
In 1984, The Natural was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Supporting Actress (Glenn Close), and nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress (Kim Basinger). Many of the baseball scenes were filmed in Buffalo, New York's War Memorial Stadium, built in 1937 and demolished a few years after the film was produced.
The musical score
Randy Newman's dramatic and Oscar-nominated score, which was described by at least one complimentary critic as "Coplandesque", has been referenced frequently since then, in visual pieces underscoring other "natural" ballplayers. The music has been used in a documentary about Hall of Famer Ryne Sandberg; retellings of Ichiro Suzuki's breaking of the single-season hits record from Roy's era of 1920; and in retellings of Game 1 of the 1988 World Series, when a seriously injured Kirk Gibson hit a dramatic game-winning 9th inning home run reminiscent of Roy Hobbs' blast to win the pennant. To this day, the movie's theme is often played at ballparks when a home-team player hits a home run.Billy Joel traditionally uses a theme from the score as an introduction while on tour.
The plot
The movie begins by showing Roy Hobbs as a grown man, looking rather old for his years, silently awaiting a train that will take him to New York for a last chance at baseball. The specifics of his early career are not revealed until later. The film then cuts to a lengthy flashback showing Hobbs as a young boy playing baseball on an American farm, somewhere in the Midwest, with his father. He is obviously a highly-talented baseball player. When a tree, under which his father had died, is destroyed by lightning, Roy takes a piece of the tree and makes a bat from it, on which he burns a lightning bolt and the label "Wonderboy". He carries the bat with him throughout his career, in a trombone case.As Hobbs embarks on his baseball career, it is cut short owing to a chance encounter with a crazed female fan, Harriet Bird (Barbara Hershey), who shoots him in the mid-section just before committing suicide.
The story skips forward 16 years. Hobbs is now in his mid-thirties and has just arrived in New York by train. He helps a down-on-their-luck, fictitious National League team called the New York Knights (similar to Brooklyn Dodgers of that era) rise to stardom and pennant contention. An unscrupulous and cynical reporter, Max Mercy (Robert Duvall), hounds Hobbs through this season. The mystery of those sixteen years is slowly revealed as Roy's childhood sweetheart, Iris Gaines (Glenn Close), returns to his life. It is later revealed that an encounter between Roy and Iris sixteen years earlier had produced a son.
The owner of the Knights, The Judge (played by Robert Prosky), tries to persuade, even bribe, Hobbs to throw the remainder of the season owing to a contractual agreement between The Judge and Hobbs' coach, Pop Fisher (Wilford Brimley), whereby The Judge will obtain full ownership from Pop if the team fails to win the pennant. The Judge is joined in this attempt at persuasion by a gambler, Gus Sands (Darren McGavin), and by Gus' mistress, Memo Paris (Kim Basinger).
Hobbs battles through many distractions and adversities, including succumbing to the sexual persuasions of Memo; being poisoned (leading to a reaggravation of the injuries to his stomach sustained in the shooting); being offered a bribe; and even the shattering of "Wonderboy" at a critical moment. He helps the Knights win the pennant, and the film ends with Hobbs playing catch with his son, with Iris standing nearby, in a farm field, in a scene that echoes the beginning of the movie. The last shot, of Hobbs throwing the ball, is the shot that appears on the DVD cover.
Influences
The Natural is the first narrative novel about baseball and includes numerous parallels to Arthurian legends, while the plot structure follows The Odyssey to some extent. The similarities to The Odyssey include a long, sidetracked journey involving sexual encounters (Calypso and Circe in The Odyssey, Memo Paris in The Natural), and finally the arrival home to his son and his mother (Penelope and Telemachus in The Odyssey; Iris and her son in The Natural).Among major league players, Roy Hobbs bears a certain similarity to Ted Williams and also (in the book, at least) Shoeless Joe Jackson with one critical incident referencing Eddie Waitkus.
Williams, the Red Sox great, said that his goal in playing baseball was for people to say, when he walked down the street, "There goes Ted Williams, the greatest hitter who ever lived." Hobbs has a similar, though somewhat more ambitious, desire for people to say he was the greatest ball player who ever lived. Like Hobbs, Williams missed years of his career during his prime (owing to military service during World War II and the Korean War, the year of the book's publication), and both later returned to baseball as stars. Other similarities are that both Hobbs and Williams played the outfield, wore the number nine on their jerseys, hit home runs during their last Major League at-bats, and each won one pennant in his career. The last two facts only occur in the movie; the book was printed eight years before the end of Williams' career and ends in a strikeout.
Hobbs' severe gunshot wound by a vengeful woman, who then leaps to her death, combines and exaggerates a couple of incidents involving real-life major leaguers. In the early 1930s, Billy Jurges was accidentally shot while trying to wrest a gun from a suicidal former girlfriend. In 1949, Eddie Waitkus was shot by a female stalker unknown to him and whom he had unwisely agreed to visit in her hotel room. Waitkus' story is often cited as "inspiring" Malamud to write the book. Both players recovered from their wounds and resumed their careers. The women were institutionalized.
In the book (though not in the film), when Hobbs is found to have taken a bribe, a boy cries, "Say it ain't so, Roy!" This is an obvious reference to Joe Jackson and the Black Sox scandal of 1919. Jackson was often labeled a "great natural hitter".
Baseball references
References to the book and movie title have been frequent. Will Clark was known by the nickname "The Natural" throughout his career after his first-career-at-bat, first-pitch home run off of Nolan Ryan, which suggested the scene in which Roy Hobbs "hits the cover off the ball" in his first career-at-bat. The Sports Illustrated cover story for August 29, 2005, featured Atlanta Braves rookie sensation Jeff Francoeur and was titled, "The Natural".References in popular culture
In a third-season episode of The Simpsons, Homer joins the nuclear plant's softball team and leads them to the championship game using a hand-crafted bat named Wonderbat (with a sloppy lightning-bolt drawn on the side). Music reminiscent of the score from The Natural plays when Homer hits home runs. The references cease when major-league players are brought in to win the championship game, and Wonderbat is destroyed by Roger Clemens, who burns it in half with a laser-like underhand pitch.In another episode featuring Homer's attempt to bowl a 300, the music that was played before Roy Hobbs' game-winning home run is used as a background for Homer's final strike. The action pans other characters, including a group of old-time photographers snapping pictures as Homer releases the ball. Like Hobbs' destruction of the ballpark lights, Homer's last strike causes all of the other pins in the other lanes to explode; balloons and streamers fall from the ceiling. The actual scene of exploding lights is often parodied on the show during scenes involving baseball.
The episode "The Natural" of It's Garry Shandling's Show mirrors the movie, except that ping-pong is the sport instead of baseball. A special paddle is the mythical "Wonderboy".
In the movie BASEketball, numerous references are made to The Natural, including the ball that the main character calls "La-Z-Boy," because he made it himself from a recliner.
On March 30, 1993, in his final at bat of the season, Charlie Brown gave a mighty swing to a fastball, and actually connected to hit a home run that wins the game! It was his first ever home run in the 43 years of the Peanuts comic strip, and he hit it off of the great-granddaughter of Roy Hobbs, who was pitching for the opposing team.
Metaphors
Many agree "The Natural" contains various literary devices. One of these metaphors is the grand allusion to the story of King Arthur and PercivalAnother metaphoric aspect may involve a gothic theme, specifically vampire imagery. This may seem far-fetched but is supported by the text and occurs when Roy encounters Harriet Bird on the train where she shoots him. In the novel, it is mentioned that someone had been shooting talented athletes with silver bullets, and we can assume the shooter to have been Harriet. Silver bullets are believed in some circles to kill the undead - such as vampires. However, Roy Hobbs does not die as a result of the attack on him, indicating that he is not a "vampire." On the other hand, his survival, and certain other "magic realistic" aspects of the novel suggest that he is not entirely human.
A chief character metaphorically indicated as a vampire is the owner, as mentioned in the following passage found on page 89: “The Cigar glowed, the Judge blew out a black fog of smoke, then they were once more in the dark. Lights on, you stingy bastard, Roy thought. ‘Pardon the absence of light,” the Judge said, almost making him jump. “As a youngster I was frightened of the dark - used to wake up sobbing in it, as if it were water and I were drowning - but you will observe that I much prefer a dark to a lit room”
With this allusion to vampires, Bernard Malamud is suggesting that although many may perceive baseball players as corrupt, money- hungry figures, the actual problem lies with the Owners who are "sucking the life" out of baseball by introducing greed into the game.
Contemporary critics noted how the imagery of women in the film, in general, is starkly separated into timeless traditions of "good" and "evil". The two "evil" women (Harriet and Memo) often wear dark clothing and are both sexy and sinister. The "good" woman (Iris) takes on a literally angelic character in a crucial moment in Chicago, when she stands and her white hat is haloed by sunlight, as she catches Hobbs' attention and leads him "to the light", and out of the batting slump brought on by Memo's nefarious distractions.
Criticism and impact
Critics were not universally impressed when the film appeared. Leonard Maltin said it was "Too long and inconsistent". Another critic said, "The ending is so hokey you don't know whether to laugh or cry." Roger Ebert fairly savaged it, calling it "idolatry on behalf of Robert Redford." However, Gene Siskel, Ebert's TV partner, rated it one of 1984's top 10 films.The film proved to have broad appeal among fans of the game and, along with its imagery and music, has had significant staying power. Both the novel and the film are usually included in lists of the greatest sports-related books and movies.
External links
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