(670 The Score) The best decision A.J. Schnack made in directing "Long Gone Summer" is waiting as long as possible for the reconciliation we know is coming.
His choice to not spoil the joy until he has to is a meaningful one, 22 years after the duel between the Cardinals' Mark McGwire and the Cubs' Sammy Sosa as they both chased baseball's single-season home run record. We again can marvel at it as we did then, not letting any gnawing suspicion of their performing-enhancing drug use overshadow the spectacle that brought mainstream sports fans back to the game for the first time since the 1994-'95 strike.
It's impossible to experience another sports documentary without having "The Last Dance" still flickering in our heads, particularly because it recalls another Chicago sports experience the very same year. Two hours is a far cry from 10, however, so there's less need for the same kind of whipsawing time-travel that Jason Hehir employed to delve into backstory and historical context. This one just sets right off on a march from Opening Day to the unusual 163rd game, and the texture of the newly added details works against the steady drumbeat of baseballs bashed into and over the stands.
We don't even really meet Sosa until already 20 minutes in, reminded that it was supposed to be Ken Griffey Jr. as Big Mac's foil, with the two of them having hit 56 and 58 homers, respectively, the season prior. The Cubs had begun the campaign mourning the death of Harry Caray, then celebrating the exploits of a rookie Kerry Wood when he struck out 20 Astros on May 6. We have to wait for Sosa's record-setting June for him to emerge and engage the race.
There's no narrator, with Schnack relying on interviews with a wide range of players, coaches, broadcasters, writers and executives and others connected to share memories and perspective. The use of play-by-play from both radio and television makes for an aural tapestry of home run calls, particularly from some late and legendary voices of the game. Nostalgic White Sox fans will note that of Don Drysdale when a McGwire shot sinks the Sox in Oakland.
The discovery of androstenedione in McGwire's locker is treated straightforwardly, with Schnack opting not to lean in too hard with any easy or obvious foreshadowing. Much of that's done more dryly with such things as an image of Barry Bonds in left field looking up at a Sosa blast and the inclusion of some Brady Anderson comments selected for reasons obvious to informed fans.
McGwire is as introspective as he seems capable of being, knowing that his whole purpose in life had been to slug homers and seeming somewhat sad and lost now that he doesn't. Sosa purports to be happy to the point that it seems needy, his vainglory still palpable even this far removed. And when he invokes his granddaughter as a reason for his contentedness, it's a reminder of how long it has been.
Jeff Tweedy's musical score provides an appropriately American sound palette and really shines with more avant garde atonality in the attenuated sequences building up to McGwire nearing his 60th. It's noticeable when it's good and never gets in the way.
What really comes through is the size of the event and how compelling it was as we lived it, the equivalent of a months-long heavyweight bout in which the combatants gained greater respect for each other as the fight dragged on into the later rounds. Sosa's outward ebullience eventually rubbed off on his lonely and isolated rival, with the latter ultimately benefiting from the extra energy he allowed himself to borrow. One notable image is the two of them at a pregame press conference before a series in St. Louis, sharing a lone microphone at the dais like Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper but trading one-liners in front of reporters who lapped it up.
There's the breaking of Roger Maris' mark, then the chase to the new record number that was closer and more dramatic than you may recall.
Shortly thereafter comes the confrontation with chemistry, and it's as swift and brutal as necessary to counterbalance everything else. Schnack lets Bob Costas render judgement, his gravitas validating the damnation. There's balance in the short denouement, allowing for a more open-ended and still-evolving conclusion as to what it all meant, and the film ends up doing it's best job in remembering the emotion proportionally.
"Long Gone Summer" lets us have fun again until it no longer can, recapitulating how we lived it. Even now we struggle to decide how much of it was real.
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