The Natural is a 1952 novel about baseball written by Bernard Malamud. The book follows Roy Hobbs, a baseball prodigy whose career is sidetracked when he is shot by a crazed fan. Most of the story concerns itself with his attempts to return to baseball later in life, when he plays for the fictional New York Knights with his legendary bat, "Wonderboy." It has been suggested that the story closely parallels the legends of Percival and King Arthur. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (598x863, 170 KB) Licensing This image is of a book cover, and the copyright for it is most likely owned either by the artist who drew the cover or the publisher of the book. ... Bernard Malamud (April 26, 1914 – March 18, 1986) was an American writer. ... In political geography and international politics a country is a geographical entity, a territory, most commonly associated with the notions of state or nation. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... A novel (from French nouvelle Italian novella, new) is an extended, generally fictional narrative, typically in prose. ... A publisher is a person or entity which engages in the act of publishing. ... Harcourt Trade Publishers is a U.S. publishing firm, and one of the worlds largest publishers of textbooks. ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ... The barcode of an ISBN . ... 1952 (MCMLII) was a Leap year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... A view of the playing field at Busch Memorial Stadium, St. ... Bernard Malamud (April 26, 1914 – March 18, 1986) was an American writer. ... Percival or Perceval is one of King Arthurs legendary Knights of the Round Table. ... A bronze Arthur in plate armour with visor raised and with jousting shield wearing Kastenbrust armour (early 15th century) by Peter Vischer, typical of later anachronistic depictions of Arthur. ...

A film adaption of The Natural starring Robert Redford as Roy Hobbs was released in 1984. The movie is not considered to be faithful to the book, since important details are changed. For the book upon which this film is based, see The Natural. ... Robert Redford (born Charles Robert Redford, Jr. ...

Plot

The movie begins by showing Roy Hobbs as a grown man, looking rather old for his years, silently awaiting a train that will take him to New York for a last chance at baseball. The specifics of his early career are not revealed until later. The film then cuts to a lengthy flashback showing Hobbs as a young boy playing baseball on an American farm, somewhere in the Midwest, with his father. He is obviously a highly-talented baseball player. When a tree, under which his father had died, is destroyed by lightning, Roy takes a piece of the tree and makes a bat from it, on which he burns a lightning bolt and the label "Wonderboy". He carries the bat with him throughout his career, in a trombone case. [Little of this material is in the original novel. Hobbs did carve the bat out of a tree split open by lighting and name it Wonderboy, and he does carry it with him throughout his career, but this is revealed through exposition much later in the story. The material concerning Roy's childhood, the farm, his father, etc. are absent from the book.]

Hobbs embarks on his baseball career, not as a batter but an ace pitcher. Hobbs also said that Josh Crane was his childhood hero. He travels by train throughout the country, hoping to land a spot with a major league team. [This is where the novel's plot begins; the first image is that of a match igniting, symbolizing creation, followed by a train thundering out of a tunnel, representing a metaphorical birth.] Hobbs's talent is virtually infinite: in one incident at a fair, the teenaged farm boy accepts a wager to throw three pitches to "The Whammer", the top hitter in the major leagues and modeled after Babe Ruth. Honorable but young and a bit cocksure, the young Hobbs is seduced by Harriet Bird (Barbara Hershey), an alluring but dark and sinister woman who gravitates to him after judging that he is the best baseball player who ever lived. In a hotel room, Bird shoots Hobbs in the mid-section just before committing suicide. [This is fairly well-adapted from the novel, except for the part about Hobbs being "honorable," and the fact that the novel's time frame is about 10 years later than that of the film. Harriet's fate, though, is not described in the novel; there is no indication that she committed suicide, and the photos which emerge later show her dancing over his unconscious body. In addition, Hobbs' mentor Sam Simpson, who makes the bet on Hobbs' behalf, dies just before Hobbs is invited to Harriet's hotel room.] Barbara Hershey is an American actress, known for her many film roles. ...

The story skips forward 16 years. [15 years in the novel.] Hobbs is now thirty-five and has just arrived in New York by train. He helps a down-on-their-luck, fictitious National League team called the New York Knights [replacing the Giants; the other contemporary National League teams are present in the film and novel, although their uniforms are not accurately represented in the film] and is signed by a scout (in a blunder that later turns out to be part of the movie's main subplot) who thinks he is a washout, without consulting the team's manager and co-owner. The gruff manager, Pop Fisher (Wilford Brimley) is unimpressed by the aged Hobbs. However, Hobbs refuses to leave, and eventually gets a chance to take batting practice, where he hits every ball well past the fence. Still skeptical, Fisher agrees to let Hobbs play. In Hobbs's first at bat in a major league game, he hits the ball but not for a home run--instead, he literally tears the cover off the ball, sending an unraveling ball of string into the outfield. From that point on, Hobbs hits massive home runs time after time, rising to stardom and reversing the bottom-dwelling Knights' fortunes. [All this follows the novel fairly closely. Hobbs' success arrives on the heels of the failure of the team's previous star player, Bump Baily, who is a pompous lunkhead in the film and an obnoxious clown in the novel. In both versions, he is so "inspired" by Hobbs' prowess that he begins to play harder, only to crash through an outfield wall and kill himself.] The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, or simply the National League, is the older of two leagues constituting Major League Baseball in the United States and Canada and the worlds oldest extant professional team sports league. ... Allen Wilford Brimley (September 27, 1934 - ) is an American character actor. ...

Despite his supernatural abilities and general goodness, Hobbs and his abilities are vulnerable to temptation. [That "general goodness" is not present in the novel. This is a principal difference between the original story and the adaptation. In the book, the character is shallow, vain and unmindful of the responsibilities of heroism; he is driven only by his selfish appetites for women, wealth and fame.] An unscrupulous and cynical reporter, Max Mercy (Robert Duvall), hounds Hobbs through the season. The mystery of those sixteen years is slowly revealed as Roy's childhood sweetheart, Iris Gaines (Glenn Close), returns to his life. It is later revealed that an encounter between Roy and Iris sixteen years earlier had produced a son. [None of this is true in the novel. While Iris, whose last name is Lemon in the book, does stand up at Wrigley Field to inspire Hobbs to break out of his batting slump, they were not childhood sweethearts. They had never met before. Obviously, therefore, she could not have had his child, but she did have a grown daughter and was already a grandmother at age 33. After meeting for the first time, she and Roy have a brief tryst in a park where, as it later turns out, he impregnates her.] Robert Selden Duvall (born January 5, 1931) is an Academy Award and four-time Golden Globe winning American film actor and director. ... Glenn Close (born March 19, 1947) is a five time Academy Award-nominated American film and stage actress. ...

The corrupt owner of the Knights, The Judge (played by Robert Prosky), who hates bright light, tries to persuade, even bribe, Hobbs to throw the remainder of the season owing to a contractual agreement between The Judge and Pop Fisher, whereby The Judge will obtain full ownership from Pop if the team fails to win the pennant. Hobbs feels strong loyalty to Pop, the archetypical gruff but loveable coach, particularly as Pop has confided to him that his one dream is to win the pennant; Pop doesn't care about winning the World Series, he just wants to be there. Hobbs cares little about money and stands firm against The Judge's attempts to buy his honor. [Hobbs cares little for Pop in the novel; he approaches the Judge on his own initiative, seeking a raise on the premise that he deserves it due to his on-field contributions. However, not only does he end up getting nothing, the Judge (whose name, incidentally and ironically, is Goodwill Banner) makes him pay the cost of one of his uniforms, which Baily had earlier destroyed in a prank.] However, The Judge realizes Hobbs's one weakness--he can be corrupted by a woman. A gambler associate of The Judge, Gus Sands (Darren McGavin), introduces Hobbs to his mistress, Memo Paris (Kim Basinger). [In both the film and the novel, Memo was Baily's girlfriend and there were rumors, debunked by Baily, that they were engaged. It is not clear in either version whether Memo is intimately involved with Gus. The novel shows a hostility developing between Baily and Hobbs after the latter "accidentally" sleeps with Memo when he and Baily switch hotel rooms; she went into the wrong room. She treats Roy with contempt from then on until finally agreeing to date him after the encounter with Gus at the Pot of Fire.] Robert Prosky (born Robert Porzuczek on December 13, 1930 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA) is an American character actor who has appeared in such films as Christine, The Natural, Broadcast News, Green Card, Hoffa, Rudy and Dead Man Walking. ... William Lyle Richardson (May 7, 1922 – February 25, 2006), who adopted the name Darren McGavin, was an American actor best known for playing the title role in the television horror series Kolchak: The Night Stalker, and also his portrayal in the movie A Christmas Story of the grumpy father given... Kimila Ann Basinger (pronounced (bay-sing-ger), often mispronounced ) (born December 8, 1953 in Athens, Georgia) is an Academy Award-winning American film actress and former fashion model. ...

Hobbs battles through many distractions and adversities, including succumbing to the sexual persuasions of Memo, who, while not as clearly sinister as the woman who shot him years ago, is most definitely an amoral and corrupting character. As Roy falls further into Memo's embrace and away from his honor, his play suffers, as if he has been reduced from partly divine to just a flawed, over-the-hill man. Before the pennant-deciding game, Hobbs eventually resolves to break free of Memo's and The Judge's web, and The Judge resorts to poisoning Hobbs (leading to a reaggravation of the injuries to his stomach sustained in the shooting). Whether or not the Judge had anything to do with Hobbs' incapacitation is left somewhat ambiguous, it may merely be a recurrence of the old bullet injury being aggravated by Hobbs' intense play and the stress of a pennant race with the entire team on his shoulders. Up until the last minute it is doubtful Hobbs will be able to play, after he collapses while attempted batting practice, against doctor's orders, in collusion with the trainer and some of the Knight's players.

Hobbs, of course, plays in the game even as his stomach bleeds through his shirt. The game stays close, in part because at least one key member of the Knights has clearly been paid off by the Judge's underworld associates and is trying to throw the game.

[This is where the film truly departs from the novel; in the book, Roy accepts the bribe and does not decide until well into the ballgame to change his mind and try to win. This occurs when Roy is at bat deliberately hitting foul balls into the stands at an obnoxious fan called Otto Zipp; he accidentally hits Iris, who he didn't know was there, and who tells him that she is pregnant with his child. He resolves to win the game for her, and for the child. By this time, however, it is too late...]

As befits both an epic poem and a baseball movie, Roy comes to bat in the bottom of the ninth, with a chance to win the game. He looks to the stands and sees Iris Gaines (Glenn Close), his childhood sweetheart and as pure and good a person as the other two female characters are predatory and poisonous. She stands up, shrouded in white light. (Actually, she stands up earlier in the film, helping Hobbs break his unlucky streak.) She is with a boy, who looks to be about sixteen and bears a striking resemblance to Robert Redford. Despite this, Hobbs fails to put two and two together until Iris hurriedly passes a note down through the crowd to Hobbs. He reads it, presumably saying that the boy is his son, and with the realization that he is redeemed, again becomes more than human: Roy Hobbs, The Natural. His stomach is bleeding more than ever, and he realizes that he may die; of course, it is his duty and destiny to stand at bat.

As Hobbs steps up to the batter's box with divine determination, the lightning flashes again, and Hobbs swings Wonderboy, infused with the soul of his father, and connects: the culmination of his quest. But he gets around on it: hard and dead foul. Having dropped the bat, Hobbs looks down and sees that Wonderboy has shattered. No longer able to depend on his seemingly magical bat, Hobbs keeps his emotions in check and tells the awkward but good-hearted bat boy, Bobby Savoy, to "pick me out a winner, Bobby." The youngster selects a bat that Hobbs had helped him make earlier: Savoy Special. Roy takes the bat. Their eyes meet, like father and son, as Bobby hands him the bat just as a camera bulb flashes (a smaller "lightning flash"). Hobbs grips the bat in his hands. It feels like a good bat. It is made with love, as was Wonderboy. Hobbs realizes that this bat may have the magic, too.

Hobbs' stomach has started bleeding visibly, and he accepts the fact that the biggest swing of his life could disable or kill him. Hobbs shrugs off the umpire's concern about the bleeding, telling him to play ball and staring down the pitcher (apparently a young pitching phenom, much as Hobbs had been at the beginning of his career). But the pitcher's sneer is no match against the demi-god Hobbs, who connects (in slow motion) with an explosive sound of bat meeting ball; Hobbs has hit a towering fly ball, a pennant-winning home run, which soars into the stadium's lights and starts a chain reaction that bursts the lights and rains sparks down over the field, over the Judge and his cronies in his private box, and over Hobbs as he runs the bases, in a famous and really quite beautiful scene, backed by Randy Newman's iconic score (which is often played at baseball games following homeruns).

[In the novel, he strikes out. The confrontation with the Judge, Gus and Memo in the Judge's office takes place after the game; in the film, it happens before the game. In the book, Roy angrily gives back the bribe money and physically assaults the Judge and Gus; Memo tries to shoot him and misses, as she does in the film.]

The Knights have won the pennant, and true to Pop Fisher's dream, we don't see what happens in the World Series. It's the end of baseball for Hobbs, and the film ends with a scene of Hobbs playing catch with his son in a sun-dappled cornfield, with Iris standing by. [The novel ends with Roy losing everything as his career is over, his chance at fame and fortune is gone, the bribe scandal hits the papers along with a photo of him and Harriet Bird after she shot him, and his records are likely to be stricken. A small boy says to him, "Say it ain't true, Roy!" as he sits on a bench weeping "many bitter tears," realizing too late that he never learned anything from his failures in life and must continue to suffer for them.]

Influences

The Natural is the first narrative novel about baseball and includes numerous parallels to Arthurian legends, while the plot structure follows The Odyssey to some extent. The similarities to The Odyssey include a long, sidetracked journey involving sexual encounters (Calypso and Circe in The Odyssey, Memo Paris in The Natural), and finally the arrival home to his son and his mother (Penelope and Telemachus in The Odyssey; Iris and her son in The Natural). Odysseus and Nausicaä - by Charles Gleyre For other uses, see Odyssey (disambiguation). ... Now hes left to pine on an island, wracked with grief (Odyssey V): Calypso and Odysseus, by Arnold Böcklin, 1883 In Greek mythology Calypso (Greek: Καλυψώ, I will conceal, also transliterated as Kalypsó or Kālypsō), was a naiad, daughter of Atlas who lived on the island of Malta. ... Circe, a painting by John William Waterhouse. ...

There are also parallels between the Roy Hobbs character and Achilles, the figure in Greek mythology whose mother dipped him in a river that granted divinity and immortality, but did so while holding Achilles by the foot, partially retaining his mortal nature. Hobbs is similarly more than a mere mortal--the movie clearly portrays him as semi-divine. When Hobbs is at his best, he plays baseball better than any mortal, hitting more than one home run that appears to travel over 1,000 feet, far further than any human could. Hobbs is also invulnerable to almost every earthly temptation: he is not interested in money, power, or luxury. But, he has his Achilles heel, the part of him that is flawed and mortal: he is attracted to seductive but wicked women, and becomes corrupted by them. Once seduced by these women, his divine side recedes and he is simply a man: weak, mortal, without his skills. The Wrath of Achilles, by François-Léon Benouville (1821–1859) (Musée Fabre) In Greek mythology, Achilles (also Akhilleus or Achilleus) (Ancient Greek: ) was a hero of the Trojan War, the central character and greatest warrior of Homers Iliad, which takes for its theme, not the War...

After a spectacular start in the Majors, Roy goes into a deep slump. He comes out of this slump when a woman stands up in the crowd, wearing a brightly colored dress and a back-lit hat that suggests a halo. The woman's name is Iris, the same as the messenger of the gods from Greek mythology. Iris, by Luca Giordano In Greek mythology, Iris is the personification of the rainbow and messenger of the gods. ...

Among major league players, Roy Hobbs bears a certain similarity to Ted Williams and also (in the book, at least) Shoeless Joe Jackson with one critical incident referencing Eddie Waitkus (who had been called "a natural" when he first game to the major leagues). Roy begins his baseball career as a pitcher, good enough as a teenager to strike out the Major League's leading hitter (a Babe Ruth-like figure) in an impromptu exhibition; later in life he becomes famous as a home run hitter with extraordinary power. The arc of Roy's career, beginning as a dominant pitcher and ending as a phenomenal hitter, also parallels the career of Babe Ruth. Theodore Samuel Williams (August 30, 1918 – July 5, 2002), best known as Ted Williams, nicknamed The Kid, the Splendid Splinter, Teddy Ballgame and The Thumper, was an American left fielder in Major League Baseball. ... Joseph Jefferson Shoeless Joe Jackson (July 16, 1888 – December 5, 1951) was a left fielder in Major League Baseball who played for the Philadelphia Athletics, Cleveland Indians and Chicago White Sox. ... Edward Stephen Waitkus (born September 4, 1919 in Cambridge, Massachusetts; died September 16, 1972 in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts) was an American first baseman in Major League Baseball who had an 11-year career (1941, 1946-1955). ... For the band, see Babe Ruth (band). ...

Williams, the Red Sox great, said that his goal in playing baseball was for people to say, when he walked down the street, "There goes Ted Williams, the greatest hitter who ever lived." Hobbs has a similar, though somewhat more ambitious, desire for people to say he was the greatest ballplayer who ever lived. Like Hobbs, Williams missed years of his career during his prime (owing to military service during World War II and the Korean War, the year of the book's publication), and both later returned to baseball as stars. Other similarities are that both Hobbs and Williams played the outfield, wore the number nine on their jerseys, hit home runs during their last Major League at-bats, and each won one pennant in his career. The last two facts only occur in the movie; the book was printed eight years before the end of Williams' career and ends in a strikeout.

Hobbs' severe gunshot wound by a vengeful woman, who then leaps to her death, combines and exaggerates a couple of incidents involving real-life major leaguers. In the early 1930s, Billy Jurges was accidentally shot while trying to wrest a gun from a suicidal former girlfriend. In 1949, Eddie Waitkus was shot by a female stalker unknown to him and whom he had unwisely agreed to visit in her hotel room. Waitkus' story is often cited as "inspiring" Malamud to write the book. Both players recovered from their wounds and resumed their careers. The women were institutionalized. William Frederick Jurges (May 9, 1908, Bronx, New York - March 3, 1997, Clearwater, Florida) was a shortstop, manager, coach and scout in American Major League Baseball. ... Edward Stephen Waitkus (born September 4, 1919 in Cambridge, Massachusetts; died September 16, 1972 in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts) was an American first baseman in Major League Baseball who had an 11-year career (1941, 1946-1955). ...

In the book when Hobbs is found to have taken a bribe, a boy cries, "Say it ain't true, Roy!" This is an obvious reference to Joe Jackson and the Black Sox scandal of 1919. Jackson also was often labeled a "great natural hitter". ...

Baseball references

• References to the book and movie title have been frequent. Will Clark was known by the nickname "The Natural" throughout his career after his first-career-at-bat, first-pitch home run off of Nolan Ryan, which suggested the scene in which Roy Hobbs "hits the cover off the ball" in his first career-at-bat.
• The Sports Illustrated cover story for August 29, 2005, featured Atlanta Braves rookie sensation Jeff Francoeur and was titled, "The Natural".
• On October 16, 1988, the day after Kirk Gibson hit his dramatic homerun off of pitcher Dennis Eckersley to win Game 1 of the World Series for the Los Angeles Dodgers, NBC spliced together clips from Robert Redford and his at-bat in the Natural with Kirk Gibson's at bat and subsequent homerun. The theme to The Natural supplied the background music.

William Nuschler Clark, Jr. ... Lynn Nolan Ryan, Jr. ... The first issue of Sports Illustrated, August 16, 1954, showing Milwaukee Braves star Eddie Mathews at bat in Milwaukee County Stadium. ... August 29 is the 241st day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (242nd in leap years), with 124 days remaining. ... 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Major league affiliations National League (1876–present) East Division (1994–present) Current uniform Retired Numbers 3, 21, 35, 41, 42, 44 Name Atlanta Braves (1966–present) Milwaukee Braves (1953-1965) Boston Braves (1941-1952) Boston Bees (1936-1940) Boston Braves (1912-1935) Boston Rustlers (1911) Boston Doves (1907-1910) Boston... Jeffrey Braden (Jeff) Francoeur (born January 8, 1984 in Lilburn, Georgia), nicknamed Frenchy, is a Major League Baseball player who currently plays for the Atlanta Braves of the National League. ... October 16 is the 289th day of the year (290th in leap years). ... 1988 (MCMLXXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Kirk Harold Gibson (born May 28, 1957) is a former American two-sport athletic star, best known as a Major League Baseball player noted for his competitiveness and clutch hitting. ... Dennis Lee Eckersley (born October 3, 1954 in Oakland, California), nicknamed Eck, was a Major League Baseball player elected to Baseball Hall of Fame in 2004 (his first year of eligibility). ... Dates: October 15, 1988–October 20, 1988 MVP: Orel Hershiser (Los Angeles) Television: NBC CBS Radio (Jack Buck and Bill White announcing) Announcers: Vin Scully and Joe Garagiola Umpires: Doug Harvey (NL), Larry McCoy (AL), Bruce Froemming (NL), Durwood Merrill (AL), Jerry Crawford (NL), Derryl Cousins (AL) ALCS: Oakland Athletics... Dates: October 15, 1988–October 20, 1988 MVP: Orel Hershiser (Los Angeles) Television: NBC CBS Radio (Jack Buck and Bill White announcing) Announcers: Vin Scully and Joe Garagiola Umpires: Doug Harvey (NL), Larry McCoy (AL), Bruce Froemming (NL), Durwood Merrill (AL), Jerry Crawford (NL), Derryl Cousins (AL) ALCS: Oakland Athletics...

External links

• Photos of the first edition of The Natural