Dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge

by David Benjamin

“You could be walking around lucky, and not even know it.”

— Jay Trotter (Richard Dreyfuss) Let It Ride

MADISON, Wis. — As I left a little Cape Cod movie house after my first viewing of Breaking Away, I sensed (dimly) that I’d just seen one of my favorite flicks of all time, partly because its characters were so familiar. My version of the cynical beanpole Cyril (Daniel Stern) was a high-school friend named Ray, who might easily have rendered some of the movie’s most memorable lines:

“I was sure I was going to get that scholarship. My dad of course was sure I wasn’t. When I didn’t, he was real understanding, you know. He loves to do that. He loves to be understanding when I fail.”

“When you’re 16 they call it Sweet 16 and when you’re 18 you get to drink and and vote and see dirty movies. What the hell do you get to do when you’re 19?”

“Going to college must do somethin’ to girls’ tits, I swear. Just look at ‘em.”

Despite Cyril’s wit, Mike (Dennis Quaid), the ex-high school football star, delivers the film’s most memorable lines: “You know what really gets me though? I mean, here I am, I gotta live in this stinkin’ town and I gotta read in the newspapers about some hotshot kid — new star of the college team. Every year it’s gonna be a new one. And every year it’s never gonna be me. I’m just gonna be Mike. Twenty-year-old Mike. Thirty-year-old Mike. Old mean old man Mike.”

The “hero” is Dave Stohler, who dispels his post-graduation blues by bonding to his bicycle, speaking in an Italian accent and driving his dad nuts. Like many sports movies, Breaking Away depicts young people coming of age, finding their “balance” (in the words of Mr. Miyagi) by competing — usually against all-but hopeless odds. Think Titans. Think Hoosiers. Think Michael Oher.

A while ago, I assembled an idiosyncratic ranking of baseball movies, with Bull Durham at No. 1. Picking a Top Five among non-baseball flicks is harder because they’re a) broadly dissimilar. and b) I’ve either missed, or ignored, a few, especially if they’re about golf or car racing (although Damon and Bale in Ford vs. Ferrari are brilliant, and I could watch The Great Race once a week forever).

An issue that puzzles me about sports in cinema is that there’s no parallel genre in literature. With a few anomalies — notably, You Know Me Al by Ring Lardner, The Natural by Bernard Malamud, A Fan’s Notes by Frederick Exley — American authors (Clair Bee and Chip Hilton don’t count) have produced precious few “classic” novels that tap the inherent suspense and drama of sports. I attribute this deficit to snobbery. Popular film, on the other hand, is unfazed by the academic and critical elitism that scares authors away from writing stories about runners, jump-shooters, pugilists, quarterbacks and karate kids.

I don’t expect any other ex-sportswriter to do this. So, here’s a random mix of jock flicks I’ve seen and — mostly — liked seeing, with comments on favorites.

Boxing: Outside of baseball, boxing is Hollywood’s foremost sports genre. The gold standard is the tortured love story, with Lilli Palmer and John Garfield, in Body and Soul, which holds up remarkably after 75 years. The critics’ preferred ring saga is De Niro’s portrayal of Jake La Motta in Raging Bull. But go ahead. Try sitting through Scorcese’s bleak 129 minutes more than once. A far more watchable boxing biopic is Paul Newman’s Rocky Graziano in Somebody Up There Likes Me.

Rocky (but none of its sequels) is, of course, iconic. As are Requiem for a Heavyweight and Kid Galahad — the Edward G. Robinson original, not the one with Elvis. The Champ in either version is sappy and dated. Clint Eastwood’s well-crafted Million Dollar Baby is deftly heartbreaking. Ron Howard’s Cinderella Man— just about the perfect based-on-a-true-underdog story — should be paired in a Depression Era double feature with its horse-opera counterpart, Seabiscuit.

The sleeper, though, among the ring flicks I’ve seen, is a snatch of noir, The Set-Up, directed by Robert Wise. Robert Ryan, a broke and broken-down boxer, has a chance to reap a windfall. All he has to do is tank the last fight of his career, a meaningless bottom-of-the card prelim. One of Ryan’s most moving and nuanced performances, The Set-Up is dense with emotion and fraught with suspense. 

The Ponies: Speaking of horse operas, National Velvet is past its expiration date. But I’m fond of Seabiscuit, the Marx Brothers in A Day at the Races and The Reivers. The sleeper in this category, however, is a forgotten race-track comedy about horseplayers, Let It Ride. With humor and style, director Joe Pytka captures the addictive bettors’ milieu, the neighboring dive bars, the jockey-club snobs, the mob at the rail and the horseplayers’ sick love affair with Lady Luck. The cast is a mixture of A-listers — Richard Dreyfuss, Jennifer Tilly, Teri Garr, Cynthia Nixon, Robby Coltrane— along with an extraordinary who-are-those-guys ensemble that includes David Johanson, Richard Edson and Michelle Phillips. 

Track and Field: Race, the story of Jesse Owens’ 1936 Olympic triumph is told by the numbers, but excellent — with Jason Sudeikis stealing scenes in a pre-Ted Lasso coaching role. McFarland USA, with Kevin Costner, would still be the best high-school cross-country film ever made even if there were another one. But the running movie that stands alone is the beautifully filmed, star-studded, well-acted and memorably scored Chariots of Fire. Its setting is in the Olympics of 1924, when the Games were still human scale, the athletes were still amateurs and the Olympic Committee were already assholes. 

Basketball: Notwithstanding Glory Road, about the 1966 Texas Western NCAA champs, Samuel L. Jackson in Coach Carter and Spike Lee’s He Got Game (which I haven’t seen), the cream of hoops flicks will probably always be Norman Dale (Gene Hackman) coaching the Hickory Huskers to the Indiana state title. By the way, the real-life version of Jimmy Chitwood (Maris Valainis), was a deadeye shooter named Bobby Plump, who led tiny Milan High to the 1954 Indiana title.

Football: Hollywood has long made good football movies, twice with guys named Burt — Lancaster in Jim Thorpe, All-American, Reynolds (let’s not talk about Adam Sandler here) in The Longest Yard. Tom Cruise’s coming-of-age flick, All the Right Moves, succeeds — surprisingly — because the football scenes project more realism and heartbreak than Hollywood usually allows. There are gridiron films I either avoid or never saw, among them are Rudy (shmaltzy), The Replacements (contrived) and Any Given Sunday (cynical). On the other hand, I approve of The Blind Side, Twelve Mighty Orphans, Draft Day, Jerry Maguire, Heaven Can Wait and Invincible. My guilty pleasure here, the football flick I can watch repeatedly, is Denzel Washington cracking the whip, clearing the school bus and partnering with Will Patton in Remember the Titans. 

Some sports have just one movie. My must-see list in this cozy genre includes The Great Debaters, Best in Show, Shall We Dance (both the Japanese version and the Richard Gere-Jennifer Lopez-Stanley Tucci remake), Paul Newman’s poolhall classic, The Hustler (yes, there’s a sequel, The Color of Money), plus Russell Crowe in Gladiator, Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela in Invictus and Pat Morita’s lovable claim to immortality, The Karate Kid. 

My last entry here, perhaps the funniest flick in this whole genre, is about a sport that’s all but fictional. In Dodgeball, Patches O’Houlihan (Rip Torn), growls the unforgettable line: “If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.” Even better is the double-edged irony of a disgraced Tour de France bicyclist, Lance Armstrong (before his disgrace), advising Peter La Fleur (Vince Vaughn) to suck it up and buckle down: “I guess if a person never quit when the going got tough, they wouldn’t have anything to regret for the rest of their life. But good luck to you, Peter. I’m sure this decision won’t haunt you forever.”