'The Natural': The best there ever was

The seeds of “The Natural” were all Bernard Malamud’s, planted in his 1952 novel of the same name. The essence of director Barry Levinson's film, however, was pure Robert Redford.

The film version of “The Natural” turns 25 this year, but it seems like, oh, maybe a decade ago when the movie made its premier at theaters everywhere. The film was a tale of baseball, the sort of warm story that reminds us of how tied to our emotions the sport is.

But “The Natural” is more than a baseball tale, much in the way that “Field of Dreams,” a film littered with literary illusions to real characters, is more than a baseball tale. If any two movies defined sports movies, these did.

Both had a mystical aura to them. Kevin Costner’s portrayal of Ray Kinsella, a down-on-his-luck farmer who chased and caught his dream, might have had a richer, more textured storyline. As the centerpiece of a story about the game itself, Kinsella never measured up to Redford’s Roy Hobbs, a country bumpkin with a sweet as molasses swing.

For Hobbs allowed us to dream the possible, particularly those of us – I am an Indians fan, if anybody cared -- who have followed teams that, when they win anything, it is an impossible dream.

Cut to its essence, “The Natural” is mythology, a study in character; it’s a child-like sports fantasy in a different way than “Field of Dreams” is. For there is no game to win for Kinsella in his Iowa cornfield; he never concerned himself with winning; his concern was saving the past, ensuring that baseball and its legends lived on, unfettered by the changing world Kinsella found around him.

"Hey, is this Heaven?" Shoeless Joe Jackson asked.

"No," Kinsella told him, "it's Iowa."

The world Hobbs found was less idealistic. He had no “Moonlight Graham” or “Terrance Mann” to surround him. Hobbs’ world was one of users: men and women who wanted more than he could give them.

His world was corrupt, which seemed more real today than not. For isn’t the game of baseball corrupted now?

Corruption or not, Hobbs played through it. Though temptation came wrapped in a blonde package, he never let a dame’s allure compromise him. He wouldn’t throw a ballgame, not for her and not for all the money “The Judge” and his gang of hoodlums offered.

“The Natural” was a case study of moral character woven into a narrative about baseball. Unlike the dark ending Malamud crafted in his ’52 novel, the film ends as great fantasies always do: upbeat.

Hurting, his magical bat “Wonder Boy” broken and the son he never knew in the stands watching, Hobbs stands at home plate with a title for the Knights at stake. He swings a piece of lumber the chubby batboy gives him and … well, it’s a fantasy; who can’t figure out how it ends?

Twenty 25 years later, the ending to the greatest sports movie ever remains as magical now as ever. “The Natural” has aged well. As sports movies go, “Field of Dreams” is a no-hitter. So does that make “The Natural” a perfect game?

Yes.