..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

The dramatic imperative behind most great movies about sports requires an athlete or group of athletes to overcome adversity, usually against great odds.

On the playing fields of Hollywood lore, these teams -- real and imagined, great and unsung -- somehow never fail to rally behind a fallen comrade, be they Ronald Reagan's George "The Gipper" Gipp, Gary Cooper's Lou Gehrig or Robert DeNiro's Bruce Pearson in Bang the Drum Slowly. Even such amusements as The Bad News Bears, Major League, Slap Shot and The Longest Yard (a contemporary remake of which opens this week, with Adam Sandler in the role defined by Burt Reynolds) demanded that a group of misfits bind together as a unit, in order to achieve a common goal.

And, what washed-up jock hasn't wished for the same second chance granted Roy Hobbs in The Natural; Jimmy Morris in The Rookie; and Crash Davis in Bull Durham? Hope springs eternal …

Box-office records demonstrate that no studio executive or screenwriter has yet come up with a way to determine, with any amount of accuracy, why one sports movie succeeds and another disappoints. Neither does a star's name on the marquee -- with the possible exception of a Dennis Quaid and Kevin Costner -- guarantee even a moderate return on an investment. Will Smith, at the zenith of his popularity, couldn't turn Michael Mann's very appealing Ali into the monster success some thought it would be, especially considering Muhammad Ali's vast international appeal.

(I'll hazard a guess: however charismatic, the former heavyweight champion is someone whose life and career already had been well-documented, and, at 157 minutes, Ali presented much too daunting a task for casual fans. Internationally, the marketing effort was uninspired and dictated by the cliché about how little European audiences would embrace so-called black-oriented films. Neither did it receive the anticipated bounce from too-few Oscar and Golden Globe nominations.)

Other movies, especially those that existed on the fringes of the genre, tanked because audiences could smell a rat in the trailers and TV ads. The information contained in the previews either gave too much of the story away, or revealed a fundamental confusion between the title's creative and marketing teams.

Tony Scott's glitzy The Fan, for example, looked as if it might have been a decent baseball, wrapped in the disguise of a thriller. At the same time, however, the publicity campaign demonstrated an inherent ignorance of America's pastime on the part of the filmmakers (e.g., continuing play during a torrential rainstorm).

Oliver Stone's Any Given Sunday seemed more a treatise on fascism and no-holds-barred capitalism (Wall Street in sweats) than the game of football. This, after such gridiron-savvy dramadies as North Dallas Forty, Semi-Tough and The Longest Yard had accomplished the same thing, in a short amount of time, 20 years earlier.

No, these higher-profile films played fast and loose with the games themselves, while over-emphasizing the sometimes amazing visual and audio effects available to the directors in the mid- to late-'90s. Meanwhile, the mere casting of such headliners as Robert DeNiro, Wesley Snipes, Al Pacino and Cameron Diaz wasn't sufficient enough bait to lure casual fans of either the sports or thriller genres.

By comparison, no special effects were needed to amp up interest in last year's real-life baseball playoffs. The drama behind the Chicago Cubs and Boston Red Sox' quest for long-denied glory would have been dismissed as incredulous fiction, if it were written first as a screenplay. Even the estimable presence of Jimmy Fallon, Drew Barrymore and the Farrelly Brothers -- not to mention, the exquisite timing of a strangely coincidental Red Sox miracle -- couldn't persuade fans to part with more than $40 million for a peek of Fever Pitch.

Neither is it likely that a screenwriter is ever going to succeed in capturing the heroism and drama of Lance Armstrong's annual struggle to prove he's stronger than cancer, as he's done for the last six years in the Tour de France. The best movie about competitive bicycle racing will continue to be Steve Tesich and Peter Yates' delightful, small-scale comedy, Breaking Away.

Then, there's the case of Clint Eastwood's Million-Dollar Baby. As long as the trailers and TV ads suggested it was gritty story about one determined woman, trying to make it in the men's world of professional boxing, the film treaded water at the box office. Once stories began to emerge about the true nature of the film's haymaker subtext -- and Oscar buzz began to spread -- its commercial potential began to be realized.

Even so, Million-Dollar Baby only managed to pass $100 million in domestic revenues last week. But, that's a neat profit for a picture that cost something like $30 million to make, and not a whole lot to market.

One wonders if the people at Universal, Imagine and what's left of Miramax would be happy with a similar return on their investments in Cinderella Man.

The early-June release already has been compared to Rocky, Seabiscuit and Raging Bull, a bona-fide classic that has yet to return more than $50 million in domestic box-office receipts. (Thank goodness for DVD and video sales!) Ron Howard's 144-minute biopic tells the story of Depression-era boxer James J. Braddock, whose career trajectory actually resembled that of the champion racehorse in Gary Ross and Universal's mid-summer hit of 2003.

As such, Cinderella Man is anything but a no-brainer. But, then, neither was the stunningly successful A Beautiful Mind, another Ron Howard biopic that starred Russell Crowe.

Meanwhile, sleepers built from the same mold as Rudy, Field of Dreams, Hoosiers, Chariots of Fire, Cool Runnings, A League of Their Own, Remember the Titans, Hoop Dreams and, yes, Rocky, will continue to capture the imagination of the public and surprise analysts. They'll arrive without great expectations and expensive marketing campaigns. Word-of-mouth will make them hits.

If there's a God in Hollywood heaven, the same thing will happen in July with the amazing new documentary, Murderball. Like many other digital-age documentaries that have caught the attention of critics and audiences, alike, this highly inspirational profile of a group of dedicated quadriplegic athletes -- who play full-contact rugby in specially-designed wheelchairs -- introduces viewers to people, events and accomplishments they had no idea even existed, and screenwriters couldn't sell to the studios.

The most commercially successful of sports movies not only introduce us to extraordinary people, but they also tell engrossing stories and make us question our own expectations of greatness. Their exceedingly human protagonists -- be they employed in the service of dramas, comedies or documentaries -- all share an ability to perform admirably under great pressure, while battling demons from within and without themselves. In this way, they come to resemble the Immortals of Greek mythology.

One star athlete who is never likely to be confused with Apollo, Herakles or Kronos is Cubs right-hander Carlos Zambrano, who, according to the AP, has just been told to cut back on his computer time. Team doctors suspect that the amount of time -- about four hours a day --he spends communicating via e-mail with his brother could be contributing to recent elbow problems.

"I have to spend one hour and take it easy," Zambrano said.

According to Cubs manager Dusty Baker, who isn't a doctor but sometimes plays one in press interviews, "It's not carpal tunnel, but if you don't watch it, who knows what it can lead to? We are trying to alleviate it."

I'd love to see what Howard and Crowe could do with that premise.

Failing that, if Microsoft or AOL were ever to sponsor a screenwriting contest, Zambrano's inspirational struggle to regain form might provide fodder for an aspiring scribe. If ESPN passed on the winner, it might provide the Learning Channel with the perfect ailment for a disease-of-the-week movie for geeks. Possible sequels could expose the dangers of tennis elbow, and tendonitis from signing autographs for fans.

May 26, 2005
- Gary Dretzka