Page 58 - Introduction to Electronic Commerce and Social Commerce

Sport on Film • 47

rural middle-class representation of the baseball player reinscribes the past and its
association with heartland values and contrasts with the contemporary demographics
of baseball. In 2006, a total of 40.5 per cent of Major League Baseball (MLB) play-
ers were Latino (29.4 per cent), African American (8.4 per cent), Asian (2.4 per cent)
or ‘other’ (0.3 per cent), and 30 per cent of the coaches in MLB were either African
American (16 per cent), Latino (13 per cent) or Asian (1 per cent; Lapchick 2006).
In addition, 31 per cent of the players are international.

Heroes

There are recurring qualities associated with main characters that make them heroic.
Roy Hobbs, in The Natural, plays for a team called the Knights, emphasising the
sense that baseball players are heroes, protecting their country’s way of life. This
heroic motif is reinforced through references to Homeric heroes and Sir Lancelot

(Hunter 2005). The central characters of films such as The Jackie Robinson Story,
The Pride of the Yankees, The Stratton Story (1949) and The Natural, are baseball
players who have persevered through adversity. Their heroism resides in their purity
of focus as well as their determination to succeed in sport. Often films portray players

as naive, inexperienced, talented and enthusiastic rookies who encounter temptations
or problems when they reach the big leagues. The capacity for heroes to persevere,
retain their integrity and maintain or reacquire an innocent love for, and commitment
to, the game is a central motif in many fi lms. In The Stratton Story, Jimmie Stratton,
a promising baseball player, loses part of his leg but continues to fight to return to

the sport he loves. Bull Durham presents a more complex hero in Crash, a world-
weary veteran who very briefly made it to ‘the Show’ (the major leagues). Despite

the disappointment of a career spent in the minor leagues, Crash maintains his love
of baseball, his commitment to sport and his desire for success.

Villains

The typical villains in baseball movies are mercenary, cut-throat capitalists and
sportsmen who exploit or corrupt the innocent hero. These cut-throat capitalists are
motivated by profit, rather than love for the game. In A League of Their Own, the

villains are the capitalist organisers who ‘feminise’ the game to sell it and, at the end
of the war, shut down the entire women’s league. Eight Men Out relates the story of
the 1919 Black Sox scandal and portrays young, financially poor ballplayers being

duped by more wily, sophisticated organisers. The multiple villains in The Natural
include an agent and a reporter who hound the hero, Hobbs, and other players to get
a story; a sophisticated femme fatale, who stalks him and damages his career; and a
corrupt owner, who attempts to bribe him.