Baseball America Interview

Perhaps no other actor in the history of American film, from Gary Cooper ("The Pride Of the Yankees") to Anthony Perkins ("Fear Strikes Out” to Robert Redford (“The Natural”), has left more of an indelible imprint on baseball movies than Kevin Costner as Crash Davis in 1988’s "Bull Durham” he captured the tricks and trials of a now-legendary minor league journeyman. The next year, in "Field of Dreams," he made an Iowa cornfield a symbol of America's rural pastime. And this September 17, when "For Love of the Game" opens nationwide, Costner will add to his baseball legacy by playing Billy Chapel, a veteran Tigers right hander whose life choices are re-examined as he pitches at Yankee Stadium in the biggest game of his career.

BASEBALL AMERICA: At the screening of "For Love of the Game," you said that you hope that viewers or fans see part of themselves in the movie. What do you want people to relate to in your character?

KEVIN COSTNER: Ultimately, if you ride the whole circle, the whole road with Billy, you come to understand him. There are points where we don't like what we look like. We don't like what we sound like. But the measure of a man is his life, and how you watch the whole journey. To make an analogy to baseball, you say, "We'll get 'em next time." It takes the long haul to measure someone's career.

I always hope that somebody can relate to the joy that Billy has of playing or the anger that he has of not playing, or the competitiveness he has while he's playing, or the sense of humor, the larceny, that comes with it-his sense of pain, his weeping. I hope someone can see himself in that emotion. Do you see yourself? Do you see yourself knocking somebody down and still barking at the batter?

BA:In the filming of the movie, did you really throw five days in a row, like more than 100 pitches a day? What did that do to your arm?

COSTNER:The first day, when we went out to see the guys play on both sides, I went to meet them to break the ice, just to get rid of the sissy-actor thing. I knew they were staring at me, and whatever. So I went out and met them, and Augie had been working with them and said they were good guys. So we started to play a little bit. I noticed when I was warming up that my arm hurt unusually fast. I'd gone through knee surgery the summer before-in fact, I went to the hitting contest in Colorado (at the 1998 All-Star Game) with torn cartilage, and I didn't want to do it. But I thought I may never have another chance to do this, so I went anyway. I got lucky-I got one out.

BA: You gotta hit in the rare air.

COSTNER: I told my kids I was gonna hit one out. I don't know what the hell I was thinking about-"The Babe Ruth Story," or what. But I was hurting, and I went right into surgery right after that. So I never really got to throw before I came to New York. I was rehabilitating a knee so I could walk.

So I got there, and I went out and started to warm up with these guys, and I knew something was really weird. Something wasn't right with my arm. So I eventually went out on the (Yankee Stadium) mound and threw about five pitches, and I knew I was really, really hurting. So I stopped and got it iced up. I privately didn't say anything to anybody-“Oh, that's enough for me”-but I knew something was bad.

So we went and I did a bullpen scene first. Then we went out to the (Yankee Stadium) mound the next day. I pitched, and we weren't as organized as we needed to be, and I had this suspicion that I didn't know how much I had. I said to the director, Sam Raimi, "Sammy we really have to chalkboard this thing." And we didn't. And a couple of times I'd throw a great pitch and the catcher didn't know it was the third strike and he didn't pop up. Great actor, but that was our toughest thing. So I have to come up with another pitch. I know I've only got a couple of pitches in me, which was really scaring me for the future of the whole shoot.

I stopped, because I said I couldn't go anymore. I went down in the dugout, and the pain started growing exponentially. Finally, I threw up. There was no place for the pain to go. The pain was so extreme. And it was throbbing with every beat of my heart. Every time the heart would pump blood, the blood would shoot down into this arm and the pain started at the shoulder and went all the way down. I couldn't walk, I couldn't get anything right. Finally, I just went, "Bluuuuhhh…”

BA: In the Yankee Stadium dugout.

COSTNER:I had the good manners to not do it on the mound in front of everybody. We didn't have a trainer at that point and didn't know what to do. It was cold out there. It was in the fall. And Chili Davis happened to be clearing out his locker. He said, "How's Kev?"

“Oh, he's hurting."

“What's wrong."

“He hurt his arm."

"Where is he?"

So he came all the wav out of the locker room, out onto the street where my trailer was, He came and said, "We have to get some ice on him." So Chili was kind of cool about how he came to help. The pain just sat there. So now I'm faced with the notion of, "I've got at least 20 more days of this.” And this was the first day. It was the first time in my athletic life that I couldn't go. But I knew I was gonna have to.

(Yankee trainer) Gene Monahan came on the scene for me. He was a blessing. We would not have been able to finish the movie without Gene Monahan. I’ve never actually leaned on anybody that much.

BA:We want to ask you a few things about your other movies. As far as "Field of Dreams" goes, if you could personally meet any dead baseball player, who would it be?

COSTNER:About three guys leap to mind for me. I'd like to meet Ty Cobb. I'd like to have just seen him play, hear him talk. Who knows if would like to be around him-maybe it'd be kind of like Doc Holliday, a dangerous guy to be around. But the reputation is so big, so great and so consistent that you'd like to see it.

Babe Ruth would obviously be someone you'd like to meet. And Lou Gehrig. Those are the three.

BA: And with “Bull Durham”, what's the scouting report on Tim Robbins?

COSTNER: Good. Timmy threw really hard. Baseball's not second nature to him. He risked a lot. He knew going in that he was gonna be critiqued. But Ron (director Ron Shelton) did the right thing-he got the right guy to act the part. While we knew certain things couldn't he achieved athletically they would have been lost dramatically. One of the first things we did to avoid those situations as much as we could was I said to Ronnie, look, I'll go out there and audition for you. I'll go out and hit in the hitting cage, establish a precedent so that he can look back at any actor or some, agent-feigning indignation about their actor having to do that. “Well, Kevin did."

I think Ron and I both direct very much almost like coaches. I've used a chalkboard before, trying to get my point across in a very complicated scene, so there's no question about it later. “Oh, well you didn't say…” I can go right back to the chalkboard and say, what part of this didn't you get? The bomb goes off, you gotta be at the bridge by here. What's the matter with you?

BA: Also from “Bull Durham”, how does it feel to have helped make a generation of ball players clichéd machines? Have you ever seen a ballplayer interviewed and he says, “We have to take it one day at a time,” and just blanch?

COSTNER: You know, why it gets that way, right? Baseball is fairly simple. Those are mantras that you actually have to believe in. Teams that are not doing well don't have to take it one day at a time-they have to take each at-bat at a time. They have to climb out of stuff.

BA: "For Love of the Game” was filmed last November, and "Bull Durham" was filmed in cool weather, too. If you look carefully, you can see the breath coming out of your and Tim Robbins' mouths on the mound, when it's supposed to be the middle of summer. How cold was it during that shoot?

COSTNER: It was always cold. It was cold in Yankee Stadium also. We weren't able to take over the field in optimum times. It was also 2 in the morning, 4 in the morning. When on shoot at night, you shoot all night. What you don't understand about a movie is we go in at 6 o'clock while it's still light, because we don't want to waste the dark, and you stay till the sun comes up.

BA: You can't let the viewer see that in your face or in your movements-that you're exhausted.

COSTNER: You are exhausted. And a lot of times your close-up comes at 5 in the morning. Maybe you wish it had come at 9 o'clock the previous evening, when you're fresher, when you're supposed to look your most romantic or whatever. It's rough.

BA: What is your favorite baseball memory from high school or Little League?

COSTNER: I have so many. I remember everything. I had such a fun and successful amateur career. I pitched two or three or four no-hitters in Little League. They were fun. But I loved playing in the street. I can remember just looking for beer cartons to make second base. Throwing dirt clods down because the beer cartons slid around. I remember how you chose teams. I remember the kids' faces. I remember my dad coming to get me. It was dinnertime and the streetlights were on. Here he comes walking, and I would be in so much trouble.

I remember the love of the game, of playing the game. Sliding in the street just because you wanted to be safe. Having a car come down the street and saying, “ C’mon, we can get one more play in. Just pitch it.' And then letting the car go by.

BA: What was your favorite moment from the major leagues?

COSTNER: I remember on Opening Day Willie Mays going up against Cincinnati, against the fence, and running into Bobby Bonds, hitting his ribs at the top of the thing. I remember at an All-Star game, somebody saying, “If I could start a team, I’d start it around this young guy," and it was Johnny Bench, I remember Lou Brock a lot in the (1967) Red Sox World Series and (1968) Detroit World Series. He just seemed very unstoppable. Bob Gibson that year

BA: Mickey Lolich, a Tigers pitcher, which you play in the new movie.

COSTNER: That’s right. I play a Tiger, but I remember rooting against them. I built a canoe once and put Sports Illustrated covers all over it. It looked horrible. I had to take them off. I thought, how cool, man. But it just looked so stupid. I don't know what I was thinking about.

BA:So much of "Field of Dreams" has to do with a man's relationship with his father, having learned the game from his father. Is that where you learned the game, too?

COSTNER: Yeah. That's where I was introduced to the game and learned the game. My dad coached Little League. He never coached one of my teams. He coached my brother’s. In the opening montage (of "For Love of the Game"), all the pictures are of me and my father. You saw my little dog there.

BA: You've, played in an exhibition game and worked out with Fullerton. Any thoughts of a Garth Brooks-type tryout next spring?

COSTNER:Nah. If I was invited. I would certainly do it. But I like to play. I don't even like home run-hitting contests. They don't feel like a game to me. Like I said at the All-Stair Game, it looks like darts to me. Baseball's about the little things you have to do to win.

BA:Viewers have their favorite lines from your baseball movies. Do You?

COSTNER:There was this favorite scene of mine that got cut out of "Bull Durham.” It was when Crash was cut and let loose and he went wandering the night. Before he ends up on Annie's porch. He wanders the night and he comes up on these old black guys who are drinking wine, just sitting there on Main Street, one of these little towns in America. He kinda stumbles into them, and before long you see knowledge in his hip pocket, but he didn't know what was expected of him in a movie situation and how to get guys ready. He just approached it in a way that I was so impressed with. He went through the script and said, “Ok, this, this, this, this, this,.” You see that his approach is they’re rolling up papers and pitching to him, sharing a bottle of wine. He's found one of those wrapping-paper rolls and they were just pitching to him. And he was just launching these paper balls. And you saw it was difficult for him to let go. I understood that lonely quality. We weren't able to mash it in there.

But I like the line in "Field of Dreams” when he's asked, "Is this why you did this? For you?" And he says, "What's in it for me?” He gets real selfish about wanting to go in the corn. He caught himself being really selfish at that moment. And I like the one where he tells Dr. Graham, "Oh my God, you can't go back. I'm sorry." And I liked him asking his father, "You wanna have a catch?"

BA: Crash Davis in "Bull Durham" says that baseball takes fear and arrogance. What does acting take? Is it at all similar?

COSTNER: If you’re trying to do the right things, if you’re playing the right roles and you're a little bit afraid because there’s something in you that knows that you don't have this completely in check ... It's like to have a great game, you have to play somebody you think can beat you. So you have to play really hard. If You're gonna make up teams, you have to make up teams where you think you could lose, if you just take the eight best guys and put them on your team, and then gave everybody else the right fielders of life, then you haven't done anything.

When I was little, I always took who I didn't think were the best guys and try to win with them. And we win with them. Because those guys can be empowered too. You can empower people. They get confidence from you and get confidence to do things they didn't think they could do.

BA:In the new movie your character says about statistics, "We count everything in baseball." What's the dumbest stat in baseball?

COSTNER: In the month of April…

One thing that bothers me is when people say about a young player, “He made a rookie mistake.” I mean these guys have been playing since they were six years old or something. They know what to do. They know the moment. I think a rookie mistake is more when you carry too much clothes on the road.

BA: What did Augie Garrido bring to the new movie?

COSTNER:Augie came with a certain amount of fear, which made him a prime candidate to do well. He didn't bring arrogance. Which is why he's been so successful at the college level-because he's a teacher of the game. He will teach his team how to be better baseball players. He will teach his guys how to win.

BA: Didn't you have Angie as a teacher in a Fullerton P.E. class or something?

COSTNER: No, I had Dave Snow, who coaches Long Beach State now. I always thought about trying to go walk on, but I'd just lost confidence going to alot of schools in my life and not being a big athlete to begin with. I saw my arm getting stronger and stronger-my junior year, I could throw a football 65 yards-and I kind of thinking, I could walk on here. I believe I could pitch for them, and never having the courage to do it. I'd never been short on courage, really. I've always had a kind of gumption. But it started to wear on me.

By the time I got to my senior year (of high school), I wasn't even close to the best player on our team, but I think I understood the game better than anybody. Then, as my body started to grow in college, because I knew how to play, I thought I could probably play on further. But that's not something you want to get caught saying out loud because people will go, "I remember you on my high school team and you . . . " But I look at myself at 44, and I can go out and play a full game, and take balls and go out and pitch to a major leaguer without ... I'm not pretending that I am a top guy. But if you look at it, I have enough athletic arrogance to be able to put myself in situations where I could fail. Badly.

BA: As Crash said, should there be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astro turf in the designated hitter?

COSTNER: I wish there was. You saw the grass out there at Fenway Park. It was so beautiful to play on. Those things change batting averages, I believe, without the designated hitter, you really have to coach the game more. More players get in the game, too.

BA:And in "Bull Durham”, when you're outside the bar and you're daring him to throw a fastball at you, you're actually standing there and he's throwing it at you, or at least near you. Was that at all scary?

COSTNER:A little bit scary, because he's pretty erratic. Both his character and him. He missed me by a good three feet, but I swear to God I stood there and thought, "I gotta play this thing like a hero, but I could end up with a month full of ball.”

BA: Is there anything you would want the public to know about these three movies, something they might not see for themselves?

COSTNER:It bothers me in sports movies when people don't look right, and it bothered me in Westerns when people shot their gun too many times. There's something about authenticity that always appealed to me as a kid. I didn't like cartoons that looked fake, where the characters are real stiff. I liked it when they're more natural. I liked it when a guy outfoxed a guy because he knew he had shot all his bullets. There was a strategy.

In the movies now, a guy shoots his gun and it never empties. That's the designated hitter, as far as I'm concerned. I like the National League of movies, where you have to be accountable. I try to make it real.