Brief thoughts on '42'

I'm no critic and I don't aspire to be one. I don't have a technical eye. I don't go to movies looking for flaws, inconsistencies or mistakes. I've never walked out on a film because, if I've paid money to be there, I might as well get the full value from the pretty people and bright colors on the screen. So if you're looking for a review of "42," move along.

Simply as a fan -- of baseball, of movies, of Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers (I realized years ago that there's something about that team that would've drawn me to it -- I loved it. I loved the costumes and the cars, the reproduced uniforms (even if they got the Brooklyn caps wrong), the computer-generated ballparks from Florida to Jersey City to Brooklyn and Pittsburgh. I thought it was wonderfully acted, even if Harrison Ford seemed like a caricature. Chadwick Boseman was stellar and Nicole Beharie devine. I can only imagine what Rachel Robinson thought seeing a part of her life dramatized on screen.

But what I think I loved most were the baseball scenes. (I don't know who choreographed them or what former players, other than C.J. Nitkowski, may have suited up.) This may be the best, the most realistic baseball choreography I've ever seen on film. It's heavy on game action, and maybe once -- one swing -- out of all those recreations did I think it looked awkward. The first time Boseman steps into the batter's box as a Montreal Royal to face the Dodgers in a spring exhibition and the pitch comes in high and tight felt so real. It sounded just like when you're playing catch and you lift your glove to catch a hard one at your ear -- that sound of the air whooshing around the seams and then the smack of the ball into the glove: Fffffffffssss-THWACK!

Digital reproduction of real -- and long-gone -- places has advanced so much that scenes in the old ballparks looked more like they were filmed on location with a soft lens than with an actor in front of a green screen. Maybe it's me, but I thought some of the scenes at Ebbets Field or Forbes Field make "Titanic" look like it was filmed in a bathtub. The ballparks looked familiar, like I'd remembered them from visits even though they were all gone more than a decade before I was born. But I love to look at (and sometimes collect) photos of these long-gone cathedrals, and I've "played" a few games at Ebbets and Forbes and the Polo Grounds on various versions of Xbox and PS3 baseball games. The movie brought the pictures to live and put the video games to shame, even if they gave Forbes Field a wooden (?) green outfield wall -- not brick, and no ivy -- and put the flagpole behind the center-field fence instead of on the field of play.

  

I thought -- minor spoilers in this paragraph -- that limiting the setting to 1945 through the end of the '47 season provided the perfect window to squeeze Jackie's story into a manageable 128 minutes. There is little politicalization -- there's no dialogue about what Jackie's trailblazing will mean for society as a whole. Other than the voiceover intro and just a few off-field scenes of segregation and racism, nearly all of that discourse is presented in the context of a ballgame. We didn't need to see anything before 1945, and ending the film with a key home run may have been hokey, but it worked for me. I'll let that slide. And yes, I realize the Dodgers didn't clinch the 1947 NL pennant in Pittsburgh and that the game that day didn't play out as depicted, but I found that out only after coming home to look it up. I doubt anyone not alive that day to remember it didn't realize the artistic license until they got home and delved into baseball-reference.com, either.

The epilogue -- a few more spoilers -- captivated me. In typical biopic fashion, we're given updates on what happened to the real-life people after the timeframe of the film. The characters are shown one by one, with text on the screen listing their accomplishments. We see several actors, in scenes not shown earlier in the film, in action until the image freezes and the text appears. The splendid "Life Is A Ballgame" by Sister Wynona Carr plays, and after several actors in character have flashed by, up pops a black-and-white photo of Rachel and Jackie -- the people, not the actors. Jackie's accomplishments are displayed alongside photos of the man himself. It was actually a bit emotional and very well done. The slideshow then transitions into recent MLB footage of current players wearing No. 42, with text explaining how the number was retired throughout Major League Baseball and is worn by everyone on April 15 each year. And with that, events that happened nearly 70 years ago, to and by a man who died 40 years ago, are put into the context of today's game.

  

Whatever its flaws, "42" did it for me -- as a baseball movie, a biopic and a dramatization of historical events. There was even a moment in the film, when Branch Rickey tells Robinson that he saw a white boy in a sandlot pretending to be Jackie Robinson, that sounded a lot like what I wrote  in a short story for a college class in 1997. If I had ever tried to write a screenplay, this subject would've been one I wanted to write about and parts of this movie would've been how I wanted to write it. And that's when I know I've loved a film.

Stealing home on a '56 Topps card

Did a little Jackie Robinson research this morning, prompted by the 1956 Topps card shown above. I was curious as to when the slide into home may have occurred, presuming the scene depicted was based on a photograph of an actual occurrence. It was the number of the batter, really, that piqued my interest -- who is that? Through good deduction, dumb luck or whatever, it only took a few clicks to come up with the answer.

First, I suspected that it was a steal of home, because of the position of the batter so close to the plate, with his bat on his shoulder, gave me the impression that he had just stepped back. If Robinson was scoring on a hit, the batter would probably be further away from the plate, perhaps giving direction on whether -- and where -- to slide. Second, I figured that the opposing team was the Cardinals, based on the catcher's stirrups.

So I simply went to Baseball-Reference's Play Index (before I came across that list of Robinson's steals of home) and got the list of games in which Robinson stole a base against the Cardinals, then started clicking through box scores. Neither of his stolen bases in the two-steal game were of the plate, but the second one on the list -- August 29, 1955, was, and the play-by-play confirms that it was when starting pitcher Johnny Podres -- No. 45 in your '55 Dodgers scorecard -- was batting. Furthermore, Cardinals catcher Bill Sarni wore No. 15 in '55, and that certainly looks like a 5 on the back of the catcher; even if it's a 6, Sarni wore 16 in previous years with St. Louis.

Perhaps even more noteworthy: It was a triple steal to boot! That event didn't warrant much mention, however. In the New York Times story the following day, it had one paragraph dedicated to it, 10 grafs into the story. Podres' plunking of Stan Musial in a back-and-forth brushback spat grabbed the headlines and the photo. Musial was hit in the hand in the fourth inning but wasn't replaced until a double-switch in the seventh. (X-rays were negative, and he was in the lineup in Pittsburgh the next day.)

Compare that to the last triple steal, which wasn't even a straight steal of home (it involved a rundown), but did warrant its own headlines. It's so rare to even see a straight steal of home these days -- such an exciting play -- that the likelihood of a triple steal ever happening again has to be remote.

The Mets jersey in Yankee Stadium

The Babe has a presence

I finally made it out to Yankee Stadium '09 yesterday. It was a gorgeous, mid-70s afternoon and I didn't even need a seat in the shade to feel comfortable, but I had one, and I was.

After emerging from the D train, I walked around Babe Ruth Plaza to pick up my tickets near Gate 4 and took a glance over at the construction site that was once Yankee Stadia '23 and '76. It's nothing more than a dirt field, with the bat still standing behind what used to be the home plate area. I never had a particular affinity for the place -- my memories were of games in my childhood in the '80s, not of seeing great ballplayers -- but it was still a bit of a shock, as everyone says, to see it gone. It's definitely a good thing, though, that they're finally moving on with construction of the park.

Inside about an hour before first pitch, I took the time to walk the whole way around the concourse, a needed improvement from the last place. No longer do you feel like you're walking through the subterranian tunnels of some Cold War weapons base. Instead, the wider walkways -- though not quite as wide as Citi Field's, it seemed -- and high ceilings made for a much more comforting experience.

Out behind center field harkens back to the old stadium, though, as you pass through a tunnel beneath the bleachers and behind the casino sports bar. A set of oversized retired numbers line the wall by the doors to Monument Park (closed by the time I got there, after batting practice), one of three places where the numbers are displayed (Monument Park itself is another, and a third display -- visible on TV -- is behind the bleacher seating in left-center). Then the narrow corridor continues past the sports bar entrance and emerges in left field.

I bought some lunch and intended to eat it while standing at a ledge behind the nearest seating section, but then I noticed numbers on the ledge and an usher came to usher away two people to my left. That's when I realized you actually need a ticket to stand (or sit, because there are high chairs along the shelf) in any of these spots. I suppose they sell those tickets as reserved standing room, rather than general admission. I much prefer the traditional way -- the ledges are there for anyone to use as a convenience. There are just some times I'd prefer to buy my food and drink and consume it at the nearest possible spot rather than trudging back to my seat and risk spilling anything.

After taking in the first four innings or so from my seat, I spent a couple of frames exploring. I checked out the museum, with an impressive display of New York baseball history (even if it's there as much to assert the Yankees' dominance as much as to remember the Giants and Dodgers and acknowledge the Mets), and chuckled at so many instances of Other Teams' artifacts: jerseys and hats from the Dodgers, Giants and, yes, the Mets. Citi Field may have a Rotunda built to honor Jackie Robinson, but Yankee Stadium '09 has Jackie's hat, jersey and bat, plus jerseys from Mel Ott, Carl Hubbell, Pee Wee Reese and Mike Piazza. We won't be seeing a Derek Jeter jersey in the Mets' museum any time soon, and I'm fine with that.

The collection of autographed baseball is impressive, too, and I took special note of 15 of them, finding all randomly, except for Mike Pagliarulo's, which I looked up to get a shot for a friend of mine who loved Pags when he manned third base at the old place. It was cool to look at Thurman Munson's locker, too, which I had only glanced the one time I was in the Yankee clubhouse for a story and didn't have time to really look at it as I was keeping an eye out for Jeter, Jorge Posada, Sterling Hitchcock and Lee Mazzilli for the story I was working on. And next to Munson's locker is a replica of a current stall, with a touchscreen that allows fans to put their own names on the LED board above their heads and take pictures. One proud Mets fan with more guts and guile than I put "Let's Go Mets" on the sign and revelled in all of us taking his picture.

On the way back to my seat, I paused to look at all the overpriced baseball cards at one kiosk, including an uncut sheet of 1984 Topps for $100. Curious, I went on to eBay to see if any were available. One with a Don Mattingly rookie card (the attendant at the kiosk didn't say if either of the two sheets for sale had any particular players on them) could be had for $149, but another auction was only up to $4 or $5 with a few bids in.

I was back in my seat to see CC Sabathia struggle in the eighth, allowing Seattle to tie the score at 2. The guy next to me who had downed three Pepsis (that I had seen) by the bottom of the second had returned with another (no telling how many he had when I was gone) and expressed his displeasure at CC's inability to get outs and Joe Girardi's refusal to bring in Joba. It worked out OK in the end, though, because Alex Rodriguez hit his 595th home run -- a Yankee Stadium shot to be sure, landing in the first row in right field -- to give the Yankees a 4-2 lead that was protected in the ninth by Mariano Rivera.

In the end, I find the new place to be bright and welcoming, but no more intimate than the old place. It's still a colossus, certainly more stadium than ballpark, but it's a needed upgrade from the one it replaced. Even though the concourses are bigger and open to the field, it still felt in some places like we were inside, beneath the stand, rather than outside or under cover of the stands. That may be a feeling derived from the open space above our heads, sloped up and outward for the seating sections.

But it certainly isn't a bad place to see a ballgame -- if you can afford it.

Where Jackie's impact was felt most

I still remember April 15, 1997, when I sat in a lounge in my dorm at Notre Dame and watched as Jackie Robinson's No. 42 was retired throughout baseball by Bud Selig, standing at a podium at Shea Stadium. Behind him stood Jackie's widow, Rachel, and President Bill Clinton. The significance of the occasion, the 50th anniversary of Robinson's debut with the Dodgers, was clearly underscored by the presence of these heavyweights. That night inspired me to write a short story based on Robinson's debut for a class that semester. If I ever dig it up and decide I'm not going to try to have it published, I'll post it here.

But in that rec room at O'Neill Hall, 700 miles from home, no Major League baseball within two hours, I felt a bit of pride at being a Mets fan far away from New York that night. I'm sure the choice of Shea Stadium for the ceremony had more to do with the Dodgers being in town than the Mets being home, but maybe only a little. New York, after all, was the city in which Jackie played all 10 years of his career. He worked in the city, lived in Connecticut, died there and was eulogized and buried in New York. When the Dodgers left for Los Angeles -- a year after Jackie retired ... after being traded to the Giants -- Jackie remained in New York. He may have starred in four sports at UCLA, but once he left L.A. and made his way through Kansas City and Montreal to Brooklyn, New York was where he stayed.

The Dodgers, of course, do a fine job of celebrating their history, even the Brooklyn Era now more than 50 years since they left the borough, and they deserve to have Robinson as a focal point of their legacy. But if there is one place where Jackie's impact should have a permanent footprint, I think it's New York.

I first started contemplating this argument a year ago, when Mets fans regularly criticized the Jackie Robinson Rotunda at Citi Field. That commotion has died down a bit this year, now that the Mets have made an active -- and admirable -- effort to celebrate their own history (because they're not going to be adding much to it this year, I'm afraid), and I'm glad. I love the Robinson Rotunda. I don't look at it as celebrating the career of a Dodger; I see it more as championing the life of a man who changed not just baseball, but America. Ebbets Field is gone and now, too, so is Yankee Stadium. The only place left in New York to truly get close to Jackie is his gravesite. Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City, where he played his first game for the Montreal Royals, is also long-gone and the city's cool statue stands miles away from the stadium site, near a subway station in the Journal Square business district. Brooklyn has a middle school and a statue where the minor league team plays, but Coney Island is a long way from Sullivan Place. Even Robinson's Hall of Fame plaque is different from the one he knew.

Robinson obviously has a connection to L.A., but it's as a college athlete, even if that's all Los Angeles had in the '30s. He made his name in New York, and it's what he did in New York that he's known for across the country. The Yankees wouldn't set aside a corner for Jackie if they were the only team in New York. I have no problem with Mariano Rivera continuing to wear No. 42 for the duration of his career, but up until a few years ago, they refused to include it among the retired numbers at the ballpark, when the other 29 clubs had long displayed the number on their walls. So to me, Queens, the borough bordering Brooklyn, and the Mets, the National League successor to the Dodgers, are the next best option for a baseball shrine to one of its seminal figures.

I'm not old enough to remember a burning Bronx (I -- or my family -- celebrated my first birthday only that September) let alone three-team summers in New York. A lot of what I know of the Dodgers in Brooklyn comes from Doris Kearns Goodwin's memoir, but after reading that book, I had a strong feeling that if I had grown up in the '40s or '50s, I would've been a Dodgers fan. So maybe that's why I'm proud that it's the Mets' ballpark that is home to a great tribute to a great man who died four years before I was born and whose lasting legacy did little for me, personally, beyond giving me the opportunity to watch guys like Darryl Strawberry, Dwight Gooden, Torii Hunter, CC Sabathia and Jason Heyward play ball.

The rotunda's a great way to enter a ballpark, and for all the unique touches designed for the stadiums built since the early '90s, it may be the most inspired and unique. Petco Park and Oriole Park may have their warehouses, Coors Field the Rocky Mountains in the distance, Busch Stadium the Gateway Arch, PNC the Pittsburgh skyline and AT&T McCovey Cove -- but those were already on-site and the architects just had to work them into their designs. The rotunda, obviously copied from Ebbets Field, was resurrected, and just as a generation of Dodger fans recalled walking through it in Brooklyn, a lot of young Mets fans today will grow up to have what hopefully become fond memories of Citi Field's rotunda.

This year marks just the third time since 1997 that the Mets have not been home on April 15. Only in 2000 and '03 did they wear gray uniforms, and those weren't even official Jackie Robinson Days -- the moniker took hold in 2004. The Mets are 8-4 on April 15 since the ceremony at Shea in '97 and have won six of their last seven on this date. Both road games prior to today's happened to be in Pittsburgh, in 2000 (a loss) and 2003 (a win). The one loss since '04 came in 2006, with the 2007 game getting rained out when a nor'easter hit the East Coast, wiping out several games that Sunday. The Mets honored Robinson at their next home game, the following Friday, and lost to the Braves, but because the game wasn't played on April 15, I'm not including it in the 8-4 record.

Today, they'll honor Jackie in Denver and 14 other cities. But every day, he's honored in New York.