Get ready for a real thrill, like a warm bun enfolding a jumbo frank at the ballpark. This doc is that good.
The Battered Bastards of Baseball
Grade: A
Director: Chapman Way (The New Yorker Presents), Maclain Way (The New Yorker Presents)
Screenplay: Documentary
Cast: Todd Field (Stranger Than Fiction), Kurt Russell (The Hateful Eight)
Runtime: 1h 20m
By: John DeSando
“When I think about the [Portland] Mavericks, I don't really think much about baseball. I think about those guys. I think about those characters, and the fact that they enjoyed themselves more than I'd ever seen grown men enjoy themselves.” Todd Field
The Battered Bastards of Baseball, now on Netflix, may be the best baseball documentary you will ever enjoy, arguably even better than the Cubs’ Catching Hell and Ken Burns’ Baseball. Throw in the fact that it is as exciting as the best fictional scenes in Major League and Bull Durham with a bit of The Natural’s magic. It is filled with eccentricity and energy, more so than most run-of-the-mill minor league games on their best days.
And, oh yes, Gunther Pracher, a lifelong Cubs fan, says you need to see it. I vouch for him because he’s my son-in-law, and as with The Portland Mavericks’ famous independent ball team, if you don’t have passion, you don’t join my family. He’s a smart star player.
Battered is about the 1973-77 Class A Mavericks of the Northwest League, the only independent team at that time in the nation. Started by actor Bing Russell, Deputy Clem of Bonanza fame (my fav is his turn as a women’s corset salesman in The Magnificent Seven), he brought baseball back to Portland as well as Jim Bouton, the legendary blacklisted Yankees’ pitcher, filmmaker-to-be Todd field as a batboy, and Russell’s son, Kurt, on the roster while starring in numerous films but loving baseball as they all did. And almost a pennant.
The film has just the right measure of blazingly-good archival footage and talking heads who actually know The Mavericks and baseball, like the colorful Joe Garagiola. From the Mavericks’ front office to the fans, this doc is honest and enthusiastic about the upstart team and its fans and the questionable motives of the ruthless gods of organized baseball.
If for nothing else, the team inspired a successful bubble gum, The Big Chew, and showed that the minor leagues could be the major leagues.
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JohnDeSando62@gmail.com.
