The last time the Tribeca Film Festival featured a baseball documentary it was the wonderful Knuckleball!, one of my all-time favorite sports documentaries. This year’s The Battered Bastards of Baseball, a documentary about the short-lived minor league team the Portland Mavericks, might not indulge in the powerful zen-filled narrative that Knuckleball! does (read my review here). But The Battered Bastards of Baseball is a hilarious and heartfelt documentary about actor Bing Russell‘s rebellious, ragtag attempt to revive independent baseball in the 1970s against the wishes of Major League Baseball. Anyone who appreciates a real-life David versus Goliath story, especially one that is as seeped in hysterical reminiscing as this one, will look at The Battered Bastards of Baseball as a glorious grand slam of illuminating entertainment.
Bing (a famed actor and father of even more famous actor Kurt Russell) grew up in St. Petersburg, Florida, where the 1930s New York Yankees held their training camps. By chance he met Yankees legend Lefty Gomez and shortly afterward became a fixture of the Yankees clubhouse. It started Bing’s lifelong obsession with baseball, though an injury while a semi-pro player would derail his own professional baseball aspirations. Bing moved to Hollywood to begin an acting career and appeared in mostly Westerns as what his son Russell calls a “plumber actor” — an actor who always had a job in a supporting role and went to the set everyday. His most famous role was playing Deputy Clem Foster on Bonanza from 1963 to 1972 after appearing in two earlier episodes as other characters. When his run on the series ended, Bing found himself with a lot of extra time on his hands. Around the same time, the Beavers Triple-A baseball team announced it was moving from Portland, Oregon due to low attendance. Russell drew on his immense knowledge of baseball to take advantage of that opportunity and created the Portland Mavericks.
Though in previous decades there were hundreds of unaffiliated teams in every corner of the country, by 1973 Major League Baseball had such a stranglehold on the sport that every minor league baseball team was affiliated with a Major League Baseball team. However, Bing’s Mavericks were created as an independent, Single-A baseball team in the Northwest League. Because they had no affiliation, the Mavericks weren’t out to feed their players to a higher-level teams in the farm system — they were in it to win. However, because the team was independent, Bing had to create the whole structure of the team organization — and the team itself — from scratch. This included having open tryouts which drew hundreds from across the country since unlike the affiliated minor league teams the Mavericks didn’t have a scouting system. This created a rag-tag team of colorful personalities willing to put everything on the line in what was for many their only chance of ever playing professional baseball.
The history of the Portland Mavericks is nothing short of extraordinary, and as somebody who knew little about the team I was absolutely blown away by what they accomplished. Bing took a territory that had been written off for dead by baseball executives and made the Mavericks into the most profitable minor league team in the country and, at one point, had the highest season winning percentage of any pro baseball team at any professional level. It’s incredible to relive that history with the various interviewees (including Bing’s widow and his son, Russell, who actually was a designated hitter for the team in 1973 and 1977), who all speak of their association with the team as one of the happiest periods of their lives. Included among them is Todd Field, the team’s batboy who later became a filmmaker and made the Oscar-nominated films In the Bedroom and Little Children. Another great highlight is Rob Nelson, a former player who shares dozens of great anecdotes about the team. It’s astounding to see just how popular they really were, but it’s not hard to see why — the Mavericks brought as much fun to baseball as the Harlem Globetrotters bring to basketball, except the Mavericks did it while they were trying to actually win games.
The Battered Bastards of Baseball is like a real-life version of Major League, and if it wasn’t for the heavy use of archival footage you’d never believe this team ever existed. There’s no other way to describe the ridiculous shenanigans that are recounted by the interviewees in this documentary. Major League Baseball might have treated the Mavericks like a bad joke, but they were seemingly the only people in America that saw the Mavericks in that way. Almost immediately the misfit Mavericks began to receive national attention for playing like they had no future in baseball, which, for many of them was the actual truth. The team’s popularity exploded in 1975 when blackballed pitcher Jim Bouton (who also appears in Knuckleball!, making him something like the dean of recent great baseball documentaries) joined the team. I only wish the 76 minute documentary was longer to get even deeper into the Maverick’s story.
In a sense, The Battered Bastards of Baseball recalls what might have been the last time “misfit baseball” could be brought to the masses. Though the Mavericks paved the way for the revival of independent baseball — like my local Long Island Ducks — the era of ESPN and 24/7 sports coverage wouldn’t allow such a misfit “experiment” (as the Mavericks are frequently referred to in the documentary) last. It’s a shame because pro sports could use a solid does of Maverick-style “anything goes” fun in between countless game-stopping instant replays, bland corporate branding, and boring soundbyte interviews.
Even non-baseball fans will find a lot to appreciate here because rookie directors Chapman and Maclain Way have created a celebration of radical independence in the name of desire and fun in the face of corporate ire. The Battered Bastards of Baseball and the aptly-named Mavericks immediately made me nostalgic for an era of baseball I wasn’t alive to see. We could only hope that this documentary inspires a revival of gritty fun in pro sports. So forget Moneyball — this is the anti-establishment baseball movie of the 21st century.
RATING: An extraordinary, unbelievable, and sincere documentary that celebrates the love of the game that every sports fan has in common (9/10).
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