Scenes of my young years were warm in my mind,
Visions of shadows that shine.
Til one day I returned and found they were the
Victims of the vines of changes.
— Phil Ochs, “Changes”
Most movies about heroes usually end in triumph with the hero accomplishing great things, making the feats seem easy in retrospect once you see the result. But if it were easy to be a hero, there would be nothing unique about those who sacrifice in an attempt to change the world. Two recent documentaries remind us that there is a real risk and cost to attempting to accomplish something great. One film, The Curious Case of Curt Flood (2011), is a new HBO documentary about the baseball player who attempted to break baseball’s reserve clause. The other movie, released on DVD this July 2011, is Phil Ochs: There But for Fortune (2010), telling the story of the activist and folk-singer. Both stories remind us that standing up for one’s beliefs has costs.
The Curious Case of Curt Flood follows HBO’s tradition of creating outstanding sports documentaries, although much of Curt Flood’s story is not about athletic prowess. Curt Flood had been a star center fielder with the St. Louis Cardinal when the team opted to trade him to the Philadelphia Phillies after the 1969 season. At the time, players were limited by a reserve clause in their contracts that gave them no say about where they played. Flood wanted to change that, and he decided to sue Major League Baseball in a case that eventually went to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Curious Case follows Flood’s suit and Flood’s life as you see how much he gave up by foregoing his baseball career to pursue what he saw as a basic human right of not being controlled by one’s employer. At the time, other players were afraid to support him openly, and many in the public viewed Flood’s actions as showing a greedy ballplayer. But with candid interviews from people like Flood’s former teammate Bob Gibson, the film shows not only how Flood was a hero but how much he sacrificed as his life spiraled downward into alcoholism and other troubles after he made the decision to stand up for what he believed.
Phil Ochs sang and stood for a number of issues during the 1960s and 1970s. He never achieved the success of his contemporary Bob Dylan, but he will always be a hero to members of the anti-war and civil rights movements. Phil Ochs: There But for Fortune has interviews with Ochs’s family members, anti-war activists, other singers (but no Dylan), and recordings from Ochs himself. There are a number of videos of Ochs talking and singing that I had never seen before, and it was a revelation for me to see him throughout all stages of his career.
The Ochs film is excellent, although there is a sadness that hangs over the tale even from the beginning. In retrospect, perhaps it is because we know how long it took for the Vietnam war to end or because of a sense of how Ochs’s life would end. Like Flood, Ochs was a victim of both his own flaws and of flaws in American society.
While a lot of people will know the stories of these two men, I suspect that many more are merely familiar with a one- or two-sentence biography of each and will learn a lot from these films. Both are excellent documentaries about two flawed men who reached for the stars and are heroes even if they fell short of their goals. The Curious Case of Curt Flood and Phil Ochs: There But for Fortune are two stories everyone should know. And they are two reminders of why so few people aspire to be heroes in the real world.
If you’d like more information, HitFlix has a good review of the Curt Flood film, and The Huffington Post has a good review of the Ochs film. Curt Flood photo via HBO.
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