The three act structure in baseball (an analysis of the 2014 Seattle Mariners)

I'm a really big movie fan and tried writing a screenplay a few years ago and my girlfriend told me that I had to read a book called "Making a Good Script Great." I scoffed at the idea, of course, thinking I was way beyond learning anything from a 'how to' book, and though I question if it made me a better screenwriter, it did teach me the nuts and bolts of three act structure, and how if a screenplay is a 105 pages long (a 105 minute movie, or an hour and forty five minutes), that the first act is roughly thirty pages long, the second act forty five pages long, and the third act also thirty pages long. The book also stresses that these numbers aren't literal but are close enough to accurate, that you'll find this sort of structure playing out in movie after movie, and though there are exceptions, just as there are exceptions to every rule, the parameters basically work out. Hell, even Jean Luc-Godard, the great avant-garde French New Wave director said 'every movie has a beginning, middle, and end, just not necessarily in that order.' I don't want to get too much into what Linda Seger wrote in her book but she sure wasn't using examples like Godard, and more importantly really got into what act in a screenplay needs to accomplish, so that a writer didn't have a blistering start, or an exciting night at the typewriter, only to be stymied and stuck on page thirty or so. She wanted to give a screenwriter some structure and guidelines to work within.

I'm going to use the recent movie "Nebraska" as an example, not that it's a favorite of mine, or that I even thought the screenplay was that successful, but it was a simple story that easily illustrates three act structure. The opening act shows an old man thinking he's won a million dollars and needs only drive to Lincoln, Nebraska, to pick up his winnings, thinking that if he doesn't get there on time, they'll give the prize to someone else. The first act also introduces Woody's son, with a similarly destitute life as a TV salesman in Billings, Montana, with no real future to speak of, that's only accentuated by his girlfriend leaving him. Woody gets his son to drive him to Lincoln to procure his winnings but on the way gets drunk, hits his head on the railroad tracks, and the whole journey gets sidetracked. In essence, I'd say Woody's head injury (one of many in his life), all but ends the first act, or maybe it's a scene or two later, when he's in the hospital, bitching about how he doesn't want to go to Hawthorne, his hometown, but without this plot device there would have been no movie, or it would have been much more abstract, and just been a father and a son straining to talk to each other on a long distance drive. According to "Making A Good Script Great," the second act is almost always longer than the first or third act, and that's because it's the central story of the movie, and this also makes sense, when I consider the millions of movies I've watched, and the experience I've had as a moviegoer. Lots of movies have good conceits, with some interesting characters, only to die about twenty minutes into the picture, and this is especially true of conceit-laden movies not focusing on characters so much, but ideas that introduce themselves way too quickly and have nowhere to go. The second act is when a movie coalesces and really becomes about something and in the case of "Nebraska" it's Woody's relationship to his extended family and friends that he hasn't seen for decades, even though he only lives a few hundred miles away. "Nebraska" isn't so much about Billings, Montana, where the movie starts, or Lincoln, Nebraska, where it basically ends, but Hawthorne, a forgotten American town in the middle, that I'm not even sure exists, but boy did Alexander Payne make it look picturesquely forgotten, reminding me of how Peter Bogdanovich made that town in Texas look in "The Last Picture Show." It's also interesting that the location for the second act on this road trip movie is somewhere between those of the beginning and end, not really conscious of either. The third act, of course, winds the movie up and (spoiler alert), Woody doesn't win the million dollars in the lottery, not to mention he bonds with his son, who buys him a truck, because that's all Woody really wanted with the prize money anyway.

I suppose when you start studying something like three act structure you start seeing it pop up everywhere, because art imitates life, and that would include sports, so it's no surprise that I've really seen it playing out in a baseball season, where the symmetry seems to work perfectly. The first act runs from April to May, where hope springs eternal (no pun intended), and every team is a winner, especially since a baseball season is so long and it's hard to write off any team too soon. The second act runs from June to August, with the All-Star break in mid July symbolizing the half way point of the season almost perfectly, and it's here the good clubs rise, and the bad ones fall by the wayside, and are forgotten, just like a good movie, let alone a great one, needs a strong second act to make any kind of impact at all, because lots of clubs can have a good April, and be completely forgotten by August. The third and final act of the season happens in September and October, ending with the World Series, and a champion, that gets to fly a banner in its park, the equivalent of winning an academy award. I'm a big Mariner fan this year, listening to about %70 of the games on the radio, like baseball was meant to be taken in, or with a good friend at the ball park, but not on TV, where it's too slow and meandering to be much fun. I wondered if the Mariners had it in them this year to make the season interesting, let alone memorable. I'd argue that an interesting season would require a good second act, or else the first act will be forgotten, and the third act in September, won't mean much, even if it hold promise. The Mariners have been famous for a good decade or so of closing well, when the games don't really matter, and nothing is on the line. In mid August, they'll sometimes go on a five or six game winning streak that gets the media excited for a moment, before falling off completely, because at that point the season is over, for all intents and purposes.

I'm not sure what the conceit was this year, or the opening act, in April and May, because I'm not such a nut that I watch the Spring Training games, and listen to every bit of minutiae about the M's, but I think it had to do with the pitching being good, because that was their strength in the 2013 season, and if I had a dime for every game they lost 1-o, or 2-1, I'd be a rich man, a truly frustrating team to like, and I should know because I tried listening to them, but gave up by June, the beginning of the second act. So, they had good starting pitching, and just as importantly had acquired one of the best second basemen in the game, and a perennial All-Star, Robinson Cano, a power hitting second baseman. The M's swooned and soared in April and May, the opening act, but played %500 ball and that's really all you need to do early in the year, although the great clubs usually do better, but the word 'great' had nothing to do with the conceit of the season, the Mariners were just going for better. On a side-note, my own personal conceit for the team had to do with the Japanese owner dying, a tragedy, but perhaps a good thing for the franchise, because he didn't go to one Mariner game, in I want to say over 15 years, and that would include one they played in Japan, so I have a hard time believing he really gave a shit about baseball or the team, never a good thing for an owner, and in my heart I just knew the M's would be better when he was gone, because the owner has to care about his business.

The Mariners weebled and wobbled in the first act, but beneath the wins and losses there was a tenacity to this club, that was just missing in previous years ('weebles wobble but they don't fall down). For example, they'd actually come back to win ball games, in the late innings, with clutch hitting, or they'd occasionally pour one on, and just destroy a team, always the sign of a winner. I went to a game or two in May, and saw the weaknesses first hand, realizing that they were missing about three players to make them really good, but they were good enough, to make me like them, and believe in them, one of the best feelings for a sports fan, or at least this one. I had the feeling they could win every time I tuned into 710 AM, to catch a game, something utterly missing from the previous season. Still, I wondered if these guys had a good summer in them, and since baseball is the national pastime, and one of the best books written on it is called, "The Boys of Summer," about the Brooklyn Dodgers, you've kind of got to have a good summer, to make it really interesting. I wrote a blog about the Mariners at the end of May, the first act, teetering on June, wondering if they had what they took to have a really good second act, or if they'd be forgotten, like so many so-so teams in the beginning. In a way, I didn't care, or better put, respected them even if they didn't have a good second act in them, because they'd given me a couple of months of real excitement and entertainment, and what more could I want? They had satisfied me, but I realized they hadn't taken the city by storm, and my love for them was very personal, having to do with a love for baseball in general. I knew that if they folded in the second act, or played erratic baseball, that the audience would lose its patience with them, and call it another a bad season, turning instead to the Sounders (the soccer team), or wishing for a basketball team to return, but let's face it, the Super Bowl champ Seahawks have stolen the city's heart, and I'd argue that's the foundation for the Mariner's success (Russell Wilson goes to the games), but also their invisibility, but come July we'll see how long that lasts. I told a couple of sports fans at work that the Mariners would feed off the success of the Seahawks, giving a boost to their low self-esteem, but they didn't listen to me. They were cynics beaten down by losing year after losing year, and thought I sounded polyannish. I wanted to tell them they were underestimating my powers of intuition regarding sports, especially baseball and football, but they wouldn't have listened, and I'm too old to be surprised by that.

Well, who's laughing now is all I can say. We're almost at the All-Star break, and this team just rocks. They filled in those three missing players I was talking about, most notably with the appearance of James Jones in late May, at the end of the first act, an instant crowd favorite, but more than that a superstar in the making, and I don't say that lightly. This guy has just started his career, and he already reminds me of the footage I've seen of Jackie Robinson, from the Brooklyn Dodgers, an original 'boy of summer,' batting lead off like he was born for the position (I'm not sure where Jackie batted in the Dodger lineup.) Sometimes, James Jones reminds me of a more talented Mookie Wilson, a crazy thing to say, since Mookie is one of my favorite baseball players of all time, the center fielder/lead off hitter, from those great mid-Eighties Mets teams, that culminated in one of the great World Series victories ever against the Red Sox, when the ball went under first baseman Bill Buckner's legs, an ex L.A. Dodger from my childhood, a back up first baseman, and pinch hitter, not to mention a leftie (nor do I mean 'leftist' spell check. I'm sure Bill Buckner is a good law abiding citizen-baseball player, if he hasn't committed suicide for his blunder, that will define his career, and make him both greater than he ever would've been otherwise, and more doomed at the same time... a tragic figure!). Justin Smoak is also gone and it's weird for me to say this, because I kind of liked him, but I think the team is better off with a real #5 hitter in Logan Morrison, that has been lighting it up at the plate in a way that Smoak never did, though he was getting better. If you look at the Mariners season as a movie, then I'd say the second act has introduced James Jones and Logan Morrison (adding some real weight to the hitting), not to mention Zunnino is having just a great year, and Cano is Cano; like the skipper, Lloyd McClendon said, "Cano is kind of like one of those great shooters in the N.B.A. that ends up with twenty points every night, and you have no idea how it happened." I did have the privilege of watching Cano throw the ball around in the infield, and I can only say there is something special to his step, a true talent. I should also add that Brad Miller at shortstop is starting to hit and that's a big deal because he was awful at the plate in May and June (the first act), but has really come alive at the beginning of the second act, and if he keeps batting like this no one will even remember how mediocre he was at the beginning, except the statisticians, and the critics. If I was to compare this club with the 2001 Mariner's that won the most games ever in a regular season when everyone was on fire, they are not much like them. That team had a much stronger first act, in May and June, and folded a bit in the third act, but were so strong they held on for the post-season. These Mariners are sort of the opposite.

The second act has started off so much better than I thought it would that I feel like I'm watching a masterpiece between the Mariners and the A's, arch rivals, believe it or not, at least up here. The A's have the Mariners number, year in and year out, but we'll see this year, because something feels different. This team was interesting in the first act, but they shed their skin in June, and have gotten even better. I'm just hoping to catch some games before anyone else finds out or believes, but the Mariners are benefiting from the good Voo-Doo of the Seahawks commanding victory in the Super Bowl, that the Mariners are starting to exhibit, at just the right time, the beginning of the second act of the season in June, going into the heart of the second act in July, and ending with the Sun in Leo. The third act begins with the Sun in Virgo, and it's a more analytical time when everyone is thinking out mathematically possibilities for each teams chance to win their division, or more possible, be a wild card, and the words for the endgame are 'the Mariners have been mathematically eliminated," but this is such an abstract term that most teams stay technically alive in the pennant race even in September, even if they don't stand a snowball's chance in Hell of making a real run, and everyone knows it. It's part of the bargain for being a baseball fan, because there are just so many games, that you're going to win and lose a lot, stretching out the mathematical possibility for a chance of post-season success, even if the odds are almost impossible, relying on the winning team to lose all of their games, and the losing team to win all of their games, almost overnight, which almost never happens in the third act, because the season is coming to its logical conclusion. Let's face it, most 'underdog' victors had a pretty good second act between June, July, and August, like I hope the Mariners fulfill.

They've finished out the first third of the second act in blistering colors, promising more to come. Things only seem to be getting better on the team, but the cynics won't believe this, and say 'they're the Mariners, they'll fold, just you watch." That may be true, but these guys just don't feel like that in the least, and if anything seem to be going in a better direction filling the gaps in their lineup as if by magic, without so much as a trade, or an acquisition. Plus, Lloyd McClendon, the skipper, is just 'a cool cat,' in the word of Shannon Drayer, the sort of voice behind the voice of the Mariners (Rick Riz is the voice, in the post-Dave Niehaus era, kind of unexpected, but kind of not, since Niehaus died of a heart attack, and sounded like he was going to have a heart attack on the air, his genius, so 'get the salami and mustard from the cupboard, Ma, we've got ourselves a Grand Salami!') I'm going to catch the Neptunean M's in July around my birthday, right before the All-Star break, against the Minnesota Twins, a classic, symbolizing the beginning of the second act in late May to June, Gemini (twins), the transition from beginning to forming. The Mariner's are becoming a great team, chosen by some kind of weird destiny that drives the cynics and the mathematicians crazy, because they are irrational, and that's why I love them. I'd also ask the devout baseball fan to shed his partisan allegiances for just a moment, to observe this budding flower, that can only be described as the Seattle Mariner, coming to life, a beautiful moment before anything is defined. I moved to Seattle a year or two after the great Mariners breakthrough against the Yankees in '96, I want to say, and caught the afterglow, when people waved Mariners banners outside of their wealthy Capitol Hill homes. Those days are gone and there is no 'You Gotta Love These Guys,' campaign for the Mariners (Jenny used to say, "No, I don't.") We didn't really love those guys even though we should've but I do love these guys but the ad-men haven't even caught up to it, and that's when a team is pure.

The Mariners played their longest game this year tonight in Houston at Minute Maid stadium, and I can't tell from the announcers if it's a dome stadium or not, but I don't think it's the Astrodome, that relic from a bygone era, when J.R. Richards did crack and lit up the league. These Astros feel more sober than those in the Seventies, but it's hard to tell beneath the All-American veneer that baseball presents because deep down these men are successful, and will get away with whatever they can, given the social norms, fluctuating with eras. The game took 3:36 minutes to finish, and I want to say the Mariners won 13-3, but it was worse than that, and they picked up a game on the A's losing to Detroit. It's important to remember that one has a favorite team, but success is also dependent on how well the competition fares, so here's to the second act, and a real death like third act, that keeps everyone on their seats, including me, eating some garlic fries, with yellow mustard.