By Fred Topel | Image property of Universal Pictures.
Everyone's Hero
Rob Reiner plays the voice of a talking baseball in Everyone’s Hero. Being a master improviser from the Spinal Tap days, he did his press interviews in the persona of the ball. This may tell you nothing about the movie, but it was fun.
Rob Reiner Talks Everyone's Hero
“The advice I got was from this one ball that was used in a t-ball game,” Reiner began. “My 6-year-old, well now she’s 8, but when she was 6 she played in t-ball and it basically said there are no small baseballs, only small something or others.”
Apparently, there is a huge rivalry between bats and balls. “This is the unspoken rivalry that’s gone on since the beginning of baseball. It’s always been, ‘Who’s more important, the bat or the ball?’ I would always say that the ball is more important. I mean it is called base ball. It’s not called baseball bat or batball. You can play baseball without a bat. You can get a broom handle. You can get a piece of wood. But how do you play without the baseball? Think about that.”
Set in the 1930s during Babe Ruth’s reign, the film harkens back to the ball’s better memories of the game. “The contemporary baseball is looking for more perks, to be quite honest with you. The old baseball would be just happy to play the game, the love of the game. The new baseball likes to be kept in a humidor. It says, ‘I’m not going to be used for more than three batters.’ There are performance clauses, like a second inning. If you get to two innings and you don’t get thrown out, there are perks. There’s a Scott Boras for every baseball now. There didn’t used to be those agents.”
And don’t get him started on the steroid issue. “We don’t like it. You know, they accused us of the reason why the balls were going out of the park. The truth comes out now! It’s not like the baseballs are juiced; the players were juiced. And so we got a bad rap for a long time and now you see the truth is coming out.”
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