MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Pastime’ Baseball Film Goes a Strong Nine Innings

Baseball is such a mainstay of populist American myth that sometimes even the cynical films about the game seem sentimental, while the really grandiose affirmations, like “Field of Dreams,” can go cosmic. “Pastime” (selected theaters) is a little film, a surprisingly good one, that stands somewhere between “Field of Dreams”’ and the darker iconoclasm of “Bull Durham” or “Eight Men Out.”

“Pastime” takes place in 1957, in a tiny California city with a losing Class D baseball club. It’s about the last days of a venerable 41-year-old reliever named Roy Dean Bream (William Russ) and the first days of a 17-year-old phenom named Tyrone Debray (Glenn Plummer). Bream has a heart problem, which he medicates secretly, and only one major pitch: a crazily exploding breaking ball that he deploys in his increasingly brief late-inning save stints. Debray is a shy kid with smoke in his arm.

Bream is white and Debray is black--and they’re ostracized by their young teammates, who cauterize the sting of mediocrity by acting tough and flip. These teammates aren’t naturally mean--except for Randy Keever (Scott Plank), the lead pitcher and tantrum-thrower: a typical example of a no-talent egotist covering up shoddy skills by bullying people.

“Pastime” is a little fable about passing the torch, in the style of the humanist liberal TV dramas of the ‘50s: the kind Rod Serling used to write and Robert Mulligan or Ralph Nelson used to direct. It has their mood: the mixture of irony and sentiment, the quiet pessimism that concealed a kernel of hope, the search for the darker undercurrents of the American Dream. The only thing that isn’t similar is the inflated last 10 minutes.

Obviously, Bream is a hero to director Robin B. Armstrong, and to D.M. Eyre Jr., who wrote this script 17 years ago, because he’s the ultimate lover of baseball. He’s sacrificed everything for it--his life, his comforts, the chance for a family--just to keep playing.

From one angle, his life is pitiful--his greatest moment was probably getting tagged for a grand slam by Stan Musial in his minuscule tour in “the Bigs”--but only if we accept winning as the ultimate goal, which this movie both doesn’t and does. Bream, in Russ’ often moving performance, is a true idealist: corny and loquacious, but inwardly true.

“Pastime” has it both ways. It glorifies Roy for not being opportunistic or win-obsessed, but it also suggests that he may live on in the real winner, Tyrone. By making the phenom black, the movie takes in the whole social revolution--in life and baseball--brought about by integration. (Is there any subconscious link between the current tendency to glorify the old baseball era, and the fact that it was also lily-white?)

Armstrong, a first-time director, obviously loves the vernacular and feel of the game--and he tries to show it from the inside, give us a feel for the player’s-eye view. His shooting style is both dry and lyrical--and some of Armstrong’s effects are strikingly well-judged, like the understated epiphany of the film’s last shot.

Eyre’s writing (he also did “Wolfen”) is easy and natural-sounding and he and Armstrong have been very well served by the cast members mentioned above as well as Dierdre O’Connel as the blowzy but compassionate bartender Inez, Nobel Willingham as the rock-solid manager and Jeffrey Tambor whose smarmy but collegial owner is full of little surprises.

Some audiences may dismiss “Pastime” (rated PG) as another “male weepie.” They shouldn’t. It’s touching, well-acted, well-written and directed, done with obvious devotion. And, if it’s not quite a gem, if the irony begins to seem a little too heavy, the plot devices slick and inevitable, the preachments a little too bald, it’s probably because not enough movies of this kind are made anymore. We may have lost the knack--which is a pity.

‘Pastime’

William Russ: Roy Dean Bream

Glenn Plummer: Tyrone Debray

Jeffrey Tambor: Peter LaPorte

Dierdre O’Connel: Inez Brice

A Miramax Films release. Director Robin B. Armstrong. Producers Eric Tynan Young, Armstrong. Screenplay D.M. Eyre Jr. Cinematographer Tom Richmond. Editor Mark S. Westmore. Costumes Kristine Brown. Music Lee Holdridge. Production design David W. Ford. Set decorator Ellen Totleben. With Noble Willingham, Scott Plank. Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes.

MPAA-rated PG.