Eastbound & Down - As American As Apple Pie

Kevin Costner got it wrong.

The 1989 Oscar nominated hit reminded the country why it loves baseball. This story of self-discovery and passion is one that touched fans across the nation (and world).

This was before the Steroid Era.

The past decade has been unkind to our nation’s pastime. Controversy over the use of performance enhancing drugs and the media saturation of sports has morphed the public view of the professional athlete.

Morphed…or simply the truth brought to light? Costner’s romanticized version of baseball (For the Love of the Game, Bull Durham, and Chasing Dreams) is what the purist fans want you to think the game is all about. Danny McBride and Will Ferrell (perhaps unintentionally) show us the truth about baseball and professional athletes in general.

Eastbound & Down (In six 30 minute episodes) paints a picture that every sports fan can recognize. Kenny Powers is a legend. No, I take that back, Kenny Powers is a washed up former star, who thinks he is a legend. His persona is an exaggerated version of one that is prevalent in sports today. Though his downfall was of his own volition, he seeks to blame the system and ignore his own problems. The “chip on the shoulder,” “me against them,” “nobody gave me a chance” mentality you always hear about.

An aura of arrogance and self promotion to attempt to profit off of his past drowns his thoughts at first. As time goes on, he begins to realize that it’s over.

Not only has he lost what was once a long, promising, and perhaps storied career, but everything he left at home when he went to the Show has changed. Old flings have grown up and moved on, his family and friends are not what they once were, and those that idolized him are still in awe at his accomplishments. This is where the show crosses shockingly into reality. Kenny Powers is a homophobic elitist ass hole that looks down upon the commoners of his small rural hometown. He smashes the windows of cars, snorts mountains of cocaine, and rides with naked hookers on his jet ski across the lake.

And gets away with all of it.

Why? He once threw a baseball 100 miles per hour and won the World Series. His talent is shattered, he’s stepped on everyone to reach the top (and again to try and get back), but it doesn’t matter. Such is the spectacle of the professional athlete.

“Fundamentals are a crutch for the talentless.”

The sad part of it all is that Eastbound & Down is not too far removed from every small town that spawned a baseball prodigy over the years. They go away, become submerged in the fame and fortune of big time professional sports, and become forever changed; hoping somehow, one day, they’ll get a chance to throw another pitch. That day will never come. The system and the people that brought them to the top has just as easily cast them aside, and once their “friends” back home realize they are washed up, and are no better than they are, they’ll bring you down too. The only thing that makes an indifferent person happier than seeing you succeed, is witnessing your eventual fall back to Earth to be just like they are: an invisible, 9-5, working nobody.

That is, until they knock someone’s eye out of the socket with a fastball.

Watch Eastbound & Down, you will not be disappointed.