The "Un"-Natural?

I am a regular reader of the sports pages, and not just for the scores. Often I find some of the newspaper's best writing there, and yesterday was no exception.

Mike Boehm had a very well written column in which he compared the Roy Hobbs as Bernard Malamud penned him in 1952 with the Roy Hobbs as Robert Redford played him in the movie with the same name, "The Natural." Like Boehm's, there have been many articles written in these days of expectation and dismay, as the sports world awaits the findings of the commission investigating the extent of steroid use in baseball.

Other sports have similarly been dealing with the perfusion of "performance enhancing drugs." At least one, cycling, may be permanently damaged by lab tests and their post-cursors, commissions and controversy. Marion Jones recently became the latest star of track and field to confess to steroid use and to return otherwise hard-won Olympic medals. Shame has become the suspect shadow of glory. We are no longer clearly joyed by any triumph. The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat are both pursued by technicians in white coats with needles and little plastic cups.

Sometimes I find myself wishing for the "good ol' days," when our sports heroes were, like Babe Ruth, hard-living sorts, boys in men's clothing. Something changed with the advent of "excellence" in sports. Chicago's "Monsters of the Midway" were, well, pretty monstrous, back in the day before we expected them to grow up, and before they expected themselves to be "athletes." Somehow, as we've concentrated on what is "fair" we've lost a sense of what is "play." Sports was supposed to be about entertainment and fun, but it has come to be about business and seriousness. And sports' players "play" less: too much is at stake in "take out slides," for example, when millionaires are on the field, and in the press boxes, and in the front offices behind the scenes.

This is my lament, not Mr Boehm's! And his is better, or at least more salient. He decries the way the Hollywood has changed our culture, by giving us a series of idealized images that take us further from our human condition. He points to what happened to Roy Hobbs, who, as Malamud wrote him, was "a conflicted, angry loner who didn't get enough love as a child, who's not a bad sort, really, and has principles, but who tends to undermine his best intentions and best interests." This, of course, is too complex for Hollywood's simplifications of our visions and our minds, and so we see little of this in the Redford portrayal.

And maybe we don't even want to see, is Boehm's argument, because maybe in the escape into entertainment that both movies and sports (and these days the evening news) have in common, we do not want to face certain realities. We simply want to be thrilled, Boehm suggests.

Yet there is something to be gained from "going by the book," as it were! Boehm writes: What I take from "The Natural" is that decent enough people can give in to temptation; that they repeat mistakes instead of learning from them; that the fear of appearing to be vulnerable, flawed and old is a damaging fear of what's unavoidably human; that wonders ever cease; and that this is all very sad. Malamud is writing about the human condition, not just about baseball. He's asking us to stop demanding fantasy, and to understand-- and maybe to forgive-- the truth."

Boehm concludes: Which Roy Hobbs would you choose-- the idealized one who brings down the stadium lights? Or the painfully real one whose last swings, his honest best, won't bring redemption for the all-too-human mess he has made?

Boehm made me think about our acceptance of each other-- and ourselves. And how we either limit that acceptance, or find ways to embrace each other.

I'm also grateful that I do not have to rely upon even my honest best to "redeem" the "all-too-human" messes I have made. I know that my Redeemer lives...

Blessings...