Boris Johnson didn’t like Adolescence. In his Daily Mail column last week he acknowledged the fine acting of the most talked-about television programme of the year, but still concluded that it was ‘tosh’. The problem, he felt, was that it wasn’t based on a real-life crime, which somehow lessens its worth as a lesson for our times in the eyes of the former Prime Minister.
I’m not sure his logic fully holds up to scrutiny (nor, for that matter, does Keir Starmer’s plan to show Adolescence in schools). But if it is real-life drama that Boris wants then Netflix, with impeccable timing, this week released another one of those sports documentaries at which they have become rather adept.
The latest offering is The Clubhouse: A Year with the Red Sox, a warts-and-all look at the highs and lows – psychological as well as sporting – of the 2024 Boston Red Sox. It is no sepia-tinted reminiscence of glory, like The Last Dance about the NBA’s all-conquering Chicago Bulls side of the 1990s, or even quite in the same vein as those fly-on-the-wall series Drive to Survive and Full Swing, which focus on the individual pursuits of glory that are Formula One and the PGA Tour.
Indeed the fascination here is not about how successful the team is (not hugely), but how well it does compared with the low, low expectations of the locals, which are made clear in the first five minutes of episode one.
‘Get me a better fucking Boston team,’ one, more than slightly inebriated, fan tells the camera early on. (Loyal supporters turning angry and disenchanted? Maybe this would be too close to home for Mr Johnson.) ‘They’re a weak group. They just don’t have it,’ opines one radio pundit.
And straight away we know that these men are judged on more than their ability; their mentality, in the day-in, day-out slog of the major leagues, will come under constant scrutiny. But in baseball one shapes the other perhaps more than in any other sport, as we learn through the eight episodes.
‘You have to have a short memory to be good in this game because it is so tough it will eat you alive if you don’t let things go,’ says Triston Casas, the 24-year-old first baseman, whose coping mechanisms include yoga on the outfield, painting his nails and talking to himself. A lot.
Jarren Duran, a 27-year-old outfielder, keeps his emotions in check by writing in his journal every night. We learn how Duran was subjected to relentless opprobrium, from Red Sox fans and the Boston media, as he struggled to make the step up to Major League Baseball, but has emerged as one of the best players on his team – and in the whole league.
Which makes the admission of his suicide attempt even more startling. ‘I got to the point where I was sitting in my room, I had my rifle and I had a bullet, and I pulled the trigger and the gun clicked, but nothing happened,’ Duran says. ‘To this day, I think God just didn’t let me take my own life because I seriously don’t know why it didn’t go off.’
What we see are men at the pinnacle of their sport who are not afraid to be different, who refuse to be defined by locker room notions of ‘traditional masculinity’
The man tasked with getting such a disparate group of personalities pulling in the same direction is Alex Cora, the manager – who comes with his own professional demons by way of a 2020 season-long ban for his role in the Houston Astros cheating scandal. The extent of the sporting challenges involved in moulding a winning side are made clear too: injuries to key players, for example, or deciding how long to let struggling players stay in the firing line. But what we also see from him is tactical acumen, and the series focuses on certain wins throughout the season specifically achieved by some tendencies he has noticed in the opposition.
But there are so many games (a season lasts 162 games across 185 days) that the action necessarily becomes only a small part of the series. Players can be on the road for almost three months a year. The message of how the mental side of the game is just as crucial as the physical cannot be overstated.
As Cora explains when it comes to dealing with players day in, day out: ‘This is not “Show up at the weekend and perform”. This is every day, over and over and over and over again. It’s not always about your swing or your defence or your base-running, it’s about “How are you feeling?”, “What have you got tonight?”, “How’s the family doing?”.’
Or as Sean McAdam, a journalist with MassLive, puts it: ‘This is a draining game. It demands a lot of you mentally, just having the physical tools, talents and abilities isn’t enough.’
So yes, this is a baseball documentary, and we see its capacity for drama; and we see the preparation that goes into one-on-one match-ups in this most individual of team sports. We go inside Fenway Park’s famed ‘Green Monster’ (the intimidating 37ft-high left-field wall); and we see what it means to the fans to beat the Yankees.
But what we really see are men at the pinnacle of their sport who are not afraid to be different, who refuse to be defined by outside expectations or any notions of the sporting locker rooms’ ‘traditional masculinity’: one man embracing his spirituality and painting his nails; another talking openly and frequently about his demons, and a crippling fear of failure that almost destroyed him.
If Keir Starmer really wants schoolboys across the UK to study a Netflix drama, he could do worse than suggest they watch this.
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