Jackpot: Pony Excess

As the “30 for 30” series winds to a quasi-close, executives at the self-proclaimed Worldwide Leader in Sports have many reasons to celebrate. ESPN Films’ unprecedented documentary series, which provided 30 different filmmakers with carte blanche to explore their own sports fascinations from the past three decades, has been remarkably successful, turning out at least two highly engaging films for each clunker, with only one outright flop. At its best, the series has observed the point in which the athletic world and the real world collide (June 17, 1994 and The Two Escobars), probed into athletes’ troubled minds (Run, Ricky, Run and No Crossover), made us laugh (Winning Time), made us cry (Into the Wind), rejuvenated memories of fallen heroes (Guru of Go) and resuscitated bygone villains (The U). It has allowed us to look back on past events with perspective. Often, it has reminded us of how different things once were. But with its final* film, the “30 for 30” series looks back to the past to bring us to the present. Pony Excess is about the college football dominance of the pay-to-play Southern Methodist University Mustangs back in the early 1980s, and as chance would have it, the film premieres immediately following the ceremony in which Auburn University’s Cam Newton will almost certainly be awarded the Heisman Trophy as the nation’s most outstanding college football player in 2010. Over the 14 months that ESPN has been releasing these films, effort has been made to match the documentaries with the sports that are in season, but this is synergy of a whole other level. Bill Simmons and the series’ other creators must be high-fiving one another about the timing.

Newton, as any college football fan knows, has led Auburn to this year’s national title game with tremendous athletic prowess, a winning smile and, over the second half of the season, a whole lot of controversy. In November (well after Pony Excess was slated for its December release), reports surfaced that Newton’s father told a booster at Mississippi State that only an under-the-table payment of $180,000 would get Cam to play football there. The NCAA is investigating the situation, but thus far Newton hasn’t been suspended, in part because the NCAA has found no evidence that Cam knew about his father’s illegal pimping or that he received a similar enticement to attend Auburn. To this, many sports fans call bullshit. (If Newton’s father dropped Cam’s going price from $180,000 to free, he either had a Disney-esque change of heart or he’s the world’s most inept crook; both seem unlikely.) Pony Excess only accentuates the stain. Thaddeus D. Matula’s documentary is an intense, in-depth profile of corruption. And though its subject is specific, the shadow it casts is enormous. What made SMU special on the football field in the early 1980s wasn’t just that a cadre of its boosters (and school administrators) revolutionized the process of illegal paid recruitment, going so far as to actually sign contracts, en route to stockpiling some of the nation’s best talent, it was also that said talent consistently went to the highest bidder. Pony Excess might be about the shady policies of SMU, but it also makes clear that if there’s an (illegal) offer on the table, a player is almost sure to take it.

So, in the debate over Cam Newton’s guilt or innocence, consider Eric Dickerson. Perhaps the nation’s top recruit coming out of high school, Dickerson first made a verbal commitment to Texas A&M, thanks in part to a car that had been purchased on his behalf by Aggie boosters. Well, technically, documents suggest that Dickerson’s grandmother bought him the car – a gold Trans-Am, just the sort of practical automobile you’d expect from Grandma – but numerous talking heads in Pony Excess suggest otherwise. Regardless, Dickerson was going to be an Aggie. And then, at the last moment, Dickerson signed with SMU. According to Dickerson, he just didn’t want to be an Aggie. But according to former members of SMU’s coaching staff, Dickerson got a better offer. Pony Excess includes several former SMU insiders who are surprisingly and refreshingly candid about the nefarious activities that were rampant in the SMU program in the 1980s, but Dickerson, all these years later, remains steadfast in his denial – or at least avoidance – of complicity and culpability. He, like Cam Newton, would like us to believe that he was the exception to the rule, despite significant circumstantial evidence to the contrary. In his interviews for this film, Dickerson comes off like a guy who believes that slipping by around the edge of admission, the way he used to get to the outside in SMU’s almost unstoppable option attack, he’s being charming. It could be a forecast of Cam’s future.

But enough about the moment. Let’s dig back into the past. Because one of the things Pony Excess does well is recreate the era in which these events took place. At 102 minutes, Matula’s documentary is one of the longest in the “30 for 30” series, and it uses a good chunk of that bonus time to put us in touch with early-1980s Dallas, a city populated by wealthy oilmen who had lots of cash and were desperate to prove it. For men trying to become real-life incarnations of J.R. Ewing, college football boosterism provided an all too perfect opportunity for dick swinging. By giving top high school athletes briefcases full of cash (and other bonuses) to attend their favorite schools, these white collar cowboys didn’t just make their favorite school more competitive, they demonstrated their own personal worth in the process. When SMU built one of the nation’s top programs seemingly overnight, the program’s boosters could extol the Mustangs’ wins as if they were their own. Because to a large degree they were. The Mustangs were so talented, at one point pairing – in Dickerson and Craig James – two of the best running backs in the country, that they won before they got on the field. The games weren’t fixed, but the wins were essentially purchased.

The trouble with that kind of arms race is that eventually any sense of restraint is forgotten. As SMU boosters became more brazen in their attempts to land recruits, even after being sanctioned by the NCAA, they did so in the vicinity of two newspapers in an arms race of their own. It was like dropping a duckling between two wolverines, or more. The Dallas Morning News and Dallas Time Herald fought to expose the pay-for-play scandal, but it was a Dallas TV station that landed the tell-all interview with a disgruntled former Mustangs player that set the wheels in motion for SMU’s eventual, unprecedented “death penalty” suspension, which directly canceled an entire season, slashed scholarships and eliminated national TV coverage and bowl appearances and indirectly made SMU an entirely irrelevant football program for about 25 years – a punishment that one could argue was too late or too harsh, or both. Whatever your opinion, Pony Excess does well to chart the cost. With its fast-cut editing and barrage of talking heads, Matula’s film is equally invested in SMU’s rise and its fall – everything in immoderation. This is the kind of story that makes sports fans cringe. Many of us fear that’s what’s past for SMU could be prologue for our own favorite team. For years, SMU had all the glory money could buy. Eventually, they paid for it.

* Alex Gibney’s Steve Bartman: Catching Hell, originally slated to be part of the “30 for 30” series, is supposed to be released in 2011.


Pony Excess premieres tonight on ESPN at 9 pm ET, and will rerun frequently thereafter. The Cooler has reviewed each film in the “30 for 30” series. See the archive.

Unbreakable: The Best That Never Was

In trying to recount the skill of running back Marcus Dupree, no one minces words. One of his high school teammates says Dupree was “awesome” and could score whenever he wanted, “literally.” A Mississippi newspaper reporter says that watching Dupree running through and around his prep peers was like watching NFL great Jim Brown taking on teenagers. Oklahoma University legend Barry Switzer says that Dupree was the “most gifted player” he ever coached, “bar none.” And Lucious Selmon, who recruited Dupree to Oklahoma, says Dupree was the best athlete he ever saw and had the talent to be the best running back of all time. But of all the effusive assessments we encounter in Jonathan Hock’s documentary The Best That Never Was, the latest edition in ESPN Films’ “30 for 30” series, perhaps the most accurate one is provided by one of Dupree’s childhood friends, who matter-of-factly says, “We suspected he could do anything he wanted to do.” Wrapped up in that seemingly simple statement is the measure of Dupree’s enormous abilities and, ironically, the making of his downfall.

Marcus Dupree’s mixed blessing was that everyone who watched him play came away convinced that he was without limits. That’s why Dupree had his pick of any college in the country when he graduated from his high school in Philadelphia, Mississippi, and it’s also why Dupree’s college football career almost immediately became defined by all he didn’t do and everything he didn’t have. When Dupree set a still-standing Fiesta Bowl record by rushing for 239 yards (on just 17 carries!) in Oklahoma’s losing effort to Arizona State, Switzer didn’t praise his freshman running back, he threw him under the bus, reasoning that if Dupree had been in better shape he could have doubled his carries and doubled his yards and, in doing so, led the Sooners to victory. Dupree had been record-setting great and somehow not great enough. Not for Switzer, anyway, who was so determined to avoid giving Dupree anything he hadn’t earned that he went out of his way not to recognize the dominance that came to Depree so naturally. So it was that Dupree began wondering why the program that was so desperate to sign him in the first place withheld not just praise but also the (illegal) perks that other Sooners players were rumored to be enjoying. Influenced by family and friends who assumed that the football player who could do whatever he wanted on the field should get anything he wanted off of it, Dupree, too, started to judge his college experience according to oversized expectations. And so it came to be that instead of winning a Heisman trophy or leading Oklahoma to a national title, Dupree dropped out of Oklahoma before the end of his sophomore season. A lucrative contract with the USFL soon followed and, alas, just as quickly a devastating knee injury followed that. At the age of 20, Dupree’s football career was pronounced over.

Hock revives Dupree’s impressive and too brief athletic career with clarity and balance, effortlessly blending talking head interviews, archival footage and shots of Dupree revisiting his Philadelphia roots. But The Best That Never Was ranks among the upper echelon of “30 for 30” films not because it reminds us of a player that time has forgot but because it delicately demonstrates how Dupree the person was forgotten within his prime. Here’s a guy who was so sought after coming out of high school that college assistants hunkered down for the long haul in Mississippi hotels while other recruiters bribed Dupree’s teammates with gifts, trying to buy their influence. So intense was the contest for Dupree’s services that Willie Morris wrote a book about it: The Courting of Marcus Dupree. Yet once Dupree became a Sooner, the overwhelming interest that had been paid to him as a senior was gone. No one seemed to realize how unhappy he was, and if so, no one was concerned enough to do anything about it. Dupree was a teenager being treated like a professional, not because he was that mature but because he was that skilled, as if one correlates to the other. Hock allows us to spot this failure without aggressively pointing fingers. To watch this film is to be appalled by what we take for granted: recruiters spending heaps of money in an effort to land players who come from next to nothing; players being asked to live up to their impossible reputations, or else; athletes being coerced by advisors who greedily or foolishly assume that the dominance of an athlete at 18 is a guarantee of what’s to come even two years later. No wonder Dupree felt “burned out” by his sophomore year. He was being handled according to an image of his unrealized endless potential, rather than according to what he was: still just a kid.

So if I tell you that in his brief USFL career Dupree was taken advantage of by a trusted advisor who “invested” his salary in such a way that Dupree’s eventual legal fees eradicated his earnings, or that after his playing days Dupree’s effort to find employment required him to seek out a former Mississippi police officer who had served jail time for his role in the notorious murder of three political activists in 1964, or that now Dupree works as a truck driver, you might suspect that The Best That Never Was is a depressing film. But it isn’t. Because as it turns out, the same guy who failed to achieve the long and unrivaled professional football career that everyone thought was inevitable managed to rehabilitate himself en route to a short and pedestrian professional career that, after his knee injury, even Dupree thought was impossible. All these years later, in a position that would make so many of us feel defined by missed opportunities for glory and material wealth, Dupree stands tall, proud of all that he did achieve – both in his first short career, when everything came easily, and in his even shorter comeback stint with the Los Angeles Rams when Dupree truly earned every carry and every yard through incredible effort.

Dupree’s story compels because it is both unique and universal. No one followed quite the same path, yet so many athletes are stars one moment only to be forgotten the next. As Dupree looks through the dusty trophies on the mantle in his mother’s home, or watches clips his high school highlights, we see not bitterness but joy – a contentment that comes from knowing that he did many things no one else ever could, even if he didn’t do them for as long as people expected. Hock winds down his film with a parade of talking heads making wistful comments about all that Dupree could have been, but they reminisce without seeing all that Dupree is today. As foolish as it would be to ignore the tragedy of Dupree’s football career – from his lack of a strong mentor to all that unrealized promise – it would also be a mistake overlook the beauty of Dupree’s indomitable spirit almost 30 years later. When people watched Dupree play football in his prime, they saw a man who couldn’t be brought down. Apparently they were right.


The Best That Never Was premieres tonight on ESPN at 8 pm ET, and will rerun frequently thereafter. The Cooler will be reviewing each film in the “30 for 30” series upon its release. See the archive.

Still Running: Marion Jones: Press Pause

“I took performance enhancing drugs, and I lied about it.” How many modern athletes have been too cowardly to utter those 10 simple words, even when confronted with evidence of their sins? Marion Jones says them with poise and confidence, her eyes looking directly into the camera. This clip from a 2010 public service announcement is the opening salvo in a barrage of admission and contrition that opens John Singleton’s documentary about the disgraced sprinter. From here we cut to the steps of a federal courthouse in 2007 where Jones stands before assembled cameras and microphones and says, “I have betrayed your trust,” “I am responsible fully for my actions,” “I have no one to blame but myself” and “I have been dishonest, and you have the right to be angry with me.” Her words sound premeditated but not rehearsed. She speaks not from a page and thus seemingly her heart. She allows a few tears to roll down her face, but she maintains her composure. In that moment and in several others this film, Marion Jones is everything we wish Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire or Sammy Sosa would be: accountable. Too bad she couldn’t be honest, too.

In Marion Jones: Press Pause, Jones is forthcoming about her mistakes in the way that Michael Vick has been forthcoming about dog fighting, and Tiger Woods has been forthcoming about his extramarital sex and Brett Favre has been forthcoming about his extramarital voice messages: only as required. Did Jones lie to federal investigators? Yes. Did she deliberately mislead the public? Yes. Did she use performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs)? Yes. Those are things Jones willingly admits, because at this point she has no other choice than to do so; a federal investigation forced the truth out of her. But when it comes to how, when and why the five-time Olympic medalist took PEDs, Jones is glaringly mum, which makes all of her other admissions incomplete at best and misleading at worst. In this documentary, the latest installment in ESPN Films’ “30 for 30” series, Jones carries herself with the air of someone who is holding nothing back, but if you watch carefully you’ll notice that she admits to what she’s been found guilty of and absolutely nothing more. Expecting the whole truth and nothing but the truth from a serial liar, whose repeated public denials were so emphatic that Attitcus Finch would have gladly volunteered to represent her pro bono, is as foolish as expecting Olympic athletes to turn down the opportunity for multi-million-dollar success by just saying no to PEDs. (The system is broken.) But expecting a filmmaker profiling the rise and fall of Marion Jones to at least broach the subject of how she got mixed up in PEDs in the first place? That doesn’t seem unreasonable.

Instead, Singleton enables Jones’ delusions. He avoids the PED narrative as if it were an expendable subplot, conveniently beginning his film with Jones’ tearful confession, and confusing the act that sent Jones to prison (lying to federal agents) with the acts that ruined her reputation (taking PEDs and then convincing us she hadn’t). In that sense, Press Pause is the sports equivalent of a documentary about gangster Al Capone that focuses on his arrest for tax evasion. I’m not going to argue that Singleton had an “obligation” to break down Jones in Frost/Nixon fashion, but in the least he could have avoided portraying her as a role model for accountability when she’s so obviously running from the truth. At one point in this film, Singleton captures Jones speaking at a high school in Dallas, and you’ll have to look beyond the cheers of the students, the swelling of the score and the effusive compliments of the principal to realize that for all that Jones honorably admits there is so much that she avoids. “I decided to lie to federal agents and prosecutors and investigators,” she says with dramatic emphasis. “I decided to lie when asked about using performing enhancing drugs. And in a way, you know what, I decided to lie to myself, because I was trying to avoid the consequences of other choices that I had made.” Did you catch that? That third sentence, when you would expect the supposedly honest Jones to admit that she decided to take PEDs, simply restates the second sentence, only with Jones cast as the victim – and not for the last time. “You make good choices when you hang with good people,” she continues. “And when you hang with losers, you’re going to make bad choices.” Does that sound like accountability to you? It isn’t. It’s a passive aggressive shot at her former coach and former husbands.

The problem is that Jones is so charming, so charismatic, so at ease, so direct, even in deceit, that people make the inexplicable decision to take her at her word, or even to rally to her defense. Her former basketball coach at North Carolina, Sylvia Hatchell, essentially invokes A Few Good Men’s Code Red defense, implying that Jones is a good soldier who was given bad orders. William C. Rhoden of the New York Times suggests that Jones’ six-month prison sentence is the unjust ruling of a legal system that is historically unkind to blacks. And former UNC teammate Melissa Johnson shakes her head at the “hypocrisy” of a sports landscape in which some sports stars are heavily punished in their prime while others get away with it. But let’s be clear: Jones is no victim. She just plays one on TV. In this film, it’s almost comical to see Jones remembering the shock she felt when she was sentenced to prison for “six months?!?,” or implying that her lies to federal investigators were the result of a need to maintain the rhythm of the interrogation by answering immediately, as if having more time to think about her responses would have led her to the truth she’d been denying for months. History shows that Jones denies wrongdoing until someone proves she’s done wrong, and even then she admits as little as possible. The only thing that we can be sure Jones regrets is being caught.

Don’t mistake this as hostility toward Jones. I root for her redemption because, well, I’m charmed, too. Sure, she likely used an array of PEDs very knowingly. Sure, even now, she cowardly (and passive aggressively) attributes her mistakes to the influences of bad men in her life, including her ex-husbands (thrower C.J. Hunter, to whom she has repeatedly tied to her PED use, and sprinter Tim Montgomery, with whom she was reportedly involved in a check counterfeiting scam – a topic that goes entirely unmentioned in this film). But somehow Jones really does seem like a good person who has done some bad things. And even though the film overstates the symbolism of Jones reviving her athletic career by playing in the WNBA (it’s called getting a job; people do that), I’m glad she’s moving forward. I just wish she’d head back to the past long enough to clear up her record, to face the truth. The film ends with Jones saying that her personal “highlight” would be having someone walk up to her and thank her for not quitting. But I suggest Jones needs a different message: Quit patting yourself on the back for coming clean about what had already been exposed. Quit pretending. Quit running.


Marion Jones: Press Pause premieres tonight on ESPN at 8 pm ET, and will rerun frequently thereafter. The Cooler will be reviewing each film in the “30 for 30” series upon its release. See the archive.

Man of the People: Fernando Nation

There’s a sports melodrama unfolding in Los Angeles right now that’s so epically sordid, so potentially monumental that I’m half surprised ESPN hasn’t already rebranded its “30 for 30” series as “Thirtysomething for Thirtysomething” just to have the chance to chronicle it with a feature-length documentary. It’s a story of greed, selfishness, corruption and the downfall of a once dominant superpower – the kind of thing that could be directed by Charles Ferguson and aptly titled Inside Job or No End In Sight. It’s the story of the “Dodger Divorce” – the dissolution of the marriage between Frank and Jamie McCourt, for now the co-owners of the Dodgers, whose custody battle for the team has resulted in the public disclosure of their lavish spending at a time when they are also raising the ticket prices of lower-income fans. Fernando Nation, the latest actual entry in the ESPN Films documentary series, isn’t about the “Dodger Divorce” in any specific respect, but in a way it’s an unintentional prologue to it. Because in Cruz Angeles’ profile of the influential career of Dodgers pitcher Fernando Valenzuela, we witness the birth of the very fan base that might not survive the monetary demands of the current regime. To understand what might be lost in the decade ahead, you must understand what came to be three decades ago. You must understand “Fernandomania.”

If you’re unfamiliar with the movement, “Fernandomania” was a craze roughly similar to the one that baseball fans experienced this past season in relation to Washington Nationals phenom Stephen Strasburg, albeit with several significant differences: (1) Fernando Valenzuela made a mostly anonymous debut prior to his official rookie campaign, whereas Strasburg made a highly-anticipated debut as a mid-season call-up; (2) Valenzuela dominated throughout the 1981 season en route to Rookie of the Year and Cy Young honors, whereas Strasburg lasted 12 starts in 2010 before his rookie year was cut short by injury; (3) Valenzuela joined a Dodgers team that wound up winning the 1981 World Series, whereas Strasburg joined a pitiful Nationals team that finished last in the National League East (again) and called it progress; and (4) Valenzuela was signed by the Dodgers to attract a very specific kind of fan, whereas Strasburg was signed by the Nats to attract any ticket-buyer whatsoever. Of all those differences, it’s that last point that’s most noteworthy, because while it’s easy to assume that the Dodgers have always had a sizable Hispanic fan base, given the large Mexican-American population in and around L.A., Fernando Nation proves otherwise: Before the Dodgers attracted Mexican-American fans, it displaced them – bulldozing their community of modest homes in Chavez Ravine so that Dodger Stadium could be erected there instead. The very franchise that broke the color barrier years earlier by signing Jackie Robinson inspired Mexican-Americans to band together to “Remember Chavez Ravine.” And remember they did. Until Fernando helped them move on.

It would be overstatement to call the signing of Valenzuela a pure publicity stunt, but Fernando Nation makes it clear that the Dodgers’ ownership at the time (not the McCourts) was more concerned with signing the “Mexican Sandy Koufax” than with signing the second coming of Sandy Koufax. If the Dodgers had missed their chance to sign Valenzuela – who nearly became a Yankee instead – it’s likely they would have signed the next best Mexican pitcher available. And what a mistake that would have been, because no one else could have compared. Valenzuela’s rookie year was the stuff of legend: he wound up pitching on Opening Day due to an injury to the team’s No. 1 starter and he won; he won his first eight games, actually, five of them shutouts, en route to 20 complete games and 21 wins; he won Game 3 of the World Series to help dig the Dodgers out of an 0-2 hole. He was magical – a feeling heightened by his curious habit of looking skyward midway through his windup (famously parodied by Tim Robbins’ Nuke LaLoosh in Bull Durham). Fernando Nation conveys the whirlwind nature of Valenzuela’s breakout season by not just hitting the key milestones but by clicking them off at a breakneck pace, through the calls of Vin Scully, through the memories of Hall of Fame manager Tommy Lasorda, longtime scout Mike Brito and various Dodgers historians, among others. It’s an exhilarating retrospective for a player who was one of a kind.

But as enjoyable as it is to see old footage of the young, tubby Valenzuela, rocking back in his trademark delivery, the film’s strength is its sense of context – detailing Valenzuela’s impact at the ticket window and beyond. After all, Fernandomania wasn’t just a sports phenomenon, it was a business phenomenon, and the impact of Valenzuela on the Mexican-American community wasn’t just a win for team spirit, it was a win for the Dodgers franchise that cashed in on his appeal. Eventually, it was also a win for Valenzuela himself. Signed for the league minimum of $32,500 in 1981, he held out the following season until agreeing to a 1-year contract of $350,000. The following year, in arbitration, he won a $1 million salary. Those numbers are paltry by today’s standards, but the ratio between an owner’s personal revenue and his player expenditures hasn't changed all that much. Today’s multi-million-dollar professional athletes are often vilified for holding out for larger contracts, but Valenzuela’s story underlines that it’s a matter of principle far more than it’s a matter of necessity, and rightfully so. Born into hardscrabble conditions in a remote Mexican village where he shared a bed with his brothers, Valenzuela was made (comparatively) wealthy with his first contract. But it took several years until he was paid what he earned.

With his success in salary arbitration, not to mention on the mound, there's no question that Valenzuela helped open doors for Hispanic players after him. Yet his rags-to-riches rise from obscurity is timeless in a way that makes his story feel almost stereotypical. It wasn't. As dominating as Strasburg was in his limited season, even he didn’t shut down teams like Valenzuela did in '81 (more strikeouts, yes; more runs, too). And as tempting as it is to look at Cincinnati Reds fire-baller Aroldis Chapman and wonder if he might replicate Valenzuela’s feats next season, it’s sobering to think of just how dominating he’d have to be on the field and just how impactful he’d have to be at the ticket window in order to compare. Angeles’ film isn’t overly reverential, but it makes it obvious that Fernandomania was truly special. In one of my favorite moments, Angeles captures a modern Valenzuela in the upper deck of Dodger Stadium, looking down at the field and admitting he’s uncomfortable with heights. Those cloud-scraping nose-bleed seats are the ones that Fernandomania routinely filled, often by lower-income Mexican-Americans who so looked up to Valenzuela that they were thrilled to look so far down to watch him pitch.


Fernando Nation premieres tonight on ESPN at 8 pm ET, and will rerun frequently thereafter. The Cooler will be reviewing each film in the “30 for 30” series upon its release. See the archive.

Days of Thunder: Tim Richmond: To the Limit

“I’m more afraid of being nothing than I am of being hurt.” Officially, those are the words of Cole Trickle, as written by Robert Towne and as delivered by Tom Cruise in the auto racing flick Days of Thunder. In spirit, though, they are the words of Tim Richmond. A fearless driver who became one of the best racers on the NASCAR circuit under the guidance of a crusty crew chief, Richmond was the flamboyant real-life character upon which Cruise’s Trickle was loosely based. But Days of Thunder isn’t Richmond’s story. Not by a long shot. Richmond was confident, talented and brash, and, appropriately enough, he had a Hollywood icon’s sense of the spotlight, but his life wasn’t blessed with the stereotypical Hollywood ending. Just when Richmond was beginning to show his potential for legendary greatness, he died at the age of 34. What killed him wasn’t overconfidence on the racetrack but ignorance off of it. Richmond fell victim to something he didn’t think he needed to fear: sex.

Tim Richmond died of AIDS. And in the impressive documentary Tim Richmond: To the Limit, the latest release in ESPN Films’ “30 for 30” series, we see the way Richmond lived, the way he died and, most important of all, the way he lived en route to dying. Because what’s really notable about Tim Richmond isn’t that he died of AIDS but when he died of AIDS: 1989. That’s five years pre-Real World: San Francisco, four years pre-Philadelphia, three years pre-Arthur Ashe and two years pre-Magic Johnson. For most of America, 1989 was the dark age of HIV/AIDS awareness – a time when there was just enough light to spot something to fear and not enough light to understand what we should really be afraid of. In the late ‘80s, AIDS was widely considered to be a “gay cancer,” and the great hypocrisy was that some of the same folks who thought only homosexuals got AIDS were also the ones who feared they could contract the disease through casual contact with someone who had it. It wasn’t an environment in which most anyone would feel comfortable living publicly with HIV/AIDS, least of all a NASCAR racer who had already been held at arm’s length by the sport’s “good ol’ boy” establishment just for having an apartment in New York, just for not being one of them.

Through interviews with Richmond’s sister and several of his friends, including Dr. Jerry Punch, plus archival footage of Richmond himself, director Rory Karpf gives us a sense of what Richmond knew, what he didn’t know and what he refused to believe in his final years of life, which were plagued by illness and rumor. One rumor suggested that Richmond had a drug problem. The other rumor suggested he had AIDS. To the press, Richmond denied both, instead stating that he had “Asian flu” and “double pneumonia.” To his friends, he didn’t say much at all. To his immediate family, he admitted the truth. Richmond’s public silence wasn’t tied to any attempt to die with dignity. Rather, it was an attempt to preserve his career. Until the end, says Punch, Richmond never believed he was going to die. After all, he’d seemed to overcome the disease before. One of the most stunning facts about Richmond’s final years is that after initially retiring from NASCAR in 1986, upon his surreptitious diagnosis, his health already deteriorating, he returned to racing briefly in 1987 … and won! Richmond wasn’t suffering delusions of grandeur in believing he would survive AIDS. He was just too naïve to realize the direness of his condition.

To Karpf’s credit, To the Limit is frank about Richmond’s carousing lifestyle. A still photo shows that mirrors hung over Richmond’s bed and his friends note that he had a sex apparatus in the corner of his room. Old NASCAR footage shows Richmond once pausing mid-interview to admire a blond walking by in a short skirt and also repeatedly making the most of all those post-victory hugs from the trophy babes. One of a handful of NASCAR drivers to appear in 1983’s Stroker Ace, it was as if Richmond took on Burt Reynolds’ overt, predatory sexuality. He seemed to be promoting sex all of the time. It was the perfect way to cultivate his rock star image, because in a sport in which you perform underneath a hood and helmet, the key to stardom is less victory than colorfulness (see: Cinco, Ocho). And from Richmond’s perspective, what better way to be colorful than to have lots of sex? It seemed harmless enough, but it proved to be reckless. After his death, some of Richmond’s former lovers appeared on 60 Minutes and claimed that Richmond initiated sex with them when he knew he was infected. Whether that’s true is impossible to say. Richmond’s sister not surprisingly objects to that suggestion, but her bias blinds her to reason: If Richmond himself was in denial about what it meant to have HIV/AIDS, he might also have been in denial about the consequences of spreading the disease.

Karpf plays this kind of stuff down the middle, seemingly without an agenda. He doesn’t seem concerned with salvaging Richmond’s personal reputation, nor is he out to create villains. To the Limit documents the cold reception Richmond received from the establishment drivers like Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt, but it doesn’t paint Southerners maliciously or as especially AIDS-phobic. Kyle Petty admits in one of the film’s interviews he was “ignorant” about AIDS, but that describes most of America in 1989, doesn’t it? Karpf realizes that the controversy over Richmond’s illness was a product of the times, and so his only mission seems to be ensuring that Richmond’s career isn’t defined by his death. The early portion of To the Limit is dedicated to Richmond’s ascent through racing, and even for someone who doesn’t understand the allure of the sport the footage is thrilling. I couldn’t explain how drafting works or what it takes to make a pass (other than driving faster than the other guy), and yet Richmond’s special talent is impossible to miss. When one of the talking heads suggests that Richmond would have become one of NASCAR’s all-time greats, you won’t need to take his word for it, because you’ll already believe it.

Needless to say, this is quite a bit of subject matter to stuff into a 50-minute film. But while Karpf would have benefitted from even 15 more minutes to tell his story, To the Limit never feels overly rushed. The film’s biggest disadvantage is its thankless place in the “30 for 30” schedule. As the 26th film in the series, and the ninth release in as many weeks, Karpf’s film can’t help but feel formulaic, particularly its attractively lit talking-head interviews. Yet whereas so many “30 for 30” documentaries merely dust off events for trips down memory lane, To the Limit is one of only a few films in the series that tells its story with a clarity that we didn’t have when the events occurred. One could easily argue that we now have a better understanding of Richmond’s near-death predicament than he did as he was living it. If Magic Johnson’s HIV announcement and initial retirement was the major turning point for HIV/AIDS awareness in this country, To the Limit is a reminder of just how unaware we were back then. The tragedy isn’t only that Richmond died, it's how he was forced to live on the way out.


Tim Richmond: To the Limit premieres tonight on ESPN at 8 pm ET, and will rerun frequently thereafter. The Cooler will be reviewing each film in the “30 for 30” series upon its release. See the archive.

The Ties That Bind: Once Brothers

Sports uniforms are powerful things. They take people of different races, nationalities, religions, economic backgrounds and political viewpoints and unify them as if members of one harmonious family. They convince fans to cheer for despicable people (Michael Vick in Philadelphia, Barry Bonds in San Francisco, etc.) and to embrace athletes they once despised (Brett Favre in Minnesota). They let Americans know who to care about every Olympics or World Cup. They even create a genuine camaraderie among otherwise dissimilar fans who root for the same set of laundry. But for all the times that uniforms bring people together in previously unthinkable ways (think: Jackie Robinson and the 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers), there’s a limit to a uniform’s bond. Once Brothers, the latest installment in ESPN Films’ “30 for 30” documentary series, is the story of men who were first united by the blue and white jerseys of Yugoslavia’s national basketball team, only to be torn apart by that country’s civil war.

More specifically, the film is about Vlade Divac and Drazen Petrovic, who were strangers, who became teammates, who became roommates, who became friends, who became standout NBA players, who became estranged. Once brothers, then enemies – their unity through the Yugoslavian national team and their immigrant experiences in America shattered by a war that redefined them according to their Serbian and Croatian roots. It’s a heartbreaking story, one that feels as if it should have been preventable at the same time that it seems utterly unavoidable, and it’s a credit to the filmmaker that we leave the documentary understanding and respecting the emotions and actions of both men. Once Brothers is directed by Michael Tolajian, but it comes from the heart of Divac, who narrates the film while retracing his steps from the quiet Serbian town where he was born, to the gym where the Yugoslavian national team trained, to the hotel in Los Angeles that was his first American home, to the streets of downtown Zagreb in Croatia, where Divac hadn’t set foot since before war broke out in 1991. Other documentaries in the “30 for 30” series have felt deeply personal to the people making them (perhaps most notably The Band That Wouldn’t Die and No Crossover), but no “30 for 30” film does a better job of personalizing the story from the perspective of one of its principal subjects. We don’t just understand Divac’s story, we experience it through him.

It’s an intimate tale, but Once Brothers paints a necessarily vast panorama, too – the latter directly serving the former. Whereas the previous “30 for 30” installment, Four Days in October, could take it for granted that audiences understood the nature of the Red Sox-Yankees’ rivalry, not to mention the more specific context of the 2004 ALCS, Once Brothers needed to create all of its drama from scratch. A good number of average sports fans might not even remember Divac and Petrovic, and even many legitimate NBA fans are unlikely to know much about that duo’s European careers, not to mention the outline of the war in the former Yugoslavia. Without an understanding of those things, we cannot fully grasp how close these men once were, and how impossible their friendship became once war broke out and, more specifically, once Divac became the object of Croatian ire after he was filmed snatching a Croatian flag from a fan who wandered on the court following Yugoslavia’s win in the 1990 World Championships. As Divac crumpled the Croatian flag, he was unknowingly crushing his relationship with Petrovic. After that incident, Divac was such a detested figure in Croatia that, according to an archival interview with then Chicago Bulls forward Tony Kukoc, Croatian players were intimidated into severing all ties with their former teammate. Petrovic didn’t stonewall Divac just because he was Serbian, this film makes clear, but because he was a specific Serb. Any doubts about Divac’s notoriousness are erased by footage of Divac walking the streets of Zagreb two decades after he became a figure for Croatian scorn and inspiring the kind of puzzled looks that you’d expect if O.J. Simpson strolled down South Bundy Drive in Brentwood.

It might feel dangerous to take at face value Divac’s side of the story – that he wasn’t trying to make an anti-Croatian political statement when he crumpled up the flag – if not for the numerous accounts of Divac’s efforts to repair his bond with Petrovic. If Divac was trying to send a political message, logic suggests he would have been just as happy to sever their friendship. Instead, Divac clearly believed that his relationship with Petrovic was a true brotherhood – one strengthened when in 1989 they made the leap to the NBA, a move now commonplace for European players that at the time was considered a curious experiment that made them strangers in a strange land. (In what serves as an interesting aside, Jerry West admits that the Los Angeles Lakers drafted Divac having not even scouted him.) Divac might have been naïve about what was possible in a time of war, but his affection for Petrovic is unmistakable. This is the kind of film that you wish could end happily, with Divac and Petrovic sitting down at a bar and having a drink, but of course that’s impossible. As Divac retraces his steps, we know that eventually it leads to tragedy: Petrovic’s death in a 1993 car crash, only months after finishing his best season in the NBA. That element of doom is felt from the start, and when Divac says he feels a “burden” that he was never able to make peace with Petrovic, his sincerity is convincing and his regret is devastating.

Though not the absolute best film in the “30 for 30” series, Once Brothers might be the film that best encapsulates the kind of personal, outside-the-mainstream storytelling that characterizes the series as a whole. There’s so much here: friendship, war, the globalization of the NBA, the immigrant experience and the tragically brief stardom of an NBA player who is now too easily forgotten. Though the American media created an awareness of the strained relationship between Divac and Petrovic and the war between Serbia and Croatia, for the most part this entire drama unfolded right in front of us without us spotting it. We were too consumed with our own allegiances, too quick to identify Divac and Petrovic according to their NBA jerseys, thus overlooking the men inside those uniforms. If not for war, Divac and Petrovic would never have been enemies. Of course, if not for basketball, they’d have never been brothers.


Once Brothers premieres tonight on ESPN at 8 pm ET, and will rerun frequently thereafter. The Cooler will be reviewing each film in the “30 for 30” series upon its release. See the archive.

The Curse: Four Days In October

One frame. While watching Four Days in October, the latest entry in ESPN Films’ “30 for 30” documentary series, that’s how far I got before I rolled my eyes. The trigger for my annoyance was a pair of words that flashed up on the screen in blood red: “The Curse.” No, this isn’t a film about menstruation. It’s about the 2004 American League Championship Series. Which of course means that “The Curse” refers to “The Curse of the Bambino,” which of course refers to the sale of Babe Ruth by the Boston Red Sox to the New York Yankees prior to the 1920 season, the sacrilege of which was so great that it haunted the Red Sox for decades as they went in doomed pursuit of their first World Series title since 1918. Or so the lore goes. The problem with “The Curse,” and the reason it irritates me, is that it’s utter bullshit – less because it fails to accurately explain why the Red Sox went 86 years without a World Series title than because it creates the illusion that Red Sox fans are an especially tortured lot. Hardly. Yes, in a spring-to-autumn race that produces only one big winner each year, the Red Sox were losers for almost nine decades. But in the meantime they did a hell of a lot of winning. Since 1936, for example, the Red Sox have had only 18 losing seasons. In contrast, last Sunday the Pittsburgh Pirates wrapped up their 18th losing season of the past 18 years. That, sports fans, is the kind of suckitude that truly tortured fan bases are made of.

Having said that, there’s no denying that misery and despair were integral components of a Sawks’ fan’s identity circa 2004, back before the Red Sox vanquished their Yankee rivals en route to becoming the very kind of cocky, big-spending franchise that their fans had so long despised. And so it only makes sense that “The Curse” is mentioned as part of the backdrop of the 2004 ALCS, because if any group of sports fans expected to have their hearts broken in the most excruciating fashion possible, it was the one in Boston (and in many other parts of the country where Red Sox fandom was suddenly chic). In baseball’s long history, only one team has ever come back from a 3-0 deficit to win a seven-game playoff series, and thus Boston’s four straight wins were an incredible feat all on their own. But part of what made the unprecedented comeback such magical theater was its larger context: 86 years without a title; Red Sox vs. Yankees; Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium; the franchise that always lost and the one that always seemed to win. Director Gary Waksman clearly understands the importance of that context, or else he wouldn’t have opened his film with those two annoying words, but because a 50-minute film provides scant opportunity for prologue, that’s about the extent of Waksman’s ability to set the stage, and so he takes it on faith that these teams and their rivalry need no introduction. Furthermore, he takes it for granted that we’ve heard this story before.

It’s an appropriate decision in the first case, but a problematic one in others. Four Days in October has a bizarre habit of feeling like an extended instant replay, unfolding as if we all have a distinct idea of what happened in the 2004 ALCS and thus only wish to see it again from some alternate angles. For Sawks super-fans, who by now have likely watched footage of that series at least a half-dozen times, that’s perfectly okay. But for the rest of us, something is lacking: a clear portrait of the big picture. The film superbly captures moments – Dave Roberts in a crucial pinch-running situation in Game 4 or Curt Schilling taking to the mound with an injured ankle in Game 6 – but it fails to build some simple yet significant context: like establishing the fact that Yankees closer Mariano Rivera, against whom the Red Sox staged several of their comebacks, is the most dominant relief picture in MLB postseason history. Leaving out that detail is like telling the story of the Union victory at Gettysburg without explaining the battle prowess of Robert E. Lee. And the trouble with trusting sports buffs to fill in those gaps is that in doing so we are invited to contrast Waksman’s version of these events with our memories of them, and repeatedly Four Days in October seems small by comparison.

That might have been unavoidable. It’s impossible to capture the long, rich drama of four especially long, especially dramatic baseball games in under an hour. But Waksman doesn’t help matters by giving us something beyond the games themselves as if to justify his presence. Four Days in October is full of curious footage: too many clock shots and scoreboard shots; too many shots of fans in the stands and at bars; and too much footage shot by Red Sox players on their personal video cameras. It’s different way of looking at this historic baseball series, but almost none of this is anywhere near as interesting as the games themselves, nor does it provide a greater context for what happens on the field, with two significant exceptions: (1) at one point we see footage of Schilling’s seriously bruised, surgically treated ankle before it turns into a famously bloody mess; and (2) previous to that we see clubhouse leader Kevin Millar walking up to his teammates before Game 4 and playfully spinning a then preposterous but eventually prophetic fantasy that suggests the Yankees are done for if they don’t finish off the series that night. Those moments are gems. The rest of the time Waksman’s fondness for all this previously unseen footage feels misplaced, akin to a reporter printing the complete transcript of a rare interview with a reclusive figure without realizing that the subject of the interview didn’t say anything interesting. Prior to this film, I’d never seen David “Big Papi” Ortiz dancing with his pants off. I’m still not sure I needed to.

Although context is crucial to the drama of the 2004 ALCS, the series’ heart and soul is the baseball itself. Unfortunately, even then Waksman overcomplicates matters by refusing to provide us with traditional broadcast camera angles – once again trying to reinvent the 2004 ALCS and thus failing to recapture it. It’s thrilling when from a field-level camera angle we get to watch Dave Roberts speed around third and go sliding into home to score the tying run in the bottom of the 9th inning in Game 4, but otherwise most of these shots feel like the cinematic equivalent of a music artist’s messy, half-produced, experimental demos. And that’s a rather fitting comparison actually, because the score for Four Days in October ranges from Clint Eastwood-esque to Gladiator-ish to, wait a minute, is that a fucking pan flute?! Yes, I think it is. It’s as if Waksman is desperate to enhance an already powerful event to make it otherworldly, which given that this all unfolded in what we now know to be the peak of baseball’s steroid era (or close enough to it) is probably fitting. Faults aside, this film will provide a welcome flashback for most baseball fans (Yankees fans excluded, obviously). There’s no denying that these events are worthy of inclusion in the “30 for 30” series. But as Waksman learned the hard way, trying to do them justice in 50 minutes is something of a curse.


Four Days in October premieres tonight on ESPN at 8 pm ET, and will rerun frequently thereafter. The Cooler will be reviewing each film in the “30 for 30” series upon its release. See the archive.

Running Down a Dream: Into the Wind

As if sports weren’t inherently dramatic enough, the language we use when discussing them is often bloody with consequence. Teams facing elimination from the playoffs are said to be in “do or die” situations. NFL games that are tied after four quarters go into “sudden death” overtime. And fans who allow their happiness be dictated by the success of their favorite team are said to be “diehards.” It’s all overstatement, provided that no one has made a bet they can’t afford to lose, but it’s harmless. (Working in the NFL when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, I was puzzled by the insistence of some writers that it was now inappropriate to refer to a team’s draft-day strategy room as the “war room.” Were these people similarly uncomfortable with the football terms “blitz” and “gunner”? And, in our post-9/11 climate, where was the objection to the baseball terms “sacrifice fly” and “suicide squeeze”? But I digress.) Poetic enhancement is a sports tradition. Still, every now and then something comes along and reminds us of just how foolish these inflated terms really are, and of just how dramatic sports can be on their own. Into the Wind is that kind of reality check.

The first must-see entry in ESPN Films’ “30 for 30” documentary series since The Two Escobars debuted in June, Into the Wind tells the story of Terry Fox, who in 1980 set out to do the unthinkable: run all the way across his native Canada at a rate of approximately 26 miles (one marathon) each day. A formidable task in its own right, Fox’s expedition was made all the more challenging because he was without the better part of his right leg, which had been amputated six inches above the knee three years earlier, after Fox had been diagnosed with bone cancer. Fox’s goal wasn’t just to cover the distance but to raise money for cancer research and to raise the spirits of cancer patients at the same time. He called his run the “Marathon of Hope,” and in doing so he not only grossly undersold the length of his journey but also the emotions it would stir in those who witnessed it. Directed by NBA guard (and fellow Canadian) Steve Nash and Ezra Holland, Into the Wind gracefully combines modern interviews, archival footage and narrated excerpts from Fox’s journal to bring to life the heroic quest of a 21-year-old man who in the true spirit of sports wanted to test himself, and who in the true spirit of life wanted to do before he died.

It won’t surprise you to hear that Into the Wind is a severely emotional film. When you’re dealing with a young, handsome cancer victim and the choked-up memories of his friends and family, it’s a good idea to have a box of Kleenex handy. And yet while viewer experiences may vary, I found the primary emotion of the documentary to be, of all things, joy. Bittersweet joy, yes. But joy just the same. The image of Fox running alone down various Canadian roads, continuously swinging his clumsy prosthesis underneath him in an athletic but awkward rhythm, is moving beyond words. Because each stride is such a struggle, every step feels like a triumph. And with Fox running a marathon a day, that makes for a lot of triumph. At least, that’s how I look at it. That’s how I explain the lump in my throat that developed less than five minutes into the movie that was still there more than an hour after it was over. Fox on the run is a lurching portrait of all the things that we hope to find in our greatest champions: determination, perseverance, persistence, courage and passion. No wonder Canadians fell in love with him, lining roadsides to cheer him as he passed by or packing town squares to hear him speak during mid-day rests. Sure, they were drawn by the Herculean nature of Fox’s physical task, the difficulty of which was exacerbated by what he didn’t have: a right leg. But I suspect that even more they were drawn to Fox because of what he had so much of: spirit, bravery and toughness. It’s as if with each deliberate step, Fox’s heart beat for everyone to hear.

Miraculously, that sound didn’t carry beyond the Canadian border, not in any lasting way, at least. Given our country’s love of underdogs and running, it’s unthinkable that we don’t know Fox’s story by heart, perhaps with an assist from a Hollywood movie (which must be coming now; bank on it). And yet one of the things Into the Wind makes clear is just how difficult it was for Fox to be discovered in the first place. His legacy includes a statue in his honor, and his run ended with front-page headlines across Canada, but the “Marathon of Hope” began in near anonymity; the only reason there’s footage of Fox’s first steps is because he and his best friend, who drove the van in which the two would sleep along the way, begged a TV station to come out and film Fox on their day off. In the early stages of his journey, Fox would run to and through towns that had no idea he was coming and no clue he had left. It was a much different world. Today, someone like Fox could get his own reality show – presuming one doesn’t already exist for one-legged, cancer-stricken, cross-country runners – and if that didn’t work out, he could document his own journey on YouTube and spread the word via Twitter. Social media could have immediately provided Fox with the kind of exposure that he would only enjoy later on, when the Canadian Cancer Society stepped in to promote and manage his arrivals and appearances (for better and sometimes worse).

But having said that, I suspect that Fox’s run happened at just the right time. Because while the tools for self-promotion are more plentiful today, so is the amount of noise and cynicism. It’s worth wondering: If Fox made his run in the Facebook era, would he have enjoyed greater success, or would people simply have “liked” his run instead of donating to it, “friended” him instead of emotionally connecting with him? Would we have been moved by his courage, by his willingness to carry the hopes and dreams of others on his shoulders, or would we have doubted his sincerity, questioning whether his cause was nothing more than an act of self-glorification? The purity of Fox’s run is a huge part of what makes it so powerful: he’s a guy wearing Adidas shoes, shorts and T-shirts with iron-on lettering who is just running. It’s an act that needs no further enhancement. Its tone is nostalgically earnest. I have deliberately avoided mentioning exactly how Fox’s run ended, because that's beside the point. What’s so emotionally overwhelming isn’t how far Fox ran – though I'm sure your jaw will drop when you see the final statistics – it’s how often he got back out on the road and how he fought for every step. Fox’s run wasn’t about “do or die,” it was about do. That’s what made it so beautiful. Into the Wind allows us to feel the struggle of every step and to revel in the glory of its completion.


Into the Wind premieres tonight on ESPN at 8 pm ET, and will rerun frequently thereafter. The Cooler will be reviewing each film in the “30 for 30” series upon its release. See the archive.

Death of a Statesman: The House of Steinbrenner

Most owners of professional sports franchises are fairly anonymous figures. They sign checks, they raise ticket prices and, if they’re lucky, at some point they raise a championship trophy just long enough to hand it over to their team’s coach or star player. George Steinbrenner was an exception. Like Jerry Jones of the NFL and Mark Cuban of the NBA after him, Steinbrenner wasn’t just a Major League Baseball team owner, he was a team icon, as intrinsic to the New York Yankees’ identity as the team’s famous pinstripe uniforms. From 1973 until roughly 2005, when he faded from view, people were free to loath Steinbrenner or to romanticize him, but they couldn’t ignore him. He was the face of the franchise – and happily so. Steinbrenner didn’t just own his team, he ruled over it, which is why when a deteriorating Steinbrenner handed over primary control to his son Hal, in 2008, it felt less like a business transaction than a political regime change. Sure, the Yankees stayed in the Steinbrenner family, just like Cuba is still under the direction of a Castro. But for all that might remain the same, the ceding of power by a notoriously impulsive, ironfisted overseer would leave the empire he built forever changed. Just like there can only be one Comandante, there could only be one Boss.

In The House of Steinbrenner, Barbara Kopple captures this familial transfer of sports authority with a historian’s sense of scope and a prophet’s sense of consequence. Two months removed from Steinbrenner’s death and less than two years since the Boss officially handed over the reins to his son Hal, these events might be too timely to fully appreciate in the present, but Kopple documents them as if anticipating their future significance, aware that whatever successes or failures the Yankees have over the next 30 years will be traced back to this point. The latest in ESPN Films’ “30 for 30” series, The House of Steinbrenner is about the end of an era. In a less than two-year span, George yielded to his children, the “original” Yankee Stadium was replaced by “new” Yankee Stadium, hot dogs were joined by sushi in the Bronx and, across the street, one generation of construction workers tore down their fathers’ installations. Sports, with their seasonal schedules, are naturally full of beginnings and endings, but this was something different, something greater. At its best, Kopple’s film captures an organization and its fans in the midst of moving forward while consumed by all that they’re leaving behind.

The House of Steinbrenner is a well-made documentary, but cinephiles would expect nothing less from Kopple, the two-time Oscar winner whose last feature-length film, the 2006 hit Shut Up & Sing, remains one of the most surprisingly poignant films chronicling the effects of the George W. Bush administration (by way of the Dixie Chicks). The filmmaking here isn’t flashy, it’s confident, polished. Though not as profoundly edited as June 17, 1994, Kopple’s film mostly avoids voice-over and instead relies on pure observation and interviews with everyone from Hal Steinbrenner to a kid no older than 12 who thoughtfully articulates the historical significance of the Yankees’ relocation to a new stadium. Time and again, Kopple’s interviews reveal a passion for the Yankees and for “old” Yankee Stadium that, as often as not, brings people to tears. Sure, it’s all just a game, and it’s only a stadium. But it’s their game, their stadium, their team and thus their memories. Watching these interviews and feeling the fans’ emotional attachment, it’s easy to see why these fans so adored Steinbrenner in the best of times, because he loved winning as much as they did and wore his passion publically. Hal Steinbrenner, on the other hand? His passion for baseball is difficult to detect, if it even exists. It’s as if he’s trying to preserve someone else’s dream. There’s no question that he wants to succeed, but he’s a driven owner more than a die-hard. The most animated Hal gets in this movie is when he expresses his fondness for checklists. If George Steinbrenner bought the Yankees for the love of the game, Hal manages them today for a love of the bottom line.

Since the move to the Yankees’ new digs, that bottom line has gotten much bigger. Seats are more expensive, some exorbitant. Food, too. At one point in the film a Yankees fan chuckles (painfully) over having purchased four hotdogs and a few Cokes for $100. Meanwhile, in the outfield, some of the stadium’s cheap seats are inexpensive for a reason: they have significantly obstructed views – something newer ballparks are supposed to eliminate, not create. Warts and all, the truth is that George Steinbrenner probably would have built this stadium in the 1980s if he could have, but because fan nostalgia and other factors kept the team in their antiquated stadium for too long, the Boss goes down as the guy who put the fan first, while Hal is seen as the owner who would happily grab his fans by the ankles to shake the money out of their pockets. Whereas the “old” Yankees sought to make money by putting a quality product on the field, the “new” Yankees opened a significantly more expensive new stadium and then sought to make additional revenue from the old field itself, offering up pieces of the original Yankee Stadium – from infield dirt to lockers – for public purchase. (A mere $750 buys you a sign to the men’s room!) Kopple documents all of this without personal comment, finding more than enough fans willing to go into Michael Moore-esque tirades. It’s the right approach for capturing public sentiment but the wrong one for applying culpability, and whether that enhances the film’s accuracy or hurts it is up to you.

I suspect that the knowledgeable sports fan will deduce that the real evil here isn’t any "new" greed of the Yankees’ current ownership so much as the Yankees’ organizational need to do everything bigger and better than every other franchise in sports, an expectation that for years was honed by George. Still, if The House of Steinbrenner has a significant fault, it’s being too gracious to the Boss. Kopple’s film hardly ignores his faults – there are snippets about his itchy trigger finger with managers and his impatience with young talent. But somehow Steinbrenner comes off like an irritable but ultimately harmless cartoon character, a New York Foghorn Leghorn, and dismissing Steinbrenner’s less flattering characteristics as colorfulness seems off. Still, evidence of the “real” Steinbrenner lingers in the margins of this film, in the way Hal at one point calls him “George,” or in Hal’s anecdote about his father’s discomfort when put in a situation in which he was without complete control. As an encapsulation of one of the most notorious and yet most beloved owners in the history of sports, Kopple’s film is lacking a certain depth and nuance. But as a snapshot of the most successful franchise in American sports amidst a sea change, it’s noteworthy. And I suspect The House of Steinbrenner will become even more significant as time goes by, when the epic past isn’t so close to the present.


The House of Steinbrenner premieres tonight on ESPN at 8 pm ET, and will rerun frequently thereafter. The Cooler will be reviewing each film in the “30 for 30” series upon its release. See the archive.

Kind and Generous: Unmatched

It took 21 films for the “30 for 30” series to recognize the existence of females in sports, and now it’s as if Unmatched is trying to make up for lost time. Directed by Lisa Lax and Nancy Stern Winters, and produced by Hannah Storm, this documentary isn’t just by women or about women, it seems targeted for them, too. Unmatched mentions but isn’t really invested in the fierce on-court battles between Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova, just like it references but never evokes their incredible athletic dominance. Unmatched isn’t really interested in tennis, you see, it’s interested in Evert and Navratilova’s rivalry. And it’s interested in their rivalry because it’s fascinated by their friendship. Eschewing traditional talking heads and similar outsider analysis, Unmatched lets Evert and Navratilova tell their own story, in their own words, all from the confines of a picturesque New York beach house that’s right out of a Nancy Meyers movie. Whereas other filmmakers would have felt compelled to turn back the clock in order to delight in the exquisite precision of Evert and Navratilova’s volleys, Unmatched settles into a comfy chair in the here-and-now so that we can watch two of the best tennis players of all time trading memories.

The film isn’t without it’s charms, but it is decidedly low on testosterone. Catch this documentary while flipping through the channels and you’ll be forgiven for thinking you’ve landed on Lifetime, not ESPN. After all, when’s the last time “The Worldwide Leader in Sports” found occasion to play any Natalie Merchant song, never mind the same song, “Kind and Generous,” three times in less than an hour? With scenes that capture Evert and Navratilova reclining on big white deck chairs, or walking down the beach wearing complementary sweater-and-scarf outfits, Unmatched looks straight out of a Nicholas Sparks movie. And if you told me that these shots were conceived for a CBS special romanticizing the friendship of Oprah Winfrey and Gayle King, it would be tough to argue otherwise. (All that’s missing are dogs running up and down the surf.) The movie is so determined to convey Evert and Navratilova’s spiritual sisterhood that when the documentary ends with a shot of them driving off into the distance in a convertible, I breathed a sigh of relief that no canyon was in sight on the horizon.

In making these observations, my intention isn’t demean the film, or to suggest it won’t be enjoyed by men, but to accurately describe it. While I admit that I, for one, would have loved to see more tennis highlights, in order to appreciate Evert and Navratilova’s athletic gifts, and to relive the intensity of their rivalry, I can’t deny the uniqueness of the story that the filmmakers have chosen to tell. For 12 straight years, only Evert and Navratilova held the distinction of being the top-ranked player in women’s tennis. They were the faces of their sport. Over the course of their careers, the two greats played one another 80 times, including 60 finals. And while Navratilova won more often, both retired with 18 Grand Slam singles titles. In the history of American sports, no other rivalry measures up, not in length or competitiveness. That Evert and Navratilova emerged from this as friends is special in and of itself. But that they were close friends during much their careers, in a time when everyone around them wanted them to be bitter enemies, is even more unusual. I mean, can you imagine Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali going skiing together? Can you imagine Magic Johnson or Larry Bird consoling the loser of an NBA Finals between the Lakers and the Celtics? Can you imagine Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson on a double date? You don’t see bonds like this in sports – outside of the Williams sisters, which is another matter – first because rivalries are inherently contentious, and also because it’s nearly impossible for two athletes to compete as often, as long and as evenly as Evert and Navratilova did.

It only makes sense then to tell the story of these women together, because as deserving as they are of being featured individually you can’t do one of them justice without paying significant attention to the other. They are like Johnson and Bird in that respect, or, more accurately, Johnson and Bird are as historically inseparable as Evert and Navratilova. But given the frequency with which this ESPN Films series has mined our cultural history as much as our sporting history, it’s difficult to watch Unmatched without wondering if it would have been a stronger film by focusing on Navratilova alone. Different story, I concede. But what a compelling one! Born in Prague, at 18 Navratilova put her tennis career before her personal life by seeking asylum in the United States. Six years later, she put her personal life before her professional image and admitted her homosexuality – at the peak of her career, in queer-fearing 1981. For these reasons, and others, she was often cast as the villain. Navratilova was too Czech, too gay, too tall and too muscular to be wholeheartedly embraced by American crowds when cute, petite “Chrissie” Evert was standing on the opposite baseline. And so it’s worth asking: in the past 30 years, has any sports champion – male or female – been saddled with so much and overcome it so impressively for such a length of time? I can’t think of one.

Considering how fascinating it has been to probe the minds and feelings of Allen Iverson and Ricky Williams, two players who never dominated their sports like Navratilova dominated tennis, it’s a shame that the filmmakers didn’t make a more determined effort to explore Navratilova’s psyche and soul. It’s sweet to watch Evert and Navratilova laughing together, reflecting on old times, conjuring up old matches like they were yesterday. It’s refreshing to see genuine affection, not just sportsmanship and professional courtesy, among two sports legends. But even though this documentary unearths the grittier topics mentioned above, it does so by kicking a shoe into the sand. Given Navratilova’s reticence – which is further hindered by Evert’s gift for gab – what we needed was a backhoe. Unmatched is a story of friendship, and, sure enough, that’s a special element of the Evert-Navratilova story. It’s just not the element that made them special.


Unmatched premieres tonight on ESPN at 8 pm ET, and will rerun frequently thereafter. The Cooler will be reviewing each film in the “30 for 30” series upon its release. See the archive.

Joined at the Fists: One Night in Vegas

Perhaps never before has such an eclectic group of talking heads been assembled as the one we find in One Night in Vegas, the latest entry in ESPN Films’ “30 for 30” series, which features interviews with the likes of Mike Tyson, Mickey Rourke, Suge Knight and Maya Angelou. Put another way, this documentary brings together a former heavyweight champion who served time in prison for rape and once bit off the ear of an opponent, an actor turned boxer turned actor with a history of substance abuse, a record producer who is widely rumored to be linked to the murder of Notorious B.I.G. (and myriad other crimes) and, last but not least, a Pulitzer Prize nominated writer who recited a poem at the inauguration of President Clinton. Wrap your head around that for a second. These seemingly unconnected individuals are brought together here because of the events of September 7, 1996, the titular subject of the film, when two things occurred that, likewise, might not seem to be related at first glance: Mike Tyson defeated Bruce Seldon to win the WBA title and then, after getting into a brawl of is own, rapper Tupac Shakur was assassinated on his way to a post-fight party. One Night in Vegas suggests that the proximity of these events might not be entirely coincidental. Of course if you’ve watched previous “30 for 30” pictures The U and Straight Outta L.A. and witnessed the strong cultural bond between sports and rap, you suspected that already.

One Night in Vegas touches on themes similar to those two films, but it never comes off as repetitive or otherwise tired in large part because it exhibits a style as diverse as those talking heads. Directed by Reggie Rock Bythewood, the documentary opens with spoken word artists Joshua Brandon Bennett and Rahleek “B. Yung” Johnson standing in a boxing ring as they set the stage like a Greek chorus: “In mere seconds, drinks transformed into drive-bys, shots of Patron became shots in passenger’s side windows, and what should have been a lifelong bond was guillotined by gunfire. … On September 7, 1996, there was more bloodshed outside of the ring than inside of it.” From there, the film employs its other unusual flourish: illustrations by Steve (Flameboy) Beaumont that depict Tyson and Shakur as comic book heroes, one of them triumphing and the other being gunned down. It’s a seemingly random artistic choice, but it’s also a refreshing break from the documentary norm, and a needed one, considering that the rest of the film is mostly a parade of talking heads yapping away in front of bland interview backdrops. Some of these interviewees give eyewitness accounts of that fateful night in September, some give us a historian’s overview (thank you, Chris Connelly) and some outline the similarities of Tyson and Shakur – two men who were celebrated and yet feared and whose primal, menacing antics belied their intelligence. But the film’s most entertaining interviews are the ones that, journalistically speaking, probably don’t need to be there, like Angelou’s typically eloquent account of preventing Shakur from getting into fight on the set of Poetic Justice (and then lecturing him about African-American history to boot), and Rourke’s equally unsurprising barely-coherent account of an incident in which he and Tyson almost joined forces in beating the crap out of someone at a club.

Tyson, like Rourke, is usually the most captivating thing on screen, but in this film Shakur is the magnet for our attention. That’s not much of a surprise. Unable to speak for himself, Shakur is a tantalizingly elusive figure, and his mysterious death shadows the margins. Bythewood smartly tailors his film to his target ESPN-viewing audience, taking it for granted that most of us know more about Tyson’s life and career – from fame to infamy – than Shakur’s. Though Shakur had crossover success in the movies, to paraphrase Angelou, many Americans probably don’t know Tupac from a six-pack. Thus, One Night in Vegas provides a broad overview of Shakur’s life while using Tyson as a proxy. Blessedly, the comparison isn’t overdone. When Dr. Michael Eric Dyson says that Tyson was Tupac in boxing shorts and that Tupac was Tyson with a microphone, he’s being serious but also figurative. Similarly, Bythewood is careful to keep his dual narrative from coming off like some alarmist’s warning about the inherent dangers of rap or boxing. To leave this film thinking that either discipline directly inspires real-life violence is to miss the point. Where boxers and rappers are aligned is in their posturing and verbal sparring, all of it packaged with the often explicit suggestion that if you don’t take their threats seriously that they’ll back ‘em up physically. In Shakur’s era of rap, physical strength was demonstrated regularly. It says a lot about both men that what Tyson believes they shared most was an utter fearlessness – of other people or of the repercussions of their actions – that made others nervous. With good reason.

Was Shakur, who wrote the rap that boomed through the MGM Grand as Tyson entered the ring that night, swept up by the energy of fight night when he got into a brawl of his own? Did he idolize the wrong man? Did he forget that Tyson’s fisticuffs were officiated by a referee and that there were rules within the ropes? And, as Tyson himself wonders, might Shakur be alive today if he’d just stayed home and watched the fight on pay-per-view? These are interesting questions, and they’re substantial enough to warrant exploration of the ties between Shakur’s murder and sports. And yet, the sports footage in this film is a weakness, at least to anyone old enough to remember the way Tyson could dismantle lesser opponents with his crushing blows. For those of us who can recall Iron Mike at his best, this film’s boxing highlights are mired by our awareness that we’re watching a lesser champion, that after Tyson defeated Seldon is was all downhill and that Tyson’s dominance at the time was illusionary. In his post-prison career, Tyson never defeated a worthy opponent. We know that now.

One way to get around the lackluster fight footage might have been to take an all-in approach with Beaumont’s comic book illustrations. Then again, while I question the value of hearing that night’s referee describing the mood of the dressing rooms before the fight, or the film’s preponderance of talking-head interviews in general, there’s also no debating the allure of the shot in which Tyson and Shakur embrace only a few minutes after the match, sweat still glistening on Tyson’s forehead. And no illustration could match the eerie gravity of a photograph showing Shakur only seconds before his attack. Like Straight Outta L.A. before it, this film is notable not so much because of its filmmaking but because it was made at all, liberating American history from its habitual whiteness. If Frank Sinatra had been assassinated on the night of a Jack Dempsey fight, it would be engrained in the lore of sports and music. So it is that Tyson and Tupac should be forever joined in our minds.


One Night in Vegas premieres tonight on ESPN at 8 pm ET, and will rerun frequently thereafter. The Cooler will be reviewing each film in the “30 for 30” series upon its release. See the archive.

Fighting for Truth: The Tillman Story

Pat Tillman had the stare of a prizefighter, the inquisitiveness of an investigative journalist, the fearlessness of a stuntman, the protectiveness of a big brother, the self-awareness of a philosophy major, the devotion of a best friend and the mouth of a New Jersey auto mechanic. Or so I have been told. Having worked two years at Arizona State University and two years more in the NFL, I’ve come in contact with several people who were friends or at least friendly with Tillman, but I never met the man. I know Tillman only through the stories of those former friends and teammates, and through the tremendous features of Sports Illustrated’s Gary Smith and the controversial book by Jon Krakauer. Now comes Amir Bar-Lev’s documentary, which through the accounts of those who knew Tillman best in life or were nearest to him at his death corroborates every description of Tillman that I’ve ever heard, revealing an individualistic, intelligent man of character who was also something of a rascal (that was his charm). But The Tillman Story is less about who Pat Tillman was than about who Pat Tillman wasn’t. If you’ve heard that Pat Tillman was a hero and a patriot, well, that’s true, by the most honorable definitions of those words. But Tillman wasn’t the quite hero that the military and the upper reaches of the Bush administration needed him to be. And so Tillman became in death the one thing that by all accounts he never was in life: someone else’s man.

This wasn’t Tillman’s doing. It was a crime done to him. Bar-Lev’s documentary attempts to set the record straight, to make Tillman’s story his own again. It’s a hard thing to do – to liberate a man from myth without spinning a brand new one – and it’s a task made harder still when those who knew the subject best are the ones most reluctant to describe him. In this film, Tillman’s wife, mother, father and youngest brother speak of Pat with a frankness and ease that suggests they trust their interviewer, but they are noticeably careful to avoid describing Pat with broad generalities, in part out of respect for a man who seemed to defy and detest oversimplified labels, and also because they’ve seen firsthand how such abstractions are building blocks for illusions. When Tillman walked away from a multi-million dollar NFL salary to enlist in the military and offered no explicit explanation as to why, the media filled in the gaps, writing the narrative they wanted to tell instead of the narrative they could validate. For them, Tillman was too good a story to pass up. Meantime, politicians latched on to Tillman’s enlistment as a sign of good old-fashioned American values and as a testament to the virtuousness of the military’s upcoming engagements. For them, Tillman was too famous to serve anonymously, even though his actions – Tillman refused all interviews and didn’t release a statement – made it clear that was his desire. Tillman was the best recruiting tool since Uncle Sam. His image was no longer his own to control. And the worst was yet to come.

Bar-Lev’s film spends most of its time detailing how Tillman’s genuine heroism was rampantly fictionalized upon his death. Gunned down by friendly fire in April 2004, Tillman’s death was described to the public as if it were something else, something worthy of a John Wayne film. At the televised memorial service a week later, a military representative said Tillman “(took) the fight to the enemy” and that his actions “directly saved” the lives of his “brothers.” There was no mention of the possibility of fratricide – neither publicly nor in private to Tillman’s family – even though soldiers on the ground knew immediately and without question that Tillman had been shot by U.S. troops. In fact, there would be no mention of fratricide until a month later when details of a military investigation became public. In the meantime, Bar-Lev’s film reveals, the truth of Tillman’s death was passed up the chain of command, reaching as high as then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, if not higher, but no one said a word and eyewitnesses were ordered to keep quiet. The reality that Tillman’s head was blown off by U.S. soldiers who were no more than 40 yards away was apparently too grim for the military to accept, and so even when fratricide was eventually acknowledged the military made the episode sound as chaotic as possible, implying that Tillman’s death was a tragic and essentially unavoidable “fog of war” accident, even though the only thing hazy about Tillman’s death has been the result of half truths and outright lies issued to the Tillman family and the American public.

The Tillmans make it clear they believe that the military and the Bush administration deliberately distorted the truth about Pat’s death in a repugnant attempt to make chicken soup out of chicken shit. Their suspicions are backed by piles of circumstantial evidence, perhaps the most incriminating of which (in my opinion) is the military’s lack of remorse over getting the details wrong in the first place. But that’s not the only possible explanation. Perhaps the military isn’t devious and self-serving so much as grossly incompetent, unable to comprehend official memos. Or perhaps the truth about Tillman’s death was elusive because of the misdeeds of some rogue officers, you know, like at Abu Ghraib. Because if we’ve learned one thing since 9/11 it’s that our military is the most technologically advanced in the world, with the best and brightest soldiers, when we’re trying to build a case for war, but our military is impossibly challenged by programs as intricate as e-mail and is plagued by the poor decision-making of corrupt bumblefucks working outside the chain of command whenever anything goes wrong.

The Tillman Story is a tribute not just to Pat but to his family, particularly his mother Mary, who spent years playing the role of Woodward and Bernstein in the relentless pursuit of the truth. You might not agree with all her conclusions – for example, Mary Tillman’s take that the soldiers who shot her son weren’t at all scared and just wanted to shoot something might be oversimplifying the adrenaline of a firefight – but you can’t fault her for building her own theories. If the military hadn’t attempted to hide the truth behind black boxes on thousands of pages of heavily redacted documents, Mary wouldn’t have needed to go searching for reality in the first place. But while Bar-Lev’s film triggers rage that those so quick to praise Tillman’s heroism and to benefit from it would treat him so dishonorably in death, it also subtly cautions against turning Tillman into some other kind of martyr. That even people who didn’t know Pat Tillman would want to honor his service and sacrifice is understandable, but at some point it’s worth asking: would he have wanted a statue outside Cardinals Stadium, or for ASU’s dance squad to perform a (somber?) choreographed routine in his honor? At what point do we become culpable of manipulating Tillman’s image all over again, according to our own selfish ideals? Just because Tillman can rightly be called a hero doesn’t mean he would have been fond of the label. From all I’ve seen, read and been told, Pat Tillman was content just being Pat Tillman. Therein lies the truth.