You can’t channel surf (or channel stream?) nowadays without stumbling upon enough sports documentaries to carry you through a surgery recovery, or a hunger strike, or a maybe even a Mets quest for a World Series title. It’s challenging for any to stick out among the crowd.
“14 Back,” a documentary by Sports Illustrated and Major League Baseball about the 1978 American League East race between the Yankees and Red Sox, sticks out by being … hilarious. You can find it on SI TV.
The drama of one of baseball’s best-ever races, treated as a comedy. It works very well thanks to the filmmaker’s approach, their choice of narrator and the characters who survive to tell the tale.
“I think that just came out of the joy of remembering that era, that year and that game in particular,” Jonathan Hock, the project’s producer and director, said Tuesday in a telephone interview, referring to the tiebreaking game at Fenway Park on Oct. 2, 1978. “It was nail-biting and tense and incredibly important in the moment, but 40 years later, you see all that through a slightly different prism. It doesn’t feel honest to just be reverent. The needle we were trying to thread was trying to be funny without being irreverent.”
It succeeds first of all because the participants were so colorful — from those no longer with us (Yankees manager Billy Martin, catcher Thurman Munson and owner George Steinbrenner and Red Sox manager Don Zimmer) to those who chose not to be interviewed but who are well-represented in footage of the time (Reggie Jackson and Carl Yastrzemski) to virtually everyone else living who offered his recollections. Among the best raconteurs are Red Sox lefty Bill “Spaceman” Lee, Yankees reliever Sparky Lyle and Yankees right fielder Lou Piniella, and of course Bucky “Bleeping” Dent and Mike Torrez are front and center.
“As a filmmaker, you like to follow the lead of your characters,” Hock said. “As a documentarian, your characters are speaking non-fiction, but they’re still characters. If [someone] is going to be funny, let’s follow that.”
Second of all, there’s the narrator: comedian and actor Ray Romano, who has some fun with the material. This is not the omniscient voice that has become customary for these projects. He cracks jokes and mocks some of what he’s seeing.
“Ray had seen a documentary I had made several years ago called ‘Survive and Advance,’” Hock said. “He wanted to adapt it as a scripted feature, and he wanted to play Jimmy Valvano. I thought it was a great idea. The Valvano family was ready to turn the page after that documentary. … We had gotten to know each other a little bit through that process. When we needed somebody for this particular kind of voice for this film, he came to mind.
“He was worried. He said, ‘These are great sports heroes! When people hear my voice, they think it’s going to be funny.’ I said, ‘Take a look at the script, take a look at the rough cut and see.’” He saw, and then he spoke, integrating very well with the film’s tone.”
Finally, what has transpired since ’78 made this approach possible.
“The Red Sox had this psychological affliction that is easier to laugh at now, since Johnny Damon in 2004. It probably wouldn’t have been very easy for them to laugh about it, and laugh with one another, when reminiscing if [the Red Sox] had never won. Now they’re on a more equal cosmic footing.”
Such footing makes for many belly laughs, plus plenty of tidbits about that season and that game you probably didn’t know. It’ll allow you to catch up on your history if the Yankees and Red Sox face off in this year’s AL Division Series.
Let’s catch up on Pop Quiz questions:
1) From Howard Gold of Kearny, N.J.: Country singer Charlie Pride has an ownership stake in an MLB team. Name the team.
2) From Bernard Bennett of Columbia, Md.: In a 1980 episode of “M*A*S*H,” a legendary game — featuring a legendary home run — is played over the camp’s public-address system. Who hit the home run?
Your answers:
1) The Rangers
2) Bobby Thomson
If you have a tidbit that connects baseball with popular culture, please send it to me at [email protected].
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