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The Natural
''The Natural'' is a 1952 novel about baseball by Bernard Malamud, and is his debut novel. The story follows Roy Hobbs, a baseball prodigy whose career is sidetracked after being shot by a woman whose motivation remains mysterious. The story mostly concerns his attempts to return to baseball later in life, when he plays for the fictional New York Knights with his self-made bat "Wonderboy". Based upon the bizarre shooting incident and subsequent comeback of Philadelphia Phillies player Eddie Waitkus, the story of Roy Hobbs takes some poetic license and embellishes what was truly a strange, but memorable, account of a career lost too soon. Apart from the fact that both Waitkus and fictional Hobbs were shot by women, there are few if any other similarities. It has been alternately suggested by historian Thomas Wolf that the shooting incident might have been inspired by Chicago Cubs shortstop Billy Jurges, who was shot by a showgirl with whom he was romantically linked, but there h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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The Natural (film)
''The Natural'' is a 1984 American sports film based on Bernard Malamud's 1952 novel of the same name, directed by Barry Levinson and starring Robert Redford, Glenn Close, and Robert Duvall. Like the book, the film recounts the experiences of Roy Hobbs, an individual with great "natural" baseball talent, spanning the decades of Roy's career. In direct contrast to the book, the film ends in a positive tone. It was the first film produced by TriStar Pictures. The film was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Supporting Actress (Close), and it was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress ( Kim Basinger). Many of the baseball scenes were filmed in 1983 at War Memorial Stadium in Buffalo, New York, built in 1937 and demolished in 1988. All-High Stadium, also in Buffalo, stood in for Chicago's Wrigley Field in a key scene. Plot In 1910s Nebraska, a young Roy Hobbs learns to play baseball from his father. After Hobbs Sr. suffers an early fatal hea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |