Watching the MLB All-Star Game is tough.
Trust me. I tried.
Last week's exhibition of American League dominance was, somehow, less interesting than ones prior. Manny Ramirez was absent, Ryan Howard choked, and Josh Hamilton just isn't as exciting when he's not addicted to drugs.
Thankfully, AMC swooped in from a few channels over to bail me out. The middling network was showing "Rookie of the Year," a 1993 movie starring Gary Busey and a kid who kind of looks like Ralph Macchio. In the movie, the fake Macchio kid (Thomas Ian Nicholas) breaks his arm and, thanks to a medical mishap, gains the ability to throw light-speed fastballs. Naturally, he signs with the Chicago Cubs.
I flipped back and forth for a while before committing to the movie. As much as I enjoy watching Prince Fielder run - if that's even the right word for what happens when his legs move - how do you turn down a film where Busey plays a character named Rocket?
So, with no further ado, here's what I learned about the MLB from "Rookie of the Year."
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1. The Chicago Cubs are a hapless franchise.
At the onset of the kid's pro career, the Cubs are in the throes of another miserable season. Their GM is likely to be fired, and their star player - Rocket - lives on the DL and might be insane. Minus a few flashes (which only ended in disappointment), this is every Cubs season. Is there any other franchise in all of sports that could fill in for the Cubs in this movie?
Furthermore, what does it say about the masochism and self-loathing of Cubs fans that the premise of "Rookie of the Year" was met with no protest? They accept the staggering awfulness of their team and have no qualms about a movie that pervasively pokes fun at it.
And here's the most depressing part: You know that there were at least a few of the Cubs faithful back in 1993 who thought, if only for a second, "Man, it'd be great if we had a poor man's Ralph Macchio who could carry us to the NLCS with his hideously injured lightning arm." Such is the depth of these people's suffering.
2. The New York Yankees are an evil franchise.
As the kid becomes the best closer in the MLB, his ludicrously greedy stepdad/manager sells his contract to the Yankees, behind the backs of his mom and the owner of the team. No player or representative of the Yankees is ever on-screen in this movie, yet we accept the team's lingering presence as a symbol of everything that's wrong with pro baseball. The gist: "This kid's good. The Yankees would probably buy him." And Yankee fans likely didn't flinch at this idea, much as Cubs fans weren't bothered by being portrayed as inept in every conceivable fashion.
These are storylines so old and true that we accept them as valid premises for a movie. And only in baseball is this possible. The Clippers are bad, sure, but they suck in a quiet, ignorable way. The Cubs, however, fail in an agonizing, theatrical fashion, year after year. Meanwhile, the Patriots are sort of hegemonic and evil, but they can't enact the pocketbook blitzkrieg of the Yankees, who, presumably, would sign Bernie Madoff if he could hit the high inside fastball.
3. Barry Bonds did a lot of steroids.
Like any '90s sports movie worth its salt, "Rookie of the Year" features a bunch of cameos from famous athletes. When the kid hits his stride as a pubescent star, there's a tidy montage of him striking out a bunch of baseball greats. He sits down Barry Bonilla. He gets a K off Pedro Guerrero. Then he strikes out a pleasant-looking Giants player with a cross earring. And then you realize: Oh, dear God, that meek man is a larval form of the hulking, demonic mass of rage we now know as Barry Bonds.
The whole movie is like a faded postcard from baseball's innocent past. 1993 was just before the dawn of the steroid era - back when Nolan Ryan lifted American flags to stay in shape and Bo Jackson got juiced on freedom. Or something.
Honestly, I'm not a steroid moralist; in terms of bad influences on kids, I think CC Sabathia's bulging waistline is far worse than Alex Rodriguez's perforated backside. I don't think baseball has been ruined by steroids, but watching this movie, I was reminded of a bygone era when, after watching a grand slam, we thought, "That guy's good at baseball," not, "That guy's probably on a cocktail of evil science that can turn a man into a nuclear weapon."
4. This movie could not be made in 2009.
And that's kind of sad. But no matter how you look at it, if this movie were set in the present, we'd be preoccupied with wondering whether Hideki Matsui showed the kid his porn collection, whether Kevin Youkilis got the kid in a bar fight, or whether Dontrelle Willis gave the kid a few of his anti-anxiety pills.
That's the most striking contrast between the MLB of "Rookie of the Year" and the MLB of today: We know too much about these athletes to accept them in the innocent setting of a children's movie. And it's not the players who have changed - I'll take Jason Giambi over Ty Cobb any day. Rather, it's our sports culture, wherein we can't root for an athlete until we decide we know him. It's the other Lou Gehrig's Disease: an affliction that makes fans want to believe their heroes are decent people. Of course, that often turns out not to be the case.
But that's not to say I wouldn't watch "Rookie of the Year 2." It could star one of the Jonas brothers, and Tim Lincecum could teach him about the benefits of growing a mullet. Ideally, it'd be released in time for next year's unwatchable All-Star Game.
