Five for Friday: Superman in Sports

The Man of Steel makes his cinematic return, and it includes Superman's latest foray into the world of sports.

In general, the last…oh, 10 years?…have given me superhero movie fatigue. But when I learned that James Gunn, the director behind Tromeo and Juliet (and I guess more germane to the topic, Guardians of the Galaxy, one of the recent’ish comic adaptations I truly enjoyed) was taking on Superman, I was intrigued.

See, part of my disinterest in the wave of comic-book films is that I grew up a genuine nerd for DC Comics. Other than Spider-Man and X-Men, I had minimal familiarity with or interest in Marvel characters. Add Disney flooding the market with Marvel Cinematic Universe content, and getting into the series felt more like homework than entertainment.

What’s more, Warner Bros. efforts to produce adaptations of DC characters — the characters with whom I was acquainted and loved — often fell flat. Yes, Christopher Nolan’s first two takes on Batman with the Dark Knight trilogy were excellent, but the finale left a bad taste in my mouth — especially coming just one year after the disastrous Green Lantern.

Now, I’m in the minority of those who enjoyed Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel, which delivered considerably more action and a much more engaging lead as Superman than the painfully dull 2006 Superman Returns. But bringing together my two all-time favorite superheroes in 2016 for Batman vs. Superman should have been a home run. It wasn’t for assorted reasons I won’t get into here.

The failure of BvsS cooled me on the genre entirely, until the outstanding 2022 The Batman. By focusing exclusively on a single character in their own story arc and not chasing Disney’s strategy of building an interconnected universe, Warner Bros. delivered a cinematic interpretation of a DC property that more appropriately captured the essence of the source material.

I have high hopes for Gunn’s version of Superman accomplishing the same for my A-1 childhood favorite superhero. The bright, vibrant scenes depicted in trailers appealed to me the same way seeing Superman comic covers on racks at Walden Books reached me as a kid.

1. Truth, Justice & The American Pastime

One such scene featured prominently in trailers depicts the Man of Steel doing battle at a baseball field. Cleveland’s Progressive Field provides the backdrop, and presumably, the hero proves more victorious on those grounds than the Guardians have for the last 75 Octobers.

Now, had James Gunn wanted to dig deep into Cleveland baseball lore, and fulfill Jon Peters’ obsession with Superman fighting a giant arachnid, the director could have depicted Kal-El in combat with a Cleveland Spider.

Given the historic ineptitude of the Cleveland Spiders baseball franchise, perhaps that wouldn’t have been the best counterpart for Superman. But it would be better than Jesse Eisenberg’s version of Lex Luthor, which was a spot-on Peter Thiel impression but lacked the gravitas of Superman’s arch-nemesis.

Anyway, this is all to say that Gunn’s version of Superman honors a longstanding connection between the Kryptonian hero and sports. Superman has most frequently been depicted against a backdrop of baseball, especially in the early days of the comic when the game lived up to its billing as America’s Pastime.

The website 13th Dimension collected an impressive gallery of assorted superhero-meets-baseball comic-book covers, most of which feature Golden Age Superman in action.

My favorite of the lot comes from October 1950, coinciding with the New York Yankees-Philadelphia Phillies World Series, and features Superman snapping his bat in half on a screamer back to the pitcher.

Had Kal-El done this in the late 2000s, the blog Fire Joe Morgan would have snarkily scoffed at the Man of Steel’s ability to hit for power but criticized his inability to draw walks.

Speaking of cringy, 21st Century grousing…

2. Man of Steel Meets Gridiron

OK, so I really don’t want to wade into this territory. However, I would be remiss neglecting any mention of an actor who portrayed Superman after previously having had a standout college football career when the entire purpose of this newsletter entry is spotlighting ties between the character and sports.

Indeed, Dean Cain was a sensational safety for Princeton before embarking on his acting career. Cain still holds or is near the top of a variety of Princeton records.

His most memorable foray into entertainment came as Clark Kent and Superman in the 1990s TV series, Lois and Clark. Cain’s more recognizable now as a voice for slanted political punditry, mostly focusing on culture war nonsense.

To that end, Cain’s portrayal of Superman makes him the obvious choice to take up the inevitable mantle of labeling this interpretation of the character as a migrant in our world (which Superman is) and an embodiment of kindness (also a core tenet of the character) as “woke.”

I’ll let a former Batman respond accordingly.

Political babble notwithstanding, Cain was an excellent football player. His linking of Superman and the gridiron isn’t the only connection between the character and sport, though.

Lois & Clark’s small-screen successor, Smallville, blended Warner Bros. ownership of DC properties with The CW’s (then still The WB!) identity as an outlet for teen viewers. Smallville lasted a too long, which successful American TV series tend to, but I loved its first four seasons or so. When I first began seeing who is now my wife when we were college sophomores, our shared enjoyment of Smallville was one of the small things over which we bonded because of how deftly the series combined comic-book action with teen drama.

I’m sure Smallville hasn’t aged well — and not just because one of its leads, Allison Mack, went to prison for helping lead a sex-trafficking ring. But it remains a fond memory for me, and I appreciate how handled Clark Kent’s obvious athleticism without compromising his secret.

Earlier versions of Superman balancing the hero’s inherent strength with the mild-mannered Clark Kent bordered on the ridiculous — to such an extent, mocking it became an enduring pop-culture trope.

Former Miami Hurricanes defensive lineman Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s depiction of Kent on Saturday Night Live is especially hilarious and underscores the absurdity of the Superman/Clark Kent contrast.

Of course, Clark Kent couldn’t just waltz onto a playing field and start decimating his opponents, lest he give away his identity. But that also didn’t mean he didn’t need to allow himself to get beating up in the locker room of the Metropolis pro baseball club.

Smallville handled this well, depicting its athletic Clark Kent as a member of the Smallville High School football team but throttling down his abilities at Jonathan Kent’s behest.

This story arc actually predates The Incredibles doing a similar (albeit much more funny) bit when Dash joins the school track team.

3. Shaquille O’Neal and The Man of Steel

For those who weren’t around to experience it, Shaquille O’Neal’s arrival in the NBA was otherworldly. So, when the Big Aristotle flexed a biceps inked with the Superman logo and had the same insignia stitched onto the leather of his customized Suburban, it felt fitting; not nearly as eye-rolly as later attempts to invoke the Man of Steel, like Dwight Howard wearing a cape to shoot a layup at the Dunk Contest or Cam Newton’s fun-once-but-cornier-the-more-he-did-it touchdown celebration.

Indeed, Shaq’s game seemed like it was from Krypton starting with his breakout at LSU. His insane NCAA Tournament performance in 1992 set the stage for O’Neal to immediately take the pros by storm the same year.

I still vividly recall watching him destroy the basket vs. the Phoenix Suns on a Sunday afternoon NBA on NBC broadcast in 1993.

That Shaq played such a revolutionary game, which blended raw power and astounding agility, while oozing natural charisma made him an obvious candidate to breakout as a mainstream superstar.

And he did…to an extent. His hip-hop albums varied in quality. None could be considered classics, but he was on some memorable tracks when collaborating with the right talent. My personal favorite is “You Can’t Stop the Reign” with Notorious B.I.G., title track of Shaq’s 1996 album, on the cover of which O’Neal is showing off his Superman tattoo.

Shaq also raps on titles like 1998’s “Blaq Supaman,” an obvious homage to the comic-book hero, and 1997’s “Man of Steel.” The latter isn’t a Superman-inspired song, however, but the title song for Shaq’s abysmal film, Steel.

No matter how bad an Superman adaptation before or since might be, none compare to Steel. And yes, that includes Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.

4. Superman vs. Muhammad Ali

It’s too bad the world never got a major Shaquille O’Neal-Superman collaboration of some kind. After all, around the same time Shaq joined the Orlando Magic, Charles Barkley appeared in a terrific Nike ad campaign going one-on-one with Godzilla.

Given that the actor in line to play Superman at the peak of Shaq’s pop-culture popularity was Nicolas Cage, maybe it’s for the best that pairing never happened.

But it’s not as if Superman never went toe-to-toe with a real-life superstar athlete. In 1978, the Man of Steel faced off with Muhammad Ali in a comic-book clash that was certainly gimmicky, but a fun bit of kitsch reflective of the time.

This wasn’t Superman’s first time in an exhibition against a real-life athlete inside a ring, though.

5. Antonino Rocca Upsets Superman

Few opponents have ever bested Superman: Batman does so in the Frank Miller Dark Knight Returns comic arc. Kal-El was famously killed in the mid-1990s as a means for DC to reboot the character, introducing a new villain called Doomsday in the process.

But the writers didn’t need Doomsday to topple Krypton’s Son for “The Death of Superman” arc. They needed only refer to mid-20th Century pro-wrestling star Antonino Rocca, who walloped Superman inside the squared circle.