Sep 24 2001
61*
I live a sports-free life. That’s right, neither Rufus nor I has the slightest interest in sports. Not for me the sorrow and rejection of the girl left at home on the weekend while her husband is out, usually with “the guys”, trying to get a ball of varying size into a hole or net of some kind. The Super Bowl means nothing to me. Most years I have no idea who is even playing. In fact, I personally feel that all sports should be pay per view rather than interrupting regularly scheduled TV shows. If you want to watch them — and this applies especially to the blasted Olympics, which seems to be on every time you turn around instead of every four years like it’s supposed to be — you can pay to watch them and I’ll watch “Angel” instead, thank you very much.
All of which makes it amazing that we watched “61*”. Even more amazing, we just loved it. You can tell that this was a true labor of love for director Billy Crystal, a life-long Yankees fan. This is the story of Roger Maris, who broke Babe Ruth’s home run record after more than 30 years (Maris’ own record, asterisk and all, would stand for more than 30 years, too) and his friend and teammate Mickey Mantle. It is a wonderful and heart-breaking story, told with the cooperation and assistance of both the Maris and Mantle families, but showing these two players as the men they were rather than painting them as heroes. Stand-out performances by Barry Pepper (“The Green Mile”) and Thomas Jane (“Boogie Nights”), who both look and talk so much like their real-life counterparts that it’s almost scary.