As magnificent as the scene was, little was left to the imagination.
When Roy Hobbs is down to his last strike and bleeding through his flannel uniform and swinging the cherubic batboy’s bat they had made together, we know what will happen. The virtuous Hobbs has rejected the Judge’s bribe, as we knew he would. And right before Hobbs stepped to the plate for the final time, Iris had to spell out to him that he’s the father of her son, a development everybody in the theater knew.
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We also know that once the fateful pitch is delivered, Hobbs will blast a home run to vindicate his waylaid life and win the pennant for Pop Fisher. The ball crashes into the stadium’s floodlights, exploding like fireworks. The pyrotechnics give the audience a jolt, but we should expect Hollywood to add such a maudlin flourish.
There’s a thin line between a rolled eye and a watery one, and “The Natural” crosses back and forth for many of us. The film closes with Hobbs and his son playing catch in a field of tall, golden wheat. Iris watches from the side. They don’t speak, only radiate.
Over the 37 years that have passed since “The Natural” — which was filmed in Buffalo — was released, never once have I wondered whatever became of Hobbs. He hits his heroic dinger, gets an instant family that just so happens to already own a farm back home and forever remains a sports legend.
The clichéd Hollywood ending.
How swell.
How boring.
What follows is an appreciation for the original Roy Hobbs, the maddening dullard in Bernard Malamud’s 1952 novel “The Natural.”
This Hobbs not only accepts the bribe, but he also negotiates the price, brutally injures Iris, reneges on the fix without telling anybody, strikes out anyway to suggest maybe it was the enchanted bat all along and is busted in the next morning’s newspaper.
I want to know what happened to that guy next.
Malamud’s protagonist is a delusional, self-centered, obsessive whiner who possesses otherworldly baseball talent. In the book’s most dramatic moments, you don’t know what Hobbs will decide to do or whether he’ll come through because he is — how shall I put it? — an aimless dipshit.
He is a black hole of a human. See ball, hit ball. See food, scarf food. See girl, grope girl.
He never feels fulfilled. He doesn’t profess any love for the game or his teammates, only for breaking records. He always needs money. He loathes his father for putting him in an orphanage and refers to his dead mother as a “whore.” The idea of children or grandchildren repulses him.
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Roy the Rube, in other words, is precisely the type of character Robert Redford wouldn’t sign up to play as a superduperstar leading man.
Hobbs was transformed by screenwriters Roger Towne and Phil Dusenberry into a wholesome country boy, wisened up over the 16 years he went from teen phenom to anonymity.
Hollywood Hobbs makes silly mistakes only when it advances the storyline. He’s otherwise charismatic, introspective and quick with a witty comeback. He doesn’t sweat money. Women eat from his palm, and his teammates love him. But he’s driven more by father-son sentiment than anything else, even baseball.
As such, Hollywood Hobbs faces no real dilemma at the end of the movie. He absolutely will not take the bribe to throw the one-game playoff for the National League pennant. He absolutely will rise from his hospital bed and shove it down all the villains’ throats. He absolutely will become the greatest dad of all-time.
Potent silver-screen pizzazz — Oscar nominations for cinematography, art direction and score — embellish Hollywood Hobbs’ journey and make sure we see the conclusion coming three trolley stops away.
For the book “Talking Horse: Bernard Malamud on Life and Work,” editor Nicholas Delbanco recalled the late author’s reaction upon seeing the film was to mutter, “Feh, feh.”
Janna Malamud Smith, author of “My Father is a Book: A Memoir of Bernard Malamud,” reasoned the change in direction can be chalked up to social context of the early 1980s.
“I’d point to the Reagan era’s manufactured optimism, the Stallone ‘Rocky’ sensibility, the American denial of tragedy and wish to believe that talent triumphs over all obstacles and the fact that the box office loves a happy ending,” Malamud Smith wrote in an email.
While the film’s conclusion strikes a “Rocky III” tone, the novel leaves you with the bleak melancholy of “The Wrestler.”
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Malamud’s tale is uncertain and turbulent. Written as homage to French poet Chretien de Troyes’ tale of Perceval and the Holy Grail, the parallels are thick.
Perceval was infatuated with joining King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table and, with his magic sword, tries in vain to save the Fisher King. Hobbs finally reaches the majors with his bat, Wonderboy, to play for the New York Knights and maybe deliver a championship for hard-luck manager Pop Fisher.
Hobbs in both versions of “The Natural” begins as a 19-year-old pitcher on the verge of a Chicago Cubs audition. On the train there, Walter “The Whammer” Wambold, a Babe Ruth facsimile, happens to ride with condescending sportswriter Max Mercy. They encounter the mysterious Harriet Bird in their travels.
The train is forced to stop along the way. Passengers kill time at a nearby carnival, where a wager arises: Can Hobbs strike out The Whammer on three pitches? Hobbs wins, making The Whammer look foolish. Harriet Bird’s attention is redirected from the icon to the victorious phenom.
Once in Chicago, she lures Hobbs to her hotel room and shoots him in the stomach before killing herself. Hobbs’ destiny has been ambushed.
From there, the stories diverge once Hobbs shows up 16 years later in Pop’s dugout with Wonderboy and nothing to say about his shadowy past.
Many characters maintain similar traits on the page and the screen, but Hobbs’ altered personality enhances or diminishes their impact.
Despite featuring six actors who have been at least nominated for an Academy Award, the film doesn’t allow much character development aside from Hobbs.
Movie critic Roger Ebert was among the many who bemoaned the effort.
“Why did ‘The Natural’ have to be turned into idolatry on behalf of Robert Redford?” Ebert wrote. “Why did a perfectly good story, filled with interesting people, have to be made into one man’s ascension to the godlike, especially when no effort is made to give that ascension meaning? And were the most important people in the god-man’s life kept mostly offscreen so they wouldn’t upstage him?”
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Malamud makes us care more about those in Hobbs’ orbit, especially those whose adoration of him he will not reciprocate. We root for Hobbs to get his shizz together not for his sake, but for Pop Fisher and Iris Lemon.
In the film, Iris Gaines is a childhood sweetheart Hobbs unknowingly impregnates the night before he leaves for Chicago. (This storyline change renders incongruent the valiant Hollywood Hobbs, who tries to bed Harriet Bird when he reaches Chicago. Hollywood Hobbs later doesn’t hesitate to sleep with his dead teammate’s girlfriend, Memo Paris.)
In the book, when Iris stands up to support the slumping Hobbs, they had yet to meet. He hits a home run, tracks her down out of gratitude and, although he has been on a mission to court the mourning Memo, suddenly feels a deep connection with Iris.
A pivotal metamorphosis might happen at last.
Roy the Rube reveals his dark past to Iris. She soothes him and confides her past to him. She’s only 33, but she gave birth at 16 to a daughter who would grow up to do the same. This knowledge disturbs Roy the Rube, who can’t picture himself with a grandmother, and kicks Iris aside, but only after he has sex with her.
Hollywood Hobbs, who plays the cad for the sake of unfolding the script, never would exploit such a woman. Hollywood Hobbs is sympathetic even in his interaction with Memo Paris because she is the one trying to ensnare him. In the book, it is Roy the Rube who fiends for her.
Hobbs as portrayed by Redford is so polished that we’re mystified how he needed 16 years to get back to baseball.
Robert Redford pictured on the set of “The Natural” in Buffalo, N.Y. in 1983. (Joe Traver / Liaison / Getty Images)Roy the Rube’s story adds up better. Of course this guy got sidetracked.
When he falls ill near the end of the book and his availability for the one-game, tiebreaker is in doubt, none of his teammates visit him. The Knights’ duplicitous owner, Judge Banner, drops by with a bribe and is not turned away. No, Roy the Rube needs that cash to impress Memo and make her want him.
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Hobbs is conflicted throughout what he knows will be his final game because of his health. He first hopes not to play, but Pop pencils him in anyway. Then Hobbs hopes he doesn’t see any good pitches so he can walk, not look foolish and pocket the money for nothing.
Angered by a heckler in the sixth inning, his mood shifts. With deadly accuracy, Hobbs purposely fouls off three line drives at the fan. The last one ricochets and hits — wouldn’t you know it — Iris Lemon in the eye. She has shown up for the game after not hearing from him since their rendezvous.
Amid the scramble to get Iris in an ambulance, she informs Hobbs she is pregnant with their son. She pleads with him to win the game for them.
It is then that Roy the Rube has a moment of clarity. He returns to the plate and crushes a long fly that drifts foul. The blast broke his magical Wonderboy. The batboy hands him an ordinary Louisville Slugger, and the Rube strikes out with one more chance to hit.
He really tries in the ninth inning, just as Wambold had 16 years earlier.
With two outs and a runner on third base, a virtual unknown named Herman Youngberry (get it?) emerges from the bullpen and strikes him down on three pitches.
Hobbs, his dignity still intact and surging, storms upstairs and dumps the bribe money on Judge Banner’s head while also humiliating Memo and slithery bookie Gus Sands. A statement has been made.
Outside the stadium, a paperboy approaches with the bulldog edition that declares Hobbs might have been on the take. There’s a statement from the commissioner that, if true, all of Hobbs’ records will be wiped out (four home runs in one game, 14 straight hits, et al). The paper includes a police photo of a 19-year-old Hobbs shot in the stomach.
The book ends with Roy the Rube on the verge of losing almost everything. Even his consolation plans appear poisoned. He got his head straight, but too late. He gave a legitimate effort, but without Wonderboy he failed. He’ll never know whether the talent belonged to him or his bat. Forever branded a cheat, he would be expunged from the record and forbidden from working in organized baseball. His unborn son will grow up in shame.
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He certainly will suffer. Perhaps he will grow, too.
We’re left to imagine.
Hollywood Hobbs walked away with everything a man could want. Roy the Rube, for all his faults, is a compelling literary figure, deeper than the two-dimensional screen upon which Hollywood Hobbs was projected.
(Top photo illustration: Wes McCabe / The Athletic)
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