J'accuse!: The Ending of "The Scout"

Purely obligatory (and frankly unnecessary) "spoiler alert": For all those people who have "watch the 1994 Albert Brooks/Brendan Fraser baseball comedy 'The Scout'" on their bucket lists, perhaps you should sit this post out (and seriously question why you have this on your bucket list). For everyone else on the fence, I just want to note that it's a pretty shitty ending anyway (hence the blog post) so you're really not missing out on much by having it "spoiled".

Obviously the biggest story in baseball right now is unfortunate Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga losing his historic perfect game bid yesterday due to an unambiguously blown call by the first base umpire (boy did Griffey really pick the wrong night to retire). This would have been the 21st perfect game in the history of Major League Baseball, the 3rd in the last 25 days, and the 2nd in 4 days. Try as I might at this time I still cannot muster the proper perspective yet to truly appreciate the fantastic odds of having two (almost three) perfect games, a confluence of circumstances so rare that in the hundreds of thousands of games of baseball played in the past 130 plus years it has only happened 20 times, in such a brief span of time.

This ludicrous rash of recent perfect games also reminded reminded me of the above pictured mediocre mid-90s baseball movie: "The Scout". As a kid, I actually liked "The Scout", it didn't reach the upper tier heights of 90's kid baseball fantasies like "Rookie of the Year" or "Angels in the Outfield" but I found it most definitely watchable. Brenden Fraser's usual affable mimbo charm, Albert Brooks playing the same self-obsessed, neurotic, poor-man's Woody Allen character he's played for the last 30 years, the multiple Oscar winning talents of the inexplicably present Diane Wiest, the ass load of baseball player cameos; all these combined to at least create something one wouldn't mind watching for an hour and a half. I'd say it's somewhere below "Mr. Baseball" and above watching 3 half hour episodes of "Arli$$" which sort of follows this formula (replacing Brooks for the even lower quality Robert Wuhl, but upgrading Wiest with the foxy Sandra Oh).

The thing about "The Scout" however is that the more one follows and learns about real-life baseball, the more insultingly ridiculous the movie becomes. Obviously sports movies are given some degree of artistic license and the classic kids baseball movie get a free pass because they're obviously for kids (although "Little Big League" comes off looking like Ken Burns' "Baseball" when compared to "The Scout"), but often a movie like "The Scout" stretches the bounds of plausibly to the point where you wonder why they even went through the trouble of incorporating real sports teams and players and setting it in our universe. I could probably write an even longer, more detailed "J'accuse" about the entire movie but it's really the ending which provides a brilliantly ridiculous climax built upon a mountain of flimsiness.

Unfortunately no clips outside of the trailer exist for the film, a testiment to either it's forgettable mediocrity or Twentieth Century Fox's skills at downplaying their film mistakes. We'll have to rely on my descriptions based on my memories built over many a repeat watchings of it on Comedy Central. To quickly summarize the film, Albert Brooks plays the titular baseball scout for the Yankees who after his latest can't miss prospect spectacularly washes out in his debut, is fired and ends up in some far off amateur baseball league in Mexico. It is there that he find Brendan Fraser, who is essentially an invisible baseball dominating robot who literally strikes everybody out with his consistent 100+ mph pitches and also homers in every at bat (I mean he's obviously supposed to be really good, but he borders on the absurdly superhuman). Of course there's a slight catch, apparently Brendan Fraser's character has some deep mental issues, I think some childhood abuse trauma (they really do a poor job of explaining it) that psychologist Dianne Wiest is hired to help with but really does nothing throughout the film aside from looking concerned.

In the movie's second most ridiculous sequence, Albert Brooks bring Fraser to America where he (as an unemployed, failed scout) manages to set up an individual tryout for Fraser in Yankee Stadium with with every MLB GM showing up to evaluate and eventually bid on this nobody from Mexico with absolutely no known past. In addition, he gets Keith Hernandez and Brett Saberhagen for him to strike out and hit towering homers against respectively. Somehow striking out a 41-year old Keith Hernandez who had been retired for 4 years at the time and hitting dingers off Brett Saberhagen, coming off his infamous "spraying bleach at reporters" season with the 103 loss Mets (in an even year no less!), impresses the GMs so much that they erupt in a huge bidding war. The Yankees end up winning by giving Fraser the biggest contract in baseball history (by far the most accurate part of the film) with the crazy stipulation that he will start the first game of the World Series if the Yankee make it.

Against all odds, the pre-dynasty era Yankees make it to the Fall Classic (mildly unbelievable at the time) against the Cardinals and Fraser is called in to pitch (which I'm sure to the resentment and disdain of no one on the team). Fraser's ambiguous mental demons initially prevent him from starting but eventually after a heart-to-heart with Brooks he makes his debut and pitches THE MOST RIDICULOUS BASEBALL GAME EVER!

Now there have been perfect games (even one in the World Series), there have been 20 strike out games, and pitchers occasionally hit home runs. Given all the scenes of Frasor's dominant baseball skills and the events that transpired in the film already I would not have found it too unbelievable that he does all those things in the game; which he does. What really breaks the camels back, obliterates the camels back, grinds the remains of the camel into a fine mist of bone and tissue, is the manner in which he does it. In addition to providing the only 2 runs of the game on a home run, he throws a perfect game by striking out all 27 batter on 81 consecutive strikes. So he never threw a ball and no one even managed to make contact with a pitch. He essentially obsoletes the game of baseball. In addition why didn't the writers just made him pitch to himself? Or have him strike out three people in succession with one slow pitch as well? Or catch a home run by following it to the top of the Empire State Building and throwing his glove in the air? All these options are just as cartoonish and impossible as this perfect perfect game he just threw.

As if the whole thing wasn't already enough of a farce, the film manages to somehow outdo itself once again by dementedly trying to instill suspense and tension in the last at-bat against the dangerous...Ozzie Smith ("Go crazy, folks!"). The same Ozzie Smith who was elected to the Hall of Fame overwhelmingly on the strength of his defense. The same Ozzie Smith who had 28 career home runs. The same Ozzie Smith with a career .262 batting average. The same Ozzie Smith who was 39 at the time and in the twilight of his career. He was a bigger threat to break up the perfect game with a bunt single than with anything else. I understand that the mid-90s Cardinals weren't exactly stacked with mashers but the producers really couldn't have gotten a slightly more plausible hitting threat ("Hard Hittin'" Mark Whiten? Ray Lankford? Todd Zeile?)?

You would think that director Michael Ritchie who also directed the "The Bad News Bears", a classic baseball movie with a notably unconventional ending, would have objected to such a ridiculously contrived conclusion. Maybe the ending was intentional, like some high-concept, absurdist, take on the typical Hollywood happy endings of sports movies that subversively mocked the concept by taking it to its grotesque extreme. Or maybe Jason Donald really did beat the throw. For a completely implausible sports movie ending that somehow manages to outdo an already implausible sports movie, all I can say is: "J'accuse!"

J'Accuse!: Mad Hatter in "Perchance to Dream"

For Christmas, my sister got me the complete "Batman: The Animated Series" DVD collection. Since then I've been steadily making my way through all 107 or so episodes of the series (although I personally don't consider the later "New Batman Adventures" episodes to truly be a part of the original series). All, I've got to say is, it's pretty damn awesome. The shows are just as great and I remembered them growing up; and I find myself appreciating some of the more mature subtleties that I never got as a kid (like the suspicious robot designer in "Heart of Steel" is named Rossum). It's really an impressive feat to consider what the creators accomplished within the narrow constraints (budget wise, time frame wise, censorship wise) of a Saturday morning children's cartoon and how they made such an actual lasting contribution to the overall Batman canon that exceeds even the contributions of all the blockbuster movies combined. I look at the dedicated work of art that was the Batman series and then at the prefabricated, re-translated, Japanese, program-length commercials that pass for Saturday morning programming these days and I weep for the children of today.

Having given my little gushing, fanboy, introduction on the matter, I still have to call a "J'Accuse!" on the Mad Hatter in the above titled episode. Now, obviously a Saturday morning superhero cartoon requires a heavy degree of suspension of disbelief and artistic license. Despite all the spectacular explosions and gunfire, nobody, including heroes and villains ever die, let alone get shot. There are episodes where goons literally fire machine guns directly at Batman and manage to hit everything around him. The time and distance continuity in the show makes "24" look like a real time documentary. One also has to wonder when Gotham City will ever re-evaluate a revolving door system at Arkham that allows criminally insane villains to escape on a weekly basis. I am willing to accept all these things; however, every once in a while something crosses a line that doesn't quite register with me.

One such example is in the episode "Perchance to Dream". First off, the episode is actually one of my all time top 5 Batman episodes and one of the first ones I watched when I got the DVDs. If you haven't seen it, I suggest you check out the link, lest you be spoiled one of the most interesting Batman episode twists of all time.

So the basic premise is that Batman gets knocked out while chasing some henchmen only to wake up from a supposed nightmare in his bed. However, once he wakes up, he is shocked to realize that both his parents are alive, there is no Batcave, he's engaged to Selina Kyle aka Catwoman, and that there is another Batman. He initially is convinced by his doctor friend that his previous life was just a dissociative hallucination and that everything up to that point has essentially been a nightmare he was woken from. Batman, however, later realizes this is wrong when he suddenly notices he is completely unable comprehend printed words. Deducing that he must be in a dream since the part of brain that controls dreaming is opposite the part of the mind that controls cognitive reading functions (never verified if this is actually true), he confronts the other "Batman" who, after a struggle, turns into the Mad Hatter. The Mad Hatter, predating the Martrix, explains that he himself is a dream figment and that Batman is trapped in his dream machine. The Hatter was willing to give Batman everything he wanted in this fabricated world, if only to incapacitate him in the real world. Seeing no obvious means of waking up, Batman attempts suicide by jumping off a tower in an attempt to shock himself into waking up. He does and he finds himself hooked up to the machine right after the events from the beginning of the episode. He quickly gets up and subdues the Mad Hatter and his gang. Great episode.

There's just one problem, however. Why didn't the Mad Hatter just kill Batman? Or at the very least imprison him so that he won't immediately capture you after he wakes up? You've somehow managed to, by an extreme twist of luck, to get a jump on Batman, but instead of finishing him off or tying him up, you take him directly into your headquarters into an overly elaborate dream machine which appears you have to monitor constantly. Just throw him off a bridge or something! The Man Hatter's entire motivation, he claims was to trap Batman in a dream world so as to incapacitate him forever. You mean like, I don't know, putting a bullet in his head?

In addition to not killing or tying him down, the Mad Hatter never even bothered to TAKE OFF BATMAN'S MASK! You'd think the closely held secret identity of Batman would be something of interest to any one of this villains. There was even an episode where someone found out and attempted to auction it off to the Joker, Penguin, and Two-Face ("The Strange Secret of Bruce Wayne"). However, the Mad Hatter is not concerned with such petty matters. Even assuming some sort of thieves honor in not removing the mask, wouldn't you think from a purely practical standpoint, that the dream machine's mind controlling helmet would fit and work better if there wasn't a big Bat mask to get in the way?

I guess that's why they call him "Mad".

As great as Batman is, he has by far one of the easiest rogue's galleries in comicdom. The lot of them are usually just crazed, non-powered humans, with easily exploitable crippling psychological obsessions (plants, jokes, coinflipping). You know what would happen if Batman and Superman decided to trade cities? Superman would throw every villain in Gotham into the sun and Batman would be dead in a week. Imagine them talking shop before hand?:

Superman: Watch out for Darkseid, the immortal, god-like tyrant of his own planet with his own personal space armada.
Batman: Be careful with Two-Face...he's got two faces...

It's obviously two different worlds so comparing them is just a futile exercise. In the end, Batman is Batman and Superman is Superman; and it's the reltable humanness of Batman stories that make it far superior to the overpowered spectacle of Superman. However, as to the Mad Hatter's actions in that particular episode, all I have to say is "J'Accuse!"

J'Accuse!: Grandpa Joe

I noticed that we are in the waning final days of this month (and this year overall) and I am a bit off my usual self imposed ten post a month quota. Seeing that, like everybody else, I'm hustling to get all my shit packed and done by the end of the year. So, rejoice lucky blog readers, from here on out it's going to be some strenuous two-a-days (possibly three) to hopefully make up the deficits. I assure you all however, that my trademark commitment to quality and blogging excellence will still be maintained despite the rushed schedule. I actually did have a few ideas in the hopper that I was planning on getting to before all the testing and the failing and the crying sidetracked me for the better part of the month.

One such thing I was getting around to was starting up my series of personal "J'Accuse!"'s. For all of those people out there not familiar with Emile Zola and the whole "Dreyfus Affair", basically it's in reference to famous published open letter by Emile Zola in 1898 where he called out the French government over unfairly imprisoning a Jewish army officer for treason. As the wikipedia article says, the phrase "J'Accuse" (french for "I accuse") has become a common expression for essentially calling shenanigans on something. That's about all I know about the Dreyfus Affair (probably just enough to get a low value Jeopardy question right about it), if you really want to know more it can't hurt to put "The Life of Emile Zola" on your Netflix queue (best picture winner 1937!). So basically as Emile Zola called shenanigans on the anti-semetic French government, so will I call my own personal shenanigans on the random pop culture esoterica that bother me.

This leads me to the subject of Grandpa Joe (played by Jack Albertson) from the classic 1971 film, "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory".

Here's the situation. You've got kind-hearted Charlie Bucket, his toiling mother, and their four bedridden grandparents. They live in a home that appears to be just a slight step up from a makeshift fort of empty refrigerator boxes. The father is dead so the mother and Charlie slave everyday doing laundry and delivering papers, respectively, just to eek out mere subsistence. They are further trapped in their dire life of unofficial serfdom by the ludicrous burden of supporting the four worthless, bedridden, elderly, grandparents. Charlie is so poor, he has to scrimp and save for a year to support the simple "luxury" of buying a single chocolate bar.

My problem with Grandpa Joe begins when the deserving Charlie finds the fifth and final winning Golden Ticket to meet Willy Wonka at his factory and comes home with the news. After verifying the validity of the ticket, Charlie asks Grandpa Joe, who has been bedridden for 20 years, to be his guest to the factory. Motivated by the passion of the young Charlie, Grandpa Joe, after some initial struggling, manages to get up from his bed. He then somehow manages to shake off the muscular atrophy and bed sores of twenty years of immobility to get into a full song and dance routine!

If I were Charlie or even his mother, at the point after which Grandpa Joe completes his little "I've Got A Golden Ticket" number, I would cold cock him right in his smug old face. This fucking goldbricker, for twenty years has been holding out while his grandson and daughter worked themselves into exhaustion! How does he even sleep at night? You think he would have pulled off a similar miraculous recovery if Charlie came home with a copy of the local want ads with an opening for a job at Willy Wonka's factory? Would he have jitterbugged around the room singing "I've Got A Job Prospect"? Of course not! He would have sat on his lazy ass like he did for the past 20 years, feigning paralysis. If this is the case with Grandpa Joe, I suspect maybe the three other grandparents aren't really as enfeebled as they appear to be. But, atleast they never were proven in the movie to be total phonies.

In addition, if I was the mom I'd be wondering what exactly is Grandpa Joe bringing to the table that Charlie would pick him over her. It's obvious that Grandpa has some sort of undue influence on Charlie to have him initially select him over his poor mother. Who has almost single handedly supported this burdensome family for all these years? Who gave birth and raised him? Who previously devoted an entire musical number in the movie to him? Who has the confirmed ability to walk normally? Notice how Grandpa just swoops right in there and without even considering deferring to anyone else starts singing about "his golden ticket".

While I do love this movie and find that recent sham of a remake to somehow manage to be both creepy and uninteresting at the same time; I will always have a slight problem in the back of my mind every time Grandpa Joe miraculously gets up and does his crazy little number. Obviously there is a high degree of suspension of disbelief to be granted in a movie with Oompa Loompas, psychedelic boat rides, landscapes made of candy, blueberry children, and flying elevators; but I just can't give it up for Grandpa Joe that easily. How can I support this monster of a man who sat back and watched his loving family work themselves ragged while he had the ability to be of help the whole time? Grandpa Joe, I'll still enjoy your song (in fact it's probably my favorite song from the movie) and be glad that you and Charlie didn't get chopped to pieces in the fizzy lifting drinks room, but as for your goldbricking actions I simply have to say "J'Accuse!"