May 11, 1984: "The Natural" Premieres

May 11, 1984, 40 years ago: The film version of Bernard Malamud's baseball-themed 1952 novel The Natural premieres, starring Robert Redford, Glenn Close, Kim Basinger, Barbara Hershey, Robert Duvall, Joe Don Baker, Wilford Brimley, Red Farnsworth, Darrin McGavin and Robert Prosky.

Is it the best baseball movie ever? Maybe. Certainly, it's the one with the best photography (thanks to director Barry Levinson), and the one with the best music (thanks to Randy Newman). It's not perfect, though. And I don't mean that it's corny or sappy.

Most of the movie was filmed in Buffalo, New York, especially at War Memorial Stadium. Built in 1937 as Civic Stadium, it was renamed War Memorial Stadium in 1960, the year minor-league baseball's Buffalo Bisons and the AFL's Buffalo Bills moved in. It seated 46,500 people, making it one of the largest stadiums in minor-league baseball, but the smallest in the NFL after the 1970 merger with the NFL. It was this reason, rather than its deteriorating neighborhood, advancing age and rundown appearance that led the Bills to build a larger stadium.

Not having computer-generated imagery (CGI) to create an old-time ballpark, Levinson needed an old ballpark, but not one that was easily identifiable, like Fenway Park with its Green Monster left-field wall, Wrigley Field with its ivy-covered walls and distinctive bleachers, or Comiskey Park with its pinwheeled scoreboard.

War Memorial was available. The story takes place in 1939, when the stadium was new. But by 1983, it was so run-down that it looked like it hadn't had any maintenance since the Great Depression, and appeared much older. By this point, it was known as The Old Rockpile. Buffalo native Brock Yates, a screenwriter who created the race upon which the Cannonball Run movies were based, said that it "looks as if whatever war it was a memorial to had been fought within its confines."

It was demolished in 1988, after the Bisons left. A new high school sports complex, the Johnnie B. Wiley Recreation Center, was built on the site.

Baseball field at the Wiley Center. That white thing

in the background is a gate from the Rockpile that was left standing.

I'd still like to know what happened to Roy Hobbs between 1923, when he was a hot pitching prospect and got shot, and 1939, when he was 35, a right fielder, and a great hitter. Not to mention what happened to him after he shot out the lights at the end. Sure, he reunites with his wife and son, which is the whole point. But, still, I'd like to know that story.