The Natural

Like most Americans born after 1970, I was introduced to "The Natural" as a movie first. I saw it in the theater on a Sunday afternoon when I was 10 years old and was just plain mesmerized. Who wouldn't love that ending? Roy Hobbs, against all odds, hits that home run off the light tower, rounds the bases in a cascade of fireworks, wins back the love of his childhood girlfriend and the son he never knew he had, and strikes back against all those evil people who tried to ruin him. Plus, Randy Newman's score. To a 10 year-old boy, you could not improve on "The Natural" the movie.A few weeks later I was at an older cousin's apartment in Brooklyn Heights and saw that he had an old paperback copy of "The Natural" the novel. The paperback had a different cover back then - an unraveled baseball with an eye peering out through the seams. Pretty creepy! I "borrowed" the book (to this day, I've never given it back -- sorry, Cousin Stevie). Then, I read it.Man, that ending. Good grief! That wasn't how the movie ended! At age 10, this was most definitely the most depressing thing I'd ever read (bear in mind that my school curriculum steered us well clear of "Old Yeller").So here I am now, almost 40. The movie version of "The Natural" fit America in the 1980s - saccharine, improbable, false. The book, which came out in the early '50s, was written for a more somber post-war America only just starting to fall in love with fast cars and jet planes. But, while "The Natural" fit the national mood quite well back in 1952, its fits the national mood now equally well. The story takes place in the early '50s, in a lost world of baseball - the Dodgers still in Brooklyn, the Braves still in Boston, night games a rarity and train travel the norm -- but the hard lessons that Roy Hobbs learns throughout the book are still relevant today.OK, Roy Hobbs in the book is not a sympathetic character at all -- he's shallow, selfish, womanizing, has a lousy moral compass. That said, the forces arrayed against him are more than even better men could handle. He's got a millionaire bookie, a femme fatale, and a capitalist Judge, all in cahoots to ruin him. The odds are rigged against him even before he leads the New York Knights to within one game of the World Series. And, read and re-read the Judge's speech to Roy, towards the end of the book, about why the Knights must throw the final game, to avoid playing the Yankees in the World Series. Is the Judge wrong? (And Hobbs... still easier to root for than A-Rod).Great books don't need to have happy endings. We can learn more about ourselves, our society, our values, from stories in which the hero fails. That's why "The Natural" the book is one of the great American novels, while the movie is, quite frankly, not even as good as "Major League". The book is superficially "about" baseball, which was still the national pastime in 1952. It certainly collects the most memorable baseball stories up to that point: the stalking and shooting of Eddie Waitkus; Babe Ruth's season-ending bellyache; the 1919 Chicago "Black" Sox scandal and "Say it ain't so, Joe". But it's not just a baseball book; it's a book about the American dream and why it proves so elusive. With its well-placed symbolism about birds as a harbinger of doom (young Roy is shot by Harriet Bird, and old Roy's pitching nemesis is named Vogelman), and the Arthurian tale of the Fisher King (Hobbs' team is called the Knights for a reason), "The Natural" remains a meaningful book even though the world in which baseball is king has long since passed into legend.

After seeing the movie several times I decided to get the book so I could draw some comparisons. Much to my surprise I discovered that the author had drawn much information from actual lives and events---some accurate, others off base. Reading it carefully I found myself making notes on various aspects, and I shall set forth some of them.First, Roy Hobbs himself. To be sure, he was not a very nice person; I found myself thinking of Ted Williams---who said again and again he wanted to be the best he was, the greatest hitter who ever lived---and, going farther back, to one Tyrus Raymond Cobb whose early life had a tremendous impact on the player---and man---he became. In spite of his terrible temper Williams, however, was more of a human being; I used to enjoy reading about his conversations with other players, particularly one pitcher for whom he had great respect (he even let this pitcher use some of his bats!) Not so Hobbs.There was one scene, both in the book and in the movie, that had me laughing fit to split and still does, because it continues to put me in mind of an actual episode concerning those misbegotten St. Louis Browns circa 1949-1950---and an experiment that failed miserably. Briefly: the Browns had taken up residence in the cellar, and the front office decided they had to do something about it. You would think they would get a few players who new how to play the game, maybe a couple of coaches---even a new manager---but no. They went ahead and hired a psychologist in the hope that he could hypnotize this miserable team out of their doldrums. It didn't work. The psychologist was probably very good in other areas, but when it came to working with hypnosis---he was, in the words of a great pitcher with a great team in the American League East, a "one-trick pony" who had one technique that he ran into the ground. Of course it didn't work; this psychologist failed to consider that what was sauce for the goose was not necessarily sauce for the gander! No wonder Roy Hobbs got up and left, the manager chased after him, and Hobbs practically snarled at him "I signed a contract to play baseball, not for those shenanigans!" Well, the Browns started the 1950 season in the cellar; in May of that year they managed to win four games but still ended up in the cellar---so they fired that psychologist, and a couple of years later they moved to Baltimore and became the Orioles. (Incidentally, I knew that pitcher quite well; he had a good working knowledge of how to use hypnosis and a few other tricks up his sleeve besides that arm.)Mr. Malamud devotes a great deal of space to the whys and wherefores of the hitting slump, and one can gain much from a careful reading of this section. He also devotes a great deal of space to Roy Hobbs' eating proclivities, and one must mention the great Babe Ruth who was perhaps the first of the great "fressers"---and here I must say something about a third baseman named Andy Carey who ate and ate and ate and where did it all go? (He probably had an extremely high metabolism, unlike the Babe and Mr. Hobbs.) And, of course, he discusses Hobbs the poor fish who went looking for love---or was it lust?---in all the wrong places and what became of him; there is indeed a huge difference between the ending of the book and the ending of the film, and the reader is invited to take his or her pick. Again I think of one Theodore Samuel Williams and one Tyrus Raymond Cobb, and how both of them came to grips with their personalities. Fascinating reading indeed.