Focus on America

Sports Films Celebrate American Brand of Perseverance

Washington -- Like a crucible, sports turns up the heat under its participants to burn off the dross -- not only of their athletic imperfections, but often of their character. For many years, American sports films have focused on the never-say-die spirit that emerges from the competitive fires as pure gold.

One classic example is Pride of the Yankees, the 1942 film biography of baseball’s legendary first baseman “Iron Horse” Lou Gehrig, whose Hall of Fame career was cut short by a debilitating -- and fatal -- nerve disease.  Starring Gary Cooper, the film features Gehrig’s real-life New York Yankees teammates, including Babe Ruth.  Gehrig says, in his well-known farewell speech at Yankee Stadium, “Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.” The movie suggests that Gehrig’s bravery in the face of approaching death -- his conclusion, in effect, that “I might have been given a bad break, but I have an awful lot to live for” -- is the stuff of which true American heroes are made.

Another genuine American hero’s life is depicted in The Jackie Robinson Story (1950), in which Robinson, the first African-American Major League Baseball player, portrays himself.  As the man who integrated professional baseball’s major leagues, Robinson encountered hostility as well as adulation.  He had no training as an actor, yet his film performance is as understated and graceful as the life he led.  By refusing to respond to the provocations of bigots, the courageous and unassuming Robinson changed the face of sports forever.

A very different kind of courage is displayed by Paul Newman in The Hustler (1961).  As “Fast Eddie” Felson, a seedy, self-destructive pool shark, Newman longs to “play the game the way nobody’s ever played it before,” and he almost does -- except for the large, greasy obstacle of “Minnesota Fats,” played to perfection by Jackie Gleason.  The Hustler chronicles Felson’s determination to defeat “Fats” and how, in the process, he realizes the emptiness of his soul.  Felson is a 1960s anti-hero, bound up with existential anger, though in the end he finds the courage and strength to change his life.

The film Rocky (1976), centered on the character of a small-time boxer making it to the top, was the bicentennial blockbuster that become an icon of this medium, along with its many sequels.  But films such as Breaking Away (1970) and The Bad News Bears (1976) represented the same spirit in more understated, and far more charming, ways.  Both films are funny, sweet stories of bands of losers that seize an opportunity to prove themselves.  In Breaking Away, a group of working-class youngsters defeats snooty, privileged college-boy cyclists, and in The Bad News Bears, an inept Little League baseball team under the dubious management of Walter Matthau (at his most sublimely sardonic) wins a tournament through nothing but determination and big hearts.

Robert Redford starred in the baseball epic The Natural (1984) as Roy Hobbs, an aging golden boy who still wants a shot at being “the best there ever was.”  Hobbs has an arm of steel (he literally knocks the cover off the ball in one practice session) and can do no wrong on the field.  Though he is tempted -- by the trappings of success, by bribes, by a woman -- he manages to remain the honorable man he was from the start.  Barry Levinson directed The Natural with his characteristic gift for recapturing a time past, and the film’s incandescent imagery evokes the near-mythical status of baseball in 1930s America.

The All-American Girls’ Professional Baseball League was founded in 1943 to engage a war-weary America and to maintain interest in the game while many male players were serving in the military.  A League of Their Own (1992) is a fictionalized account of the league’s inception.  With a strong cast (Geena Davis, Madonna and Tom Hanks as a drunken team manager) and a winsome script, this film puts the spotlight on the women who raised the nation’s spirits during the dark days of World War II.

Seabiscuit (2003) tells the true story of a long-shot thoroughbred racehorse that renewed the hopes of Americans during the bleak Great Depression of the 1930s.  The scrappy Seabiscuit’s unexpected success showed that fortitude and pluck sometimes are more important than size and strength.  His rise from underdog to racing legend is detailed in this joyous, deeply moving film.

Perhaps the quintessential film of this genre is Miracle (2004), the story of the 1980 U.S. men’s ice hockey team, which won the Olympic gold medal over the heavily favored Soviet team in a triumph that thrilled all of America.  Head coach Herb Brooks (played by Kurt Russell) says, “I’m not looking for the best players, I’m looking for the right ones” -- that is, the ones with enough guts and tenacity to do the seemingly impossible.

Two films from 2005 were based on true-life stories of American mettle.  The Greatest Game Ever Played, directed by Bill Paxton, tells the story of golfer Francis Ouimet, an amateur who -- against all odds -- won the 1913 U.S. Open championship.  Cinderella Man, the Academy Award-nominated film directed by Ron Howard, stars Russell Crowe as boxing champion James J. Braddock, who pulled himself up from poverty during the Depression to become the heavyweight champion of the world.  Inspired by the tender love of his wife (played by Renee Zellweger) and his resolve to make a better life for his children, Braddock became a symbol of hope for the common man.

The 2008 film Leatherheads, set in 1925, is the latest example of grit and heart in American sports movies.  Dodge Connelly (played by George Clooney) is 45, broke and determined to see his ragtag team legitimize professional football.  Leatherheads is a screwball comedy, but it teaches a valuable lesson about remaining true to one’s dreams through the rough-and-tumble arena of sports.

Baseball legend Leroy “Satchel” Paige once urged athletes never to give up and always to “find another way.”  More often than not, the best U.S. sports films of the last 60 years have illuminated the American gift for “finding another way” around sometimes overwhelming obstacles -- or using the obstacles themselves as stepping stones to victory.