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"THE BRONX IS BURNING"
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Maury portrayed in ESPN's
summer TV miniseries
of TheColumnists.com
The red carpet was
spread along Varick Street in Manhattan, where Robert DeNiro
welcomes his guests for the Tribeca Film Festival.
John Turturro and Oliver Platt, starring in the ESPN mini-series
“The Bronx is Burning,” the story of the 1977 New York
Yankees and that other event that got so much attention that
summer--New York City’s desperate turmoil involving serial
killer David Berkowitz, the so-called Sun of Sam.
Other actors playing famed Yankees Thurman Munson, Reggie Jackson,
Mickey Rivers and Fran Healy mingled with some of the real Yankees
of that day, Goose Gossage, Paul Blair, Graig Nettles and Mike
Torrez at the glamorous premiere...
The television cameras and tape recorders zoomed in on all of
these men. The fans begged for autographs. The ESPN PR people
juggled their interview schedules for maximum exposure.
While all this hoopla was going on, I quietly slid through a
side door for minimum exposure, stuffed a few shrimp in my mouth,
grabbed a canapé, sipped a glass of wine and later hid
out in the men’s room longer than necessary.
Look, it’s not that easy playing me in that movie about
events occurring 30 years ago when I was a hustling young sportswriter.
I couldn’t wait for the credits, Louis Mustillo as Maury
Allen, and for my own walk-on scene in the finale, the Yankees
as 1977 World Champions in a joyous clubhouse carnival.
The film will show for eight nights in the summer starting Monday
night, July 9 and for the seven following Tuesday nights beginning
July 17 through August 28.
Turturro is brilliant as the complicated manager of the Yankees,
Billy Martin. George Steinbrenner, portrayed perfectly by Platt,
and volatile Reggie Jackson, captured cleverly by Daniel Sunjata,
certain to be a coming film star, are tangled in this psycho-drama
of human fun and foibles.
In a stirring scene reminiscent of Richard Gere’s remarkable
portrayal of a candidate in an “Officer and a Gentleman,”
Martin begs Steinbrenner for forgiveness and thrashes about crying,
“This is my life. I’m a Yankee. That’s all I have.”
Munson, who died in that 1979 plane crash near his home in Ohio,
meets with Jackson in another emotional scene.
“You think I’m jealous of you?” he asks the superstar
player. “What do you have that I want?”
Munson had been the 1976 MVP and bragged about his family and
lifelong friends, missing parts of Jackson’s life.
Platt evokes the pomposity of owner Steinbrenner as he calls
a team meeting urging the Yankees on in the pennant race and
suggesting that Martin was still his manager, despite endless
media rumors.
“Take a knee,” he tells the Yankees as they stare blankly
at the Boss who is caught up in the language of his football
college coaching career.
The film rings true unlike most movies about baseball because
the people of ESPN know the sport and the actors worked diligently
at their roles. It also bounced back and forth to the serial
killing of the Son of Sam, made vivid by the writing of magnificent
New York Daily News columnist Jimmy Breslin and the film clips
of those depressing New York City days.
It would be far too immodest of me to suggest the film really
takes off in the scenes involving the sportswriters who covered
that team, including a younger me, as we share emotions with
the lead characters in the bio-pic.
That’s just the way it is. The sportswriters recorded the
history of that team in a fair, detailed, non-partisan way. That’s
why the author of the book from which the film was made, Jonathan
Mahler, could resurrect one of the most tumultuous teams in the
history of the game.
Maybe there were baseball teams that were better and maybe some
other teams even had better field fights than the one anchored
in the Yankees dugout between Jackson and Martin during a distressing
Boston series.
But it is clear during my half century around athletes that no
team ever had the combustible mixture of personalities that the
Yankees of 1977 showed off from Steinbrenner on top through Martin,
Jackson, Munson, Nettles, Gossage and the rest.
This is all cleverly captured in this wonderful summer series
that will bring back memories to those who recall it and educate
the younger fans what that team and that city were really like
in the heat of 1977.
Forget Harry Potter and “Sicko,” “Live Free or
Die Hard,” “License to Wed,” and even “Ratatouille.”
“The Bronx is Burning” is the can’t miss film
of the summer of ’07.
Do I say that because I’m in it? No. I say that even though
I’m in it.
©2007 by Maury Allen. The Maury Allen
caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The illustration is courtesy
of ESPN. This column first posted July 9, 2007.
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