Natural.

Robert Redford and sports worked, but not because of sports

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Robert Redford wasn’t really in sports movies, although he did appear in a couple with sporting themes. If you think “The Natural” was a baseball movie, you may have watched it a little too early in your life. (I did.) Though the film contains baseball scenes early, late and often, it ain’t that.

As an emerging star, Redford made a skiing movie, “Downhill Racer.” Again, this was a movie that had ski racing in it. The critic Roger Ebert was so taken with this 1969 film, he wrote in his glowing review that its smaller moments, gestures and expressions “form a portrait of a man that is so complete, and so tragic, that ‘Downhill Racer’ becomes the best movie ever made about sports — without really being about sports at all.”

Redford was good for that. He directed a movie, “A River Runs Through It,” that is not at all about fly-fishing, except in those small but powerful moments when it definitely is. The fly-fishing industry in America is said to have doubled in size in the first two years after the movie’s release.

As an actor, director, producer and independent film benefactor, Redford, who died Tuesday at age 89, consistently found himself attracted to stories about the margins of people’s lives. He loved movies that portrayed flawed heroes — not anti-heroes, but rather people who wore the mantle with visible discomfort.

In its obituary, the Los Angeles Times quoted Redford — he grew up in Santa Monica — as saying that he was drawn to characters who walked the line “between what appears and what is,” and over the long course of his acting career he chose roles that were either somewhat enigmatic or almost broodingly quiet.

“There was always that tension, and the darker side is what interests me,” Redford said. “People always ask me, ‘Why did you play all those inarticulate guys?’ Well, that was the way you made the point — playing a character who can’t always articulate what he’s feeling and who has to develop action to find out.”

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Roy Hobbs didn’t say a ton in “The Natural.” He had plenty of lines; he just didn’t say much until it really counted. Nevertheless, the movie carries such emotional weight that it is routinely included on the short list of greatest sports films despite — at the risk of repeating ourselves — being only superficially about sports.

That’s okay, of course. Most great sports movies are only barely about sports. In playing Hobbs in “The Natural,” Redford personified a man chasing his own life and, at some points, almost afraid of finding it.

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A few nuggets about this classic:

—In the movie, Roy Hobbs is portrayed first as a 19-year-old and then, with the New York Knights, as a 35-year-old “rookie.” Redford was 47 when the movie was made.

—Redford was a huge fan of Boston Red Sox star Ted Williams. That’s why he wears No. 9 for the fictional Knights. In trying to swing the bat authentically on film, Redford, who played college ball for a year, modeled his motions after Williams’ left-handed Hall of Fame stroke.

—In the movie-reel scene where he’s visiting with adoring kids, Roy Hobbs is asked how to become a big-leaguer and replies, “You have to have a lot of little boy in you.” That phrase was first spoken in real life by Brooklyn Dodgers catcher Roy Campanella.

—[SPOILER for actual readers of books] In Bernard Malamud’s novel, upon which the movie is based, Roy Hobbs does indeed accept the Judge’s bribe. He strikes out in the climactic moment to throw the game, regrets his decision, and is reduced to a weeping, pitiable figure who realizes he has squandered his life’s talent. That ending was too downbeat for Hollywood, so they re-wrote it. Home run! Lights explode! Tears of joy! The Judge goes up in flames!

—When Hobbs’ bat splinters in his final game, the replacement that batboy Bobby Savoy grabs for him is the bat the two of them worked on together, the “Savoy Special.” It turns out that there was a real-life Savoy Brewing Company in the 1930s, which had a product: Savoy Special Beer.

And with that, cheers to Robert Redford, an actor so good he could make a sports movie that wasn’t really about sports, and do it so well that we remember it as one of the best sports movies of all time. There goes Roy Hobbs, the best there ever was.