World Premiere / 93 minutes / Feature Documentary
Country and year: USA (2008)
Director: Andrew Jenks, Jonah Quickmire Pettigrew and Andrew Muscato
Starring: Bobby Valentine

Rating: 3 out of 4 stars (good)
Review by: Charlie Prince

Baseball’s popularity is on the rise in the United States, and while many baseball fans in the US know that it is also popular in Japan, we don’t know much about what baseball is like over there. I for one was curious, and for those who want a glimpse of Japanese baseball (and fandom), The Zen of Bobby V is a great place to start. Bobby V, as you may know, stands for Bobby Valentine, the colorful former manager of several Major League Baseball teams. The good news, however, is that you really don’t need to know anything about Bobby Valentine or his history to enjoy the film. The fact is that Bobby is a celebrity phenomenon in Japan, and so regardless of what you know about the man or the sport, seeing Japanese baseball through his eyes is plenty interesting.

The film begins with an interview that will set the tone for the film. The interviewer points out that Bobby has been fired in the past for essentially not being able to keep his mouth shut. He asks Bobby if he knew sometimes that if he would just keep some thoughts to himself, he would avoid a lot of trouble? Absolutely, Bobby answers immediately, but he can’t help it. It’s just in his nature to say what he’s thinking, and as we come to learn, Bobby is a very opinionated guy.

Over the course of the opening credits, we return to footage of Bobby walking around the streets of Japan, an image the filmmakers will return to again and again throughout the film. It drives home the point without any question — Bobby is a celebrity, is instantly recognized wherever he goes, and if there’s any sort of a crowd, you’ll be looking at a mob of people who come up to get his autograph or to shake his hand (prompting Bobby into an endless string of bowing and thank you’s). Not only is Bobby a pro at handling these crowds, he also clearly thrives on the attention. Bobby’s popularity in baseball has spread to a wide variety of celebrity endorsements, including the Bobby burger, and Bobby beer. As we see Bobby walking around his various settings, we often see a poster of him in the background hawking a product of some kind. Collectively, we start to get a sense that Bobby has found himself in a wonderful position in Japan — he’s playing a leading role in a sport he loves, and on the side he’s developed a full-throttle cult of personality. It’s quite the resurrection after the unceremonious end of his tenure as a manager of major league baseball in the United States, and in many ways that’s part of the fun of Bobby’s success. Bobby is on top of the world, and victory is sweet.

But of course, the documentary offers us not only a glimpse of the man himself, but also of the game of baseball and how the game is celebrated in Japan. As the film starts to interview the die-hard fans of Bobby’s team (including one fan who seems to spend most of his time with his shirt off), one thing becomes clear, which may be a tough thing for States-side fans of baseball to swallow — the Japanese fans make the American fans look like complete wimps. Talk about dedicated! These fans have numerous, cataloged chants, they have giant banners that cover entire sections of the stadium, and they even have organized traveling buses of fans, to ensure that their team has support even when they’re on the road. Some of the fans explain on camera that they have to get jobs that are compatible with their baseball traveling schedule! This is more like what you see at European football/soccer games, and it is an impressive sight to behold — far more emphatic (and organized) than anything I’ve seen at an American baseball stadium.

The film inter-weaves footage of the fans with repeated footage of Bobby being mobbed by supporters, an interview with Bobby’s wife about his passion for baseball, and interviews with fellow coaches and players. Some time is spent on Bobby’s outspoken efforts to prevent the best Japanese players from leaving Japan to play baseball in America (at one point he goes on a speaking tour to college campuses!). As part of his effort to expand the strength (and depth) of baseball players in Japan, he pushes for a league-sanctioned minor league system. When his proposal is turned down, he defiantly pushes ahead anyway, striking up a vague partnership with a local baseball field that will effectively serve as a minor league team. We get the sense that perhaps Bobby is ruffling feathers in these efforts, returning to the theme set in the opening interview, that sometimes Bobby can’t help but say what’s on his mind, when he knows that by not keeping he quiet he may risk getting fired.

It would be wrong to suggest that this theme ties the film together however, as illustrated by the ending. The final third of the film shows us a methodical blow-by-blow account of how the season we’ve been watching ends — a predictable result given that, after all, the documentary was filmed over the course of one season. The idea in structuring the documentary this way is no doubt to create a little suspense. Just as viewers were dying to know who would win the spelling bee in Spellbound, here the filmmakers keep audiences glued to their seats waiting to see whether Valentine’s team will take it all the way to Japan’s equivalent of the World Series. We learn over the course of the film that when Valentine took over managing the team, it had hit rock bottom in every way, including in the standings. So it would be a true testament to Valentine’s skills (and the filmmakers luck) if the year we happen to be watching on screen were the year Valentine’s team defied the odds.

While the film makes only a passing mention of Valentine’s former affiliation with the New York Mets, as a Mets fan myself, I can’t help but notice that the film will likely have a special appeal for Mets fans. After all, Bobby Valentine was the last manager to take the Mets to the World Series (in 2000). But the film also comes at an interesting time for Mets fans. The same day I saw The Zen of Bobby V at the Tribeca Film Festival, that morning’s edition of the New York Sun ran a headline editorial calling for the Mets’ owners to fire their current manager, Willie Randolph. Between a historically bad collapse at the end of last season, and a lackluster 4th place start 30 games into this season, many Mets fans have complained that Willie’s so called “even keel” (i.e. low key) personality is responsible for the Mets players being less energized than they ought to be. These fans, the argument goes, would prefer a manager with more “fire” — the kind of guy who flips over buffet tables in anger when his team loses, so to speak.

In that sense, the timing of The Zen of Bobby V is particularly unfortunate for current Mets manager Willie Randolph. If it’s one thing Bobby Valentine has got plenty of, it’s flair — nobody would ever accuse him of being “even keel”, and one could easily see him flipping over buffet tables. In fact, one amusing part of the documentary focuses on just how much Valentine’s mood can swing depending on whether his team wins or loses. At one point, after a five-game winning streak, we see Valentine in a park, so delighted that he is literally flapping his wings as if he were flying through some fog. He’s virtually giddy. Later, we see that losing puts him in an equally foul mood. At one point, when his team has lost, we see him trash a dugout, smashing Gatorade water coolers and other gear that has the misfortune of getting in his way. Judging from today’s criticism of the current Mets manager, many Mets fans would like to see more of Bobby’s emotion in the stoic Willie Randolph. Bobby is in a lot of ways the anti-Willie, and this documentary will almost certainly remind fans of that. While we here at CSB express no opinion as to which management style is preferable, I can’t help but sense that The Zen of Bobby V pours gasoline on an already raging fire of angry Mets fans trying to smoke Willie Randolph out of the clubhouse. The Zen of Bobby V doesn’t focus on this at all of course — it doesn’t play up the Mets angle at all. But it is interesting to reflect on the contrast.

© Charlie Prince

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