The trick of all great sports movies is that they are not really about sports. The given sport of the given film is just a means by which the filmmaker can communicate the emotional and narrative stakes to an audience in an immediate way. Sports become the method by which we understand and process the complex nature of a human narrative.
So Rocky isn’t about boxing, it’s about a loser who is desperate to prove that his small life can have value. Field of Dreams isn’t about baseball, it’s about the way the past is ever-present, illuminating and illustrating the murk of our current lives. And Warrior isn’t about MMA fighting, it’s about the way that families destroy each other, and how those same bonds can be a means of redemption and rebirth.
The Battered Bastards of Baseball, now available on Netflix Instant, is not really about baseball. Sure, it tells the story of the 1973–1977 run of the Portland Mavericks, an independent ball club formed at a time when the Major League organizations were controlling every professional aspect of the game. Bastards does a nice job of laying out the details of the team’s origins and style, explaining how team owner Bing Russell, a former actor, held open tryouts to summon every weirdo and wack-job that the Majors wanted nothing to do with, men who brought that same eccentricity onto the field and into the dugout. Much of the film is made up these old ballplayers regaling us with tales of the wild antics they got up to, as the Maverick organization not only forgave, but encouraged, an atmosphere where the men were red-eyed and unkempt, bearded and dirty, and powered entirely by a love of the game. And the film has a great David vs. Goliath narrative, as the Major League programs do everything in their power to shut down the Mavericks and defame Bing, neither of which are willing to give an inch.
Russell attracted talent from across the world who were looking for a chance to play, even recruiting his teenage son, Kurt, to play for the Mavericks.
Yes. That Kurt Russell.
If all Battered Bastards had done was collect these remembrances and edited them into roughly linear order, the film could have easily been a perfectly pleasant trip down memory lane, a throwback bit of nostalgia for a time when there was a little more forgiveness for the wild and untamed. Maybe only those who cared about baseball would’ve been interested in seeing it, but Battered Bastards could have still been an amusing diversion.
But despite what the title might tell you, the movie is not about baseball. Baseball, the Mavericks, they are just the means by which our storytellers are trying to communicate a simple and human message.
That message?
Kurt Russell loved his dad.
Bing Russell passed away in 2003, and his ghost haunts each and every frame of the film. Even when the documentary leaves him behind to focus on the development of the team, Bing Russell’s presence is still felt, this magnetic force bringing together these massively disparate people into something like a family. It’s not a mistake that a film supposedly centered around a baseball team’s historic run spends a great deal of time at the beginning and end detailing the peculiar eccentricities of this man, and the life that led him to throwing a lot of his money into a pipe dream of a ball club.
There’s probably a rebuttal to be made, another side of the story to be told. Bing Russell in this film comes across as a mix of Rodney Dangerfield in Caddyshack and Jesus Christ himself, and I’m willing to be the reality was more complex than that.
But that’s not the story Kurt Russell, the directors (Bing’s grandchildren), or any of the participants want to tell. They want to tell you about the man, Bing Russell, who carried himself as a living legend, but who came by that honestly. They want to tell you about a man who was a natural storyteller and invigorator, a man who was willing to dump untold dollars into his little baseball experiment out of honest love for the game. Bing Russell comes to occupy an almost mythical space in this film, a Ray Bradbury character come sauntering to life.
I love that. I love that Battered Bastards is a film that has been ripped straight out of the hearts of the people who knew Bing and broadcast for everyone to see. The film touches on a number of other topics and thematic issues, many of which are fascinating in their own right, but the film always returns to its roots as a love letter from Kurt and all the assembled men and women who crossed paths with Bing and were made to feel welcome in his company.
Which brings us back to the nature of sports movies. There are any number of ways in which this narrative could have been framed. It’s not as if the man was defined by baseball any more than any person can be defined by one thing. As Sarah Polley displayed with her riveting film Stories We Tell, there’s more than enough juice in a small family story to power a film.
But by using the story of the Mavericks as an entryway, it allows the filmmakers to involve and ingratiate the viewer in a way that they otherwise might not have been, had the film been a more nakedly personal and minimal experience. Sports can speak to a primary place within ourselves, the same way that a song can eradicate all barriers of time and transport you back to the moment you heard it, or a glimpse at a certain work of art can freeze you where you stand, the channels and backroads of your mind suddenly halted as the imagery aligns your world into a perfect symmetry that had never existed before.
Sports have never impacted me the way that movies or books have, but there’s no denying the passion and emotion which are conveyed through the ways we compete with each other and ourselves, and when a good storyteller finds a way to tap into that, there is no limitation to what they can make an audience feel.
The Battered Bastards of Baseball uses the archetypal power of its game to make sure you understand just who Bing Russell was, why he tilted at windmills all his life, and how he was able to draw so many people to his quest. The game is never about the game. It’s about the people who play it. Battered Bastards finds a whole host of beautiful people that played, and invites you to join in.