The
Life and Times of Hank Greenberg
Not
Rated
Cinema
21, 616 NW 21st Ave., 223-4515. Friday-Monday,
May 12-15. $6.
In 1947, Hank
Greenberg became the first baseball player to earn more
than $100,000 per year.
In 1946, Detroit
unceremoniously cut Greenberg after a misunderstanding involving
a wartime photograph of him in a Yankee uniform.
Numerology buffs
may note that Greenberg was born on 1/1/11.
Greenberg's lifetime
batting average was .313. He was inducted into the Hall
of Fame in 1956.
In last week's review of The Filth and the Fury,
I praised director Julien Temple for telling the real story
of the Sex Pistols instead of the legend as a means of reaffirming
punk rock's do-it-yourself virtues. But for The Life
and Times of Hank Greenberg, filmmaker Aviva Kempner
has gone the other way, opting for hero worship at the expense
of understanding the man. Turns out it's an equally good
move.
Lauded as everything from "the baseball Moses" to the most
important American Jew in the 1930s, Hank Greenberg was
not the first Jewish player in major-league baseball, but
he was the first Jewish star--and thus an embodiment of
the hopes of millions. The son of Orthodox Romanian Jews,
Greenberg joined the Detroit Tigers in 1933, only a few
years after local tycoon Henry Ford had published The
International Jew, which argued that a vast Jewish conspiracy
was behind both Communism and capitalism in an attempt to
destroy Christian civilization. Other Jewish ballplayers
changed their names to hide their religion and avoid persecution,
but Greenberg refused.
"There was always some leather-lung in the stands that
was getting on me," Greenberg recalls in a 1983 interview.
"I found that it was a spur to make me do better."
It must have worked. As recalled in meticulous detail by
adoring fans (including lawyer Alan Dershowitz and New
York Times sportswriter Ira Berkow), Greenberg was one
of the greatest hitters and most dependable clutch players
of his generation. Twice named the Most Valuable Player
in the American League, Greenberg was the cornerstone of
a Detroit franchise that won two World Series crowns and
four pennants. In 1937 he fell one run-batted-in shy of
Lou Gehrig's single-season record, and in 1938 he fell two
home runs short of tying Babe Ruth's record of 60 in a season.
Greenberg was also the first professional ballplayer to
enlist in the Armed forces and the first to treat Jackie
Robinson like a man. By the time he retired in 1947, the
heckling had disappeared.
Although Kempner spent 12 years making Life and Times,
the film is a simple and straightforward collection of archived
baseball footage and interviews. Greenberg's true personality
out of uniform remains largely unexplored, and Kempner glosses
over his divorce and other moments of fallibility. But this
cardboard Clark Kent figure becomes a Superman in the recollections
of his devotees. As anti-Semitism reached a global crescendo
during the Great Depression and World War II, Greenberg
came to embody pride, defiance and citizenship itself for
millions of Jewish Americans--especially those back home
in the Bronx. Other players had better stats and more rings,
but no one (except maybe Robinson) meant more and symbolized
more to his community. With great deference to that adoration,
Kempner reminds us that, rightly or wrongly, some historical
figures inspire deconstruction, others deification. Chances
are Hammering Hank has a few skeletons in his closet, but
in an age that swallows up most of its heroes, you can't
blame his legions--Kempner included--for needing to keep
the legend alive.
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Willamette Week | originally
published May 10,
2000
|
