‘Sugar’ too broadly sketches Iowa and cuts corners with baseball, but its subversion of sports-movie expectations is refreshingly authentic.
The morning after the Red Sox won the 2007 World Series (following two miserable seasons of championship drought), two people approached me in McDonald’s. I was wearing a Red Sox shirt. We were in northern Arkansas, beginning an 11-hour drive north after a weekend of wedding festivities. Incidentally, I eat at McDonald’s about as often as the Red Sox win the World Series.
Much like the Boston Red Sox, the movie Game 6 hauls so much baggage that triumph seems nearly impossible. It’s akin to being down three games to none to the Yankees in a best-of-seven series. Lo-o-o-o-o-o-o-ong odds. But somehow … .
Mr. 3000 is the Dave of sports movies. Which is to say: It’s a good-hearted fantasy that sacrifices accuracy of detail in its chosen arena (in this case, baseball) in the interest of being emotionally resonant.
At the request of my wife – who is irritated that Red Sox Haiku isn’t updated more frequently – I offer this poetry gem, written in crayon by us over beer one night.
My two sports loves are the Red Sox (since 1986) and the men’s basketball team at the University of Illinois (my alma mater), and together they pretty much occupy me year-round. When baseball season ends in October, it’s time for college basketball, and when the Final Four is done, opening day of baseball season is upon us.
You could not write this story any better, and if you tried to pass it off as fiction, you’d get buried in rejection slips. The tale of the 2004 Boston Red Sox – who won the World Series (and the team’s first championship since 1918) on October 27 – is among many other things a beautifully constructed narrative.
Because I haven’t even posted what I wrote about the World Champion Boston Red Sox – yes, a thank-you card is appropriate for that withholding – I offer you this, which effectively captures my emotional state as it relates to baseball. I’m not quite this bad, but … I do seem reticent to move on.
Sports, of course, don’t matter. They never have. Whether your team wins or loses doesn’t change the realities of your life – your job, your relationships, your health. Well, it shouldn’t. But there are contexts in which sports is truly, deeply meaningful.
It’s a chilly autumn night in Boston. Halloween. Game seven of the World Series. And out of the Red Sox bullpen comes … Mike Myers. A nice confluence, eh?
