The Natural

The Natural is a 1984 American sports film based on Bernard Malamud's 1952 novel of the same name, directed by Barry Levinson, and starring Robert Redford, Glenn Close, and Robert Duvall. Like the novel, the film recounts the experiences of Roy Hobbs, an individual with great "natural" baseball talent, spanning the decades of Roy's career. In direct contrast to the novel, the film ends on a positive tone. It was the first film produced by TriStar Pictures. The film was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Supporting Actress (Close), and it was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress (Kim Basinger). Many of the baseball scenes were filmed in 1983 at War Memorial Stadium in Buffalo, New York, built in 1937 and demolished in 1988. All-High Stadium, also in Buffalo, stood in for Chicago's Wrigley Field in a key scene. Plot In 1910s Nebraska, a young Roy Hobbs learns to play baseball from his father. After Hobbs Sr. suffers an early, fatal heart attack, lightning strikes the large tree next to which he died. Hobbs makes a baseball bat from the tree's splintered wood, burning a lightning bolt and the legend “Wonderboy” into the barrel of the new bat. Now 19 years old, Hobbs heads to Chicago for a tryout with the Chicago Cubs, leaving behind his girlfriend, Iris. While on the train, he meets legendary ballplayer "The Whammer" (based on Babe Ruth), sportswriter Max Mercy, and Harriet Bird, a mysterious woman who is following The Whammer. At a carnival during a stopover, Hobbs wins a bet that he can strike out The Whammer with just three pitches and easily does so. Hobbs later meets Bird in Chicago, and she asks if his boast that he can be "the best there ever was," is true. Hobbs answers yes, and Harriet shoots him in the abdomen, then kills herself.