Well they got that right at least (42)

November 5, 2016

The 2013 Jackie Robinson biopic was on this morning and the more I watch it, the more problems I have with it.

Please understand, I have nothing but the utmost respect for everything Robinson and the others pioneers went through (we often hear about Robinson and Larry Doby, the first African-American to play in the American League, but what about Dan Bankhead?)

But trying to compress everything into a 128-minute film almost demands a lot of things get glossed over, sometimes combining events and tweaking facts just a tad.

The scene with Ben Chapman, the vitriolic racist manager of the Philadelphia Phillies, was particularly raw. I wondered if Alan Tudyk, the actor who portrayed Chapman, had any special or profound insight over playing this character, just as the actors who appear in movies and TV shows about the Holocaust; are they in awe of the situation? (The discovery of the concentration camps in the penultimate episode of Band of Brothers still brings chills to me but what did those actors think about when the director called “cut?”).

Speaking (sort of) of Nazis, there’s another scene in 42 in which Robinson and the Dodgers visit the Pittsburgh Pirates. The date is May 17, 1947, with Fritz Ostermueller, looking like he would fit perfectly in any World War II movie, on the mound. You can tell from the catcher’s signal that the pitch is going to be inside. Sure enough, Ostermueller hits Robinson in the head. The Dodgers pile out of the dugout to brawl with the Bucs as the pitcher screams. “He doesn’t belong here!”, a frequent comment by opposing ball clubs.

My problem is with the action; it always seems a beat behind. Take a close look at Robinson at the plate: he almost never is showing actually hitting the ball and his movements strike me as too slow. I’m sure there’s a lot of CGI involved, but in this particular scene Robinson is hit in the head…with no batting helmet…and the reaction seems a bit askew; he barely looks dazed. But that was actually the case: the box score/play-by-play for the game reveals that Robinson stayed in the game, as did Ostermeuller in the Pirates’ 4-0 win.

One thing they did get wrong in the movie: The game in which Pee Wee Reese “embraced” Robinson in Cincinnati.  In 42, the date is given as June 21. True, the Dodgers did play in Reds in Ohio that day, but the event is  generally considered to have taken place on May 13 (believe it or not, there is still some question as to whether it ever really happened, just as there is debate over whether Babe Ruth called his home run in the 1932 World Series against the Chicago Cubs. Joe Posnanski wrote about the Reese-Robinson scenario here.

Yes, there are a lot of nits to pick about 42. I just wish I didn’t feel like such a shmuck about it.

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