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MAURY ALLEN |
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UP FOR GRABS |
 THE HISTORIC BONDS HOMER BALL ...How much do you think it was worth? |
Don't miss this hilarious
film about a prized baseball
By MAURY ALLEN
of TheColumnists.com
There was "The Pride of the Yankees" when
I was a kid and "The Natural" and "Bull Durham"
and "Field of Dreams" and dozens more baseball films
that held me to my seat for a quarter then or 10 bucks now.
Baseball, unlike other sports, crosses over the literary line
easily into literature or theater or film or late night television.
"Damn Yankees" was one of my favorite plays for decades
and Larry Ritter’s "Glory of Their Times" rivaled
Hemingway or Fitzgerald or even old Willie S. in my book.
Now we have a documentary starring Patrick Hayashi and Alex Popov
and a white Rawlings baseball that will glide easily into the
lore of the game.
OK. Who the hell are Hayashi and Popov and why is a baseball
a big deal in an 88-minute documentary by a first time film maker
named Michael Wranovics?
Well, last things first. The baseball is the one hit by a steroid-addled
ball player named Barry Bonds on the last day of the 2001 season
of the San Francisco Giants, less than a month after the world
we knew ended on 9/11/01.
So Bonds hit homer 73 in one season, three more than Mark “(I
don’t want to talk about the past”) McGwire hit three
years earlier, 12 more than Roger Maris hit in 1961 and 13 more
than Babe Ruth hit in 1927.
Wranovics made a film about the event and the chase for the ownership
of the ball by these two Andy Warhol fifteen-minutes-of-fameists--Hayashi
and Popov--called “Up For Grabs.”
"Up For Grabs" happens to be my favorite cliché.
Elections are up for grabs, pennant races are up for grabs, Academy
Awards are up for grabs, Nobel Prizes are up for grabs, red states
and blue states are up for grabs, chairmanships are up for grabs
and maybe even husbands and wives are up for grabs.
Finally, Wranovics comes up with something that was truly, literally,
realistically, honestly up for grabs: A baseball in the stands
now at Pac Bell Park in San Francisco, off the bat of Bonds,
with dozens scrounging for it, Popov gloving it and Hiyashi showing
it from a crowd scene after it was up for grabs. Hiyashi grabbed.
End of story. Go to an auction. Get a nut to pay two or three
million for a $5 baseball and live happily ever after. Whoa,
doctor.
Instead, Hiyashi and Popov and a host of lawyers worthy of the
slick suits of the O. J. Simpson life docu-drama began this wretched
battle over the rights to the baseball, the possible fortune
to be made by selling it and the constant identification with
the most famous home run ever hit in the game.
The film is a 10 handkerchief movie. You need that many cloths
to stifle the laughter as Wranovics ran over this in his documentary
from the almost catch of the baseball in the stands by two non-entities
to the final separation of baseball and owners for a lot less
cash than they expected. They got a measly $450,000, divided
by two when it was all over but the joke is in the journey.
The guy who hit the ball, legitimately or not, one Mr. Bonds,
is questioned about its value in a press conference after the
event. He smartly suggests the two guys divide the proceeds and
forget about it as they journey to some vacation beach.
No. They had to battle in the press, in their daily lives, in
court chambers and in legal hallways for the right to this baseball
before it could end up in auction more than two years later without
that much action.
“We offered Barry Bonds $200,000 just to sign the ball and
make it more valuable,” said Marty Appel, the PR man who
represented the auction house. “He never responded.”
Bonds was seen often in the film in clips hitting baseballs and
discussing this one.
That’s what documentaries are. Real people talk. Sometimes
they act.
Appel came up with Sal Durante, the 19-year-old who caught the
Maris home run in right field of Yankee Stadium on October 1,
1961. Durante got $5,000 for his catch from a restaurant owner
and has been googled ever since. He is a witty, light part of
the film as he compares his adventure with the Maris ball to
the Bonds ball battle.
Two characters in the episodic frolic steal the show. One is
a San Francisco dentist, interviewed as he drilled a tooth of
an unsuspecting patient, about his remembrances of that October
day at Pac Bell in 2001 and the other is a giddy kid wearing
a Dodgers uniform shirt who explained how he would have handled
the errant baseball.
Without trying, they are both funnier stand-up comics than Jerry
Seinfeld at his best.
Wranovics' “Up For Grabs” doesn’t have the emotional
pull of Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig, repeating, “Today, today,
I consider myself, I consider myself,” or Kevin Coster building
that field because he knows they will come or Robert Redford
crushing that light fixture with Wonder Boy but it has something
none of those films had.
It has people acting the way people do, lots of selfishness,
lots of ego-churning, lots of distortion, lots of lying, lots
of ambition and lots of chicanery.
Mostly, it has lots of humor. People being serious about something
as unimportant as a damn baseball hit in the stands by a guy
making 19 million dollars a year for his efforts can be downright
hysterical.
"Fever Pitch" is the fictional baseball film to see
this year, just for Drew Barrymore.
"Up For Grabs" is the baseball documentary to see for
almost an hour and a half of uncontrollable laughter.
I still hate the cliché up for grabs. Ouch. But I now
love the film "Up For Grabs." It is about baseball
but it is really about people being people. Nothing is ever funnier.
©2005 by Maury Allen. This column first posted April 18,
2005.
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can comment on this column online. Please address your message
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