A Grip on Sports: Robert Duvall was so good at his profession, a whole decade of folks saw Max Mercy as the quinessential sports writer
A GRIP ON SPORTS • It’s not often a famous actor’s death can trigger thoughts about sportswriting. Mainly because there are few movie roles built around the slowly shrinking profession. But when I heard about Robert Duvall’s passing Monday, awful memories of Max Mercy came to mind.
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• When Hollywood turned “The Natural” into a movie, it had to Hollywood-ize Bernard Malmud’s 1952 novel. After all, in the mid-1980s, there was no way Robert Redford’s fans were going to be happy leaving a theater following the downer of a strike out and failure. Nope. It had to climax with an explosion of lights and smiles and glory.
A home run. A heroic tale. A triumph. If only to secure box office gold.
But the heavies? They could stay that way. The owner? Evil. The gambler? Manipulative. The sports writer? A sleaze, portrayed with believable malevolence by Duvall.
It wasn’t easy seeing the profession you loved, and picked, treated that way. Especially when Duvall made it so believable.
Oh, you could rationalize it. The movie was set in the 1930s. The Depression. A different time. Different rules. But, c’mon. How many of the millions of people who left the theater with a tear in their eye made the distinction?
Why couldn’t somebody wooden and forgettable, like Corey Feldman, have portrayed Mercy? Instead it was Tom Hagen. The Great Santini. Down-on-his-luck singer Mac Sledge. The “I love the smell of napalm in the morning” guy.
Robert Duvall. Everyone hated Max Mercy. Hated his drawings. Hated his seedy back-biting. His dogged pursuit of poor Roy Hobbs’ hidden past.
Leaving the movie theater back in 1984, the feel-good ending didn’t uplift me as much as it did everyone else. All I could think about was whether Max was able to get the glass out of his typewriter in time to finish what had to be a Pulitzer Prize-winning game story.
And how awful someone – hey, that is me – had to be to enter Mercy’s profession.
That’s how good an actor Duvall was. Always.
• By the way, Duvall returned to journalism 10 years after he portrayed Mercy as the soon-to-die editor in “The Paper,” back when there still thriving big-city newspapers. And the journalists portrayed in the movies could still be heroes.
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WSU: Around the (current, old and future) Pac-12 and the nation, Jon Wilner takes us through his weekly Pac-12 basketball rankings, and still has Utah State on top. … John Canzano had a couple posts Monday, including his weekly mailbag. … He also had a conversation with Alabama’s athletic director, Greg Byrne, who grew up in the Northwest. … Michigan is the new No. 1 team in the Associated Press poll, replacing Arizona. It’s been a while since the Wolverines have been on top. … They are also the No. 1 seed in the bracket projections. … Oregon’s men will not be ranked. Or make the tournament. But they host Minnesota with a chance to win tonight. … Oregon State has a couple of players from France that are helping out considerably. … Colorado will face Kansas State, a team with a new head coach. … Arizona State has an even tougher challenge, red-hot Texas Tech. … Speaking of challenges, after the loss at home to TTU, Arizona has some. … Utah’s turnover problem reared up again last night and it lost by 18 points to Oklahoma State. … San Diego State lost at Grand Canyon due to a controversial ending. The Aztecs get a chance at payback. … The Colorado women are finding their offensive stride. … In football news, Colorado will open the season with a Thursday night game. This is becoming a common occurrence.
Gonzaga: There were some thoughts in the sportswriting universe the Bulldogs could move up a couple poll spots this week. Back into the top 10. Instead, they limped up one, to 11. Jim Meehan covers all the numbers in this story. … Former Gonzaga star Kelly Olynyk, the school’s poster-boy for development, is spending this part of his long NBA career helping San Antonio’s Victor Wembanyama develop. … We linked Wilner’s weekly ranking column above in the Pac-12 section. But it also has a lot to say about the Zags’ NCAA resume so we link it here as well.
EWU: One of the underrated aspects of basketball success is an attention to detail. Individually. Team. Every SportsCenter highlight was built by it in some way. And every successful college basketball squad is as well. Eastern’s men have turned a corner in that regard and, as Dan Thompson tells us, turned the corner and found themselves on Winning Street these days. … Elsewhere in the Big Sky, Weber State may just start a quarterback who began his college journey at Ohio State. … Northern Colorado’s basketball teams are playing well. The women are closing in on 20 wins and the men are the hottest team in the league. … Northern Arizona’s men had a great Senior Night.
Seahawks: The Hawks have a few free agents. Which are most important? And which could be the most likely to leave? … The new offensive coordinator should fit right in.
Olympics: Figure skating, especially the competition among the women athletes, is as popular a sports as the Olympics host. It is especially popular in this country when there are gold medal contenders. There are three this year. … Hey, it’s OK to love, and hate, the Olympics. At the same time, actually. … Curling has gone big time. Thanks to a big-time controversy that is rocking the competition.
Mariners: I linked this story on Ryan Sloan yesterday when it appeared in the Times. It is on the S-R site today. I link it once more. … Logan Gilbert is a dad. A first-time dad. And all that entails, including change.
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• Redford is no longer with us. Duvall. Wilford Brimley. Richard Farnsworth. Even some of the actors who portrayed the Knights have left life’s stage. But what should one expect? It’s been more than 40 years since Roy Hobbs told Harriet Bird he was going to be “the best there ever was.” Hey, Barbara Hershey is still around. We’ve got that going for us. Until later …