Hoosiers: David vs. Goliath again
Classic basketball film gets better - and further away - with age
The tragic and curious death of actor Gene Hackman or “Coach Norman Dale” of the Hickory High School basketball team in the heartwarming film “Hoosiers” has shined a somewhat surprising spotlight on the star actor and the apparent doubts he faced during the filming of the 1986 classic.
Apparently, throughout the filming, Hackman was extremely skeptical about the future success of the film, possibly even his future as an actor. Over the past few weeks, I’ve read or watched interviews with people involved with the film who spoke openly of his skepticism, his apparent reluctance to buy in to the “feel good” vibe of the film.
While he didn’t ever strike a viewer as a sentimental guy in any of his films and certainly his character, “Norman Dale,” who was defensive and guarded about his shameful past, wouldn’t ever go there, somehow it seemed to me, the whole thing worked. That’s acting, I guess.
Watching the film again, which I — and probably most of you — will do every time you wander through the channels and find it on, you would never think that Hackman harbored that kind of skepticism about the film. He was believable, though it’s probably fair to say that as viewers, we dearly wanted to believe in him, too. We knew right away it was a David and Goliath story; there was no doubt which side you were on from Frame One. That it was based on a genuine David and Goliath story, little Milan High School, in 1954, defeated Muncie Central, a way bigger high school, for the Indiana State Championship only made it that much more appealing.
I sort of questioned the romance with Barbara Hershey —like most of you probably did, too — but the basketball sequences, the small-town feel, the backbiting parents, if you’ve spent time covering high school basketball, that all rang very true. And unlike football, where the players are helmeted and in pads or baseball, where they’re in caps and out on the field, in basketball, you can see their faces, their reactions, their excitement and their disappointments, especially at that last crappy call by the ref. If you cover the team, you know every kid.
In my days in Port Huron, Michigan, there were two high schools in the city; Port Huron High, probably more of a blue collar, city-type of school and Port Huron Northern, a team from the suburbs (mostly white - can we say that?) And the Northern team I covered had a resurgent season, their best in years, led by two players who competed for points, rebounds and headlines. They were terrific players, excited that they were getting coverage, for one thing, more excited that the team was winning and it was fun to tag along, home and away.
I don’t know this for a fact but I had a couple of people tell me that one parent would clip the stories in the newspaper and actually count — with a highlighter — the number of times their son was mentioned in comparison with the team’s other standout player. You didn’t see that kind of thing in “Hoosiers.”
Though it took some time for the farm boys to understand Dale’s rigid coaching techniques and to trust him, he won them over, then, by not cow-towing to the school’s star player who at first, wasn’t playing. He actually won him on his side. You would like to think something like that would happen today but you would, of course, be dreaming.
I was fortunate in that my own schooling in roundball came from a silver-haired old guy named Al Grenert, who came to Nashua High in his 60’s. He had played in the old NBA where they launched two-hand set shots (he demonstrated how they did it!) and even spent time as a color man for the Boston Celtics and witnessed gravel-voiced announcer Johnny Most (“Havlicek stole the ball!”) make the most spectacular catch in broadcasting history when Most, an excitable type, had his upper plate come flying out in mid-sentence at a key moment in the game. He not only caught it, he kept talking without missing a beat. “Damndest thing I ever saw,” Grenert told me.
I think of Grenert whenever I watch “Hoosiers” and watch Dale’s hard-ass coaching ways. Grenert wasn’t quite as crusty and cranky as Dale, but he did believe in 3-on-2 drills, on sharing the basketball and only installing just a few plays. This included one magical in-bounds play he put in the first day of practice, held it close to his vest until a key moment in the New Hampshire Class L Championship game months later, then called it. Then winked at me.
I knew what was going to happen before anybody on Press Row or on the other team. When it went for an easy layup and secured a Nashua state title, it was the kind of inside-baseball moment that was thrilling for Grenert, for the kid who made the basket and me.
“Hoosiers,” of course, is a fairy tale, one that we need repeated and often. It’s fun to believe that a group of young men can find ways to blend together, make up for each other’s weak points, band together to discover how to win basketball games blending their skills together.
The moment in the film where at the key moment in the game, Dale calls for star player Jimmy to be a decoy, the entire team silently, respectfully rebels and Dale instantly recognizes it. And he backs up. He gives the chance for the game-winner to where it belongs, to Jimmy. That does me in every time and probably does you, too. As hard ass a coach as Dale was, in that moment he understood the players knew who they wanted to take that last shot. He trusted them as they had trusted him.
We don’t see a lot of that these days. At least, I don’t. You don’t see a lot of Norman Dale-type coaches, either. Society has changed and I guess our values have, too.
I still believe in unselfish team play, about sharing the ball, that old all-for-one, one-for-all philosophy that I still do see in women’s basketball, UConn in particular. Some will say it’s easier for them because Geno Auriemma always gets the best players. True.
But “Hoosiers” reminds us, at least it does me every time I watch it, that teamwork still can and does work, that discipline and smarts can still defeat raw, untamed, show-offy talent. Or at least it sure did once, in Indiana in 1954.
BTW: If you’d like to watch footage of the actual game, here’s a YouTube clip of the actual game and an ESPN Classic episode all about that Milan team. Watched it last night. Still cool.
FOOTAGE OF THE ACTUAL MILAN-MUNCIE CENTRAL GAME
THE ESPN CLASSIC SPECIAL ON THE MILAN STATE TITLE IN 1954