Sometimes, we all need a Savoy Special
Roy Hobbs, Derek Redmond, and why we all need a little help
I’ve mentioned this before, I know, but one of my all-time favorite movies is 1984’s The Natural, which stars Robert Redford as an aging Roy Hobbs, a one-time pitching phenom whose path to the major leagues was derailed by a tragic accident.
The film’s present day begins nearly twenty years later, when a fortysomething Hobbs has decided to take one last shot at baseball, long past the age by which most players have retired.
I’ve loved the movie ever since the first time I saw it, back when I was in the seventh grade — the age little T is now, by the way. But it inspires me even more today, now that I’m much closer to Hobbs’ age than I was the first time I saw it. (In fact, I’m a decade older!)
A couple of weeks ago, I watched it for the first time in a long time. Some movies I once loved haven’t aged so well, but this one has — the peaceful, rustic farmhouse Hobbs grows up in, the glamour of New York once he finally makes it onto the Knights, the excitement of playing in Chicago’s Wrigley Field, it all still feels fresh.
Most of all, the climactic scene — in which Hobbs hits the highest, longest home run you’ve ever seen, sending the ball soaring into the grandstand lights, which explode in a shower of sparks down onto the field — still gives me chills.
Just before that happens, though, there’s a scene I haven’t been able to stop thinking about since my re-watch: when Hobbs, still at the plate, hits a high fly ball he thinks is a home run, but actually turns foul.
Walking back to home plate, he sees his beloved “Wonderboy”-inscribed bat, shattered in two on the ground. He’d made the bat himself as a kid, hewing it from the trunk of a tree felled by lightning. The bat had been a trusted friend, the one thing that connected him to his childhood, that never failed him. And now it lay in pieces, ruined.
Hobbs stands and stares at the broken bat, at a loss for what to do. We see the Knights’ batboy, Bobby Savoy, come running out of the dugout to pick up the pieces; he looks back at Hobbs, who has only one thing to say: “go pick me out a winner, Bobby.”