Myth in Baseball

“Californication”

Baseball lives inside everyone: the sound of millions of your neighbor’s screaming voices are deafening, the smell of cracker jacks and hot dogs creeps into your nostrils, the ground grips your shoes, a loud crack of a bat finally reaches your ears as a man no larger than a small gap between your index finger and thumb starts his trek around first. Real players become mythical, and mythical characters become living legend. Baseball allowed a way for mere mortal players to become everlasting legend. Players like Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb, and “Shoeless” Joe Jackson become that out-in-the-distance gaze your grandfather gets while retelling their greatness. The game of baseball has been intertwined with the lives of Americans for more than a century. Stories about the past players and games are great and interesting but tend to have little connection with the modern audience. In this day and age, the common audience member only pays attention to the moment that will put them on the edge of their seats. Myths are more appealing to the modern audience because of the excitement and escape they provide, and greater demand in Hollywood productions.

Throughout the movie, the fictive character Roy Hobbs leads us through the winding road of good versus evil. Along the way mythology is used to captivate the viewer and explain the unexplainable. One of the most appealing mythological beings in the film is Wonderboy, the magical bat. Forged from a lightning struck tree, the bat seems to be completely unbreakable and contains supernatural power, seemingly ordained by God. Right from the beginning of Hobbs’ career Wonderboy’s power is displayed with the knocking off the cover from the batted ball. Only a true Knight could wield such a weapon. This weapon could be related to none other than to the mythical Excalibur. Supposedly unbreakable and could only be wielded by the true king. The crack of the bat sounds and the ragged ball soars into the outfield and Hobbs ends up with what baseball scholars claim to be the most exciting play in baseball, the triple. The triple is the rarest hit in baseball and takes the most all-around skill. In a mythological story, this type of distortion of truth is possible and adds to the excitement of the story. Along with this rare feat, Hobbs also accomplished something that only 15 players in MLB history have accomplished: 4 homeruns in one game. To match all his hitting accolades, his fielding displays seem to compete with those of the great Willie Mays. Roy Hobbs is given the baseball powers of all the greats in the game of baseball. Not to mention the fact that his back bears baseball’s most mythical number, 9. Baseball greats who wore the number include Ted Williams, Roger Maris, and Reggie Jackson. All of these players went on the reach the Hall of Fame, but more importantly, Ted Williams admitted in an interview that he had once said he hoped for someday to walk down the street and a father and son spot him and the father would say, “son, there goes the greatest hitter who ever lived.” All of these are interesting facts, but with Roy Hobbs they actually become so much more and even a non-baseball fan would enjoy watching and remember forever.

Roy Hobbs’ climb from the depths of hell to the everlasting Graceland could happen in only myth. No player in major league history has ever taken a 16 year break from the game and came back a better player than before. However, a story such as this is very uplifting and allows for a perfect escape from a grounded reality. It is physically impossible to hit a baseball into the clock at Wrigley, and into the lights of any baseball stadium, or hit the cover off a ball for that matter. People see baseball games all the time and many will claim to be extremely bored by them and only watch the last inning if it’s a close game. They do so in hopes of catching something that seems so unreal that you can’t help but smile and dream. Although walk-off homeruns occur a decent amount of times in a season, the myth of Roy Hobbs keeps the walk-off sacred. Without the background about Pop Fisher, Roy’s travel through tough times, Roy’s dream, his high school girl cheering him on, the homerun just becomes another walk-off. The audience is completely entranced by the excitement of a moment completely unreal.

Eight Men Out is a film confined to historical fact. The plot, beginning, and ending are all things that the audience already knows before they even purchase their ticket. How can anyone get excited about something in which they already know what’s going to happen? People do still