My Epic Journey Through Stuart Gordon's Life's Work Ends on a Slight Note with his 1979 TV Adaptation of the Chicago Theater Staple Bleacher Bums
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As someone who grew up in Chicago in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I have an intense nostalgia for the play Bleacher Bums despite having only seen it today.
That’s because the play about one afternoon in the bleachers of Wrigley Field during a game in which the Cubbies squared off against the St. Louis Cardinals seemed to run during my entire childhood and adolescence.
For decades, it seems, I couldn’t open a newspaper and look at the theater listings without seeing a big ad promoting Bleacher Bums as the theatrical equivalent of a hot dog with all the trimmings but no relish, deep-dish pizza, Italian beef, horrific violence, and widespread corruption.
Bleacher Bums was sold as Chicago in play form. When the trusty theatrical workhorse tours, it serves as a cultural ambassador, giving cities worldwide a taste of what makes the Second City so wonderful and terrible.
Growing up it seemed like Bleacher Bums had always been around and would always be around but it actually began life in 1977 at Chicago’s Organic Theater Company, where it was brought to life collaboratively by the cast and crew from an idea by cast-member Joe Mantegna.
Chicago isn’t the only place Bleacher Bums took off. For over a decade it was a perennial of the Los Angeles theater scene as well, having played at the Century City Playhouse from 1980 to 1991.
Bleacher Bums’ popularity, far from Wrigley Field, speaks to its universality. The long-running, intermittently revived Chi-town theatrical staple is deeply steeped in Chicago culture but it also speaks to the joys and heartbreak of sports fandom in all its forms, not just American.
I’m sure that there are soccer hooligans in Manchester who would see a lot of themselves in Bleacher Bums’.
The play, which is credited to Roberta Custer, Richard Fire, Dennis Franz, Stuart Gordon, Carolyn Purdy-Gordon, Michael Saad, Ian Patrick Williams and Keith Szarabajika, chronicles a day in the life of a group of fans who gather in the bleachers at Wrigley Field to cheer on the Cubbies.
A broad cross-section of humanity, Chicago-style, fills the stands. There’s Zig, a cigar-smoking, gravel-voiced blowhard who Dennis Franz plays as a Midwestern version of Ralph Kramden. Carolyn Purdy-Gordon, Stuart’s wife and frequent collaborator, plays Zig’s disapproving wife, who comes to the stadium to chastise her partner but soon gets wrapped up in the fun.
Roberta Custer is Melody King, a ditzy sexpot with feathered brown hair and a hard face who is the subject of the unwanted advances of oily Poindexter Rick (Ian Patrick Williams), a geek tolerated by the bums.
Michael Saad plays a charismatic blind man with a vivid imagination who experiences the game in a manner much more intense, vivid, and exciting than than those who can see the action.
Joe Mantegna oozes macho bravado as a bookie and true believer, and Richard Fire rounds out the cast as Marvin, a non-believer, and non-fan who is forever tempting the faithful with bets on everything and anything. Keith Szarabajka memorably inhabits a type found throughout live sports: the super-fan who thinks that they can personally and positively affect the outcomes of the game through cheerleading, crowd participation, wacky costumes, props, and taunts for the opposing team. He embodies the magical thinking endemic to sports fandom, where die-hards delude themselves into thinking that their weird rituals and superstitions have a direct impact on a game played by millionaire strangers.
Bleacher Bums is a slice-of-life comedy about the everyday drama of life in cheap seats at Friendly Confines. It follows a ragtag collection of fans as they bicker, gamble, insult one another, and root, root, root for the Cubbies.
The version of Bleacher Bums that played briefly on public television is not a proper television movie but rather a filmed play. Despite its inveterate theatricality, this play, where nothing happens beyond a bunch of ordinary people conversing during a baseball game, was adapted for television a second time in 2002.
This version was directed by the great character actor Saul Rubinek and features a cast seemingly devoid of Chicago theatrical actors but chockablock with name actors like Brad Garret, Wayne Knight, Charles Durning, Peter Riegert, Matt Craven, and Hal Sparks. That version is a full half-hour longer than the filmed play, so I’m guessing they added a fair amount to the source material.
The action begins at the beginning and concludes shortly after the game has ended. Though we never see a single baseball player, we nevertheless get wrapped up in the drama, tension, and excitement of the game all the same. We can’t help but root for the Cubs even if we never see them.
The exceedingly limited conflict and drama in Bleacher Bums comes from seeing whether the Cubs will be able to pull off a victory but also whether Marvin will succeed in getting inside the heads of his baseball-loving colleagues and their wallets as well.
Baseball is a matter of passion for the Bleacher Bums. It’s about hope springing eternal with each new game and the joy and camaraderie of strangers who become friends because they share the all-important bond of fandom.
Bleacher Bums is Chicago to the core. Its writers and stars would go on to tremendous fame on the West Coast, in television, movies, and the stage, but they would remain Chicagoans/bleacher bums wherever they might happen to live.
This is shockingly slight and light-hearted for a Stuart Gordon production. 1998’s terrific The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit is the only other Gordon project I’ve covered for this column that is as light as this theatrical trip to Wrigley Field.
A taped version of a featherweight theatrical staple is a mighty inconsequential way to end my glorious journey through Stuart Gordon’s life’s work.
The taped version of Bleacher Bums is an intriguing transitional work. It’s an extension of the horror auteur’s work with Organic Theater Company, but it also saw him branching out into television for the first time.
There wasn’t much Gordon could do to put his imprint on material that strays far from the filmmaker’s wheelhouse of darkly comic cosmic horror beyond contributing to the production’s sense of authenticity.
Bleacher Bums isn’t terribly ambitious. It’s content to take in the sights and sounds of a typical day at the old ballgame, but it gets Chicago right, and it understands the surprisingly complicated, emotional, and thorny essence of fandom.
I’m glad that I finally got around to experiencing Bleacher Bums. Now I know what all the fuss is about. The play is not great or even particularly good, but there’s something about it that is enduring and real despite its breezy nature.
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