PUTTING THE RACE INTO SPACE RACE: HIDDEN FIGURES (AND THE 'GO AND NO GO' CONDUNRUM)

I finally saw Hidden Numbers, and liked it a good deal. What is best about it is the way it reinforces the pain of the world of segregation with the same under-stated sense of daily living that those who lived with it experienced. We see clearly not only the ever-present fear, of stepping out of line, the constant de-humanizing by relegating people to second-class status, but also the debilitating effect Jim Crow had on the white people imposing it on their fellow citizens, the way they take their privilege for granted, recoil at the slightest stepping over that (usually) unseen line, and at the same time think of themselves as friendly, decent Christian people.

We saw this first-hand when I was an 11-year old kid and we took our first-ever family vacation to Washington DC and encountered segregated facilities at, of all places, the Washington Monument. Washington himself was a slave-holder, of course, but I didn't make the connection then. I asked my dad to explain 'whites only', and then asked 'but that's wrong, isn't it?' and when he said, 'yes it is but that is how they do things down here' he got cold-eyed by some guy, who I guess backed down from taking his racist grievance any further.

That is the strong point of the film, established from the start by contrasting the easy camaraderie between the three friends and the unspoken fear when a white state police officer stops to investigate their broken-down car. The power relationship is set from the start. This marks the subtly of the approach, culminating in the moment Katharine Johnson's confirmation of the figures John Glenn wants her to confirm before he will head into space are delivered, and then the door closes in her face. Glenn's character is an exemplar here: early on he extends himself to greet the Langley black women;  he is the first to accept Johnson for her talent, but he's also shown as a complete team player all through his launch into space.

All three of the leads are good, if perhaps a little too glamorous in their 60s retro looks, with Taraji P Henson exceptional as Johnson, whose math genius is essential to NASA's success. Kevin Costner's beneficent white man isn't too overdone--I wondered if his one-man integration of the ladies' rest rooms wasn't still unlawful in Virginia, and why it wasn't reported. It seems odd that neither Costner nor his scientists would have any idea of what an IBM computer was; I probably did and I was 10 years old. It was also interesting that the filmmaker's show an engineer who's a Polish-Jewish immigrant survivor of the Holocaust, but never mention Werner Von Braun, head of the space programme, whose V2 rockets were built with Nazi slave labour. But overall, it's a sort of Disneyfied version of the story, but not simplified like some of their sports films, and told, as I suggested, with restraint that parallels the restraint of its principals.

But one non-racial flaw jumped out at me, so important it's not just a quibble. Katharine Johnson's task was to calculate the 'go/no-go' point for Glenn's Friendship 7 capsule to re-enter the earth's atmosphere. The angle of this departure from its elliptical orbit needed to be perfect: a little too much and the capsule is incinerated by the heat of re-entry, too little and it goes off into space, outside earth's gravity forever. This gets hammered into our consciousness repeated. So why then does the movie make the go/nogo moment occur long after Glenn has re-entered earth's atmosphere and survived the intense heat, as if it was an instant before releasing his parachute? This is such a major error, so obvious, and also loses the drama of hitting the go/no go precisely. Do they think we weren't paying attention to the science stuff? Or weren't they? Baffling.

It also appeared to me that Kevin Costner was both in the Langley labs and mission control in Florida at the same time, but movie stars can do anything. Maybe he found his own go/no go point. But what sticks out about this movie is the way it delineates the way people were forced to cope with an unjust system of institutionalized bigotry, and not just cope with it, but triumph within that broken system. That it is telling the story of these three real women makes it all the more successful.

TED WILLIAMS: THE LOST GUARDIAN OBIT

NOTE: Tonight I am doing a broadcast on BBC Radio, of the Red Sox season-opening game at Yankee Stadium against the Evil Empire. If you are a Red Sox fan, as I am, you will appreciate the appropriateness of April Fools Day to start the Sox' season, but in the eternal spirit of hope, I thought I'd post this obit, which I recently found in my files, of the greatest Red Sox of all, Ted Williams.

This one was written for the Guardian,with a British audience in mind, as a stock piece for their files before Williams died. But when Ted did finally pass away, on 5 July 2002, the Guardian's news desk thought it was important enough to run a short wire-service piece in the news pages, and the obits desk decided that was enough attention for one baseball player, although, of course, Williams was much more than that. I've left it as I wrote it, except to fill in his age when he died. The Red Sox did finally win another World Series, in 2004, and then again in 2007, but in the process somehow found themselves morphing into the Yankees-lite, anathema to old-school Sox fans like me. I've since written, though the Independent hasn't yet published it, an obit of Richard Ben Cramer, whose tremendous piece in Esquire's June 1986 special issue, The American Man: 1946-1986, is one of the best profiles ever written (you can link to it here). Look at the picture of Ted in the follow through of his swing.  That's the Ted Williams I will always remember, though I never actually saw him play.

TED WILLIAMS was born in 1918, the last year the Boston Red Sox won baseball’s World Series. The next winter, the Sox sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees, where he became the game’s greatest star, and launched a dynasty of Yankee championships that continues to this day. Boston fell under the so-called Curse of the Bambino, which not even stars as great as Williams were able to overcome. Now Williams has died aged 83, and his Red Sox are still without another championship.

Williams was America’s real-life John Wayne: baseball prodigy, war hero, record-holding fisherman. How many men could make reasonable claims at being the world’s best at three different things? He embodied a masculine image which became deeply unfashionable, yet in recent years a society which lavishes huge rewards on mediocrity came to re-evaluate his accomplishments, understand, and even embrace his uncompromising personality. What was brash in a youngster becomes lovable in an aging icon. In this he came to symbolise Boston, where he was destined to play tragic hero: the young god whose hubris was repaid by the denial of World Series glory with his cursed Red Sox. 

Williams epitomised some classic New England values, working with dedication to become prodigiously skilled at his craft. Using a narrow cylinder of wood to hit a baseball bearing down at your head at speeds above 95mph is arguably the single most difficult task in sports, but no one made it look easier than Williams. Ruth may be the sport’s greatest player, but for pure hitting talent, Williams is the only man who could argue he was Ruth’s better. He could also sacrifice. Although he was accused at one point of dodging military service (he was his mother's sole support) he eventually lost much of his baseball prime to military service. And he was loyal. Despite his feuds with the Boston press, the so-called 'knights of the keyboard' he despised, and despite his love/hate relationship with Boston's fans, he played all 22 seasons of his career with the Red Sox.

But Ted never possessed another New England trait: self-restraint. He never learned the grace, the taciturn style, the faux-worldliness, of New York’s glamorous Yankees like Joe DiMaggio or Mickey Mantle. He debuted for the Red Sox in 1939, a 21 year old rookie calling himself “the Kid”. He resembled Wayne playing the Ringo Kid, tall, lean, and impossibly handsome: a combination of youthful innocence and lethal skill. He could count the stitches on a baseball hurtling at him, and uncoil his slender body like a finely-wound spring to make contact with it. Great players demand multiple definitions: soon they were calling him “The Splendid Splinter", later he would add "The Thumper".

 

His perfectionism contrasts with cricket’s equally obsessive Geoffrey Boycott. Like Boycott, Williams waged a career-long battle with the press, who accused him of placing individual success above his teams’ goals. When Cleveland manager Lou Boudreau shifted his fielders to pack the right side of the diamond, Ted refused to alter his technique and hit the opposite way. It would have stopped him taking his perfect swing. But unlike Boycott, Williams was exuberant in his abilities, generous with his chosen art to both teammate and opponent. His childish glee as he danced around the bases after winning the 1941 All-Star Game with a late home run earned him yet another nickname, “Teddy Ballgame”. “Jeffy Cricket-match” lacks the same ring. But Williams steadfastly refused to compromise for acceptance: he wouldn’t wear ties and he couldn’t pander to public relations; he never had an empathy for those who lacked the absolute sense of security his ability gave him.

Williams’ came by obsession naturally. His father abandoned his mother, a fanatical organiser for the Salvation Army. She in turn left him to his own devices; he haunted San Diego’s sandlots, hitting baseballs whenever he could persuade someone to pitch them. He was already playing semi-pro while still a high-school star, and at 18 turned pro with the San Diego Padres, then a top independent minor league team, in the Pacific Coast League, who eventually sold him to the Red Sox.

In 1941 Williams became the first player in almost 20 years to hit over .400 for the season. Where three safe hits every ten at-bats (.300) is considered excellent, the .400 barrier is regarded as nearly impossible. Before the season’s final day, Williams’ average stood at .3995. He refused his manager’s offer to sit out the final two-game double-header to protect his average, which would have been rounded up to .400. Instead, he stroked 6 hits in 8 at-bats, raising his mark to .406. No one has reached .400 since. Typically, however, 1941 was also the season DiMaggio hit safely in 56 consecutive games, and the Yankee Clipper captured the Most Valuable Player award. The two engaged in a triumphant reunion tour fifty years later, still New York chalk and Boston cheese. But by then, both they, and America, had learned to relish the contrast.

Williams’ career statistics fall short of many of the game’s greats, mostly because he lost five peak seasons to wars. He was so skilled a Marine fighter pilot that he was forced to spend World War II as an instructor. Recalled to Korea, he flew as John Glenn’s wingman. The future astronaut, Senator, and “right-stuff” test pilot called Williams the best combat flyer he had ever seen. 

 

In private Williams, whose ne’er do well brother died at age 39 of leukaemia, was a driving force behind the success of the Jimmy Fund, the Red Sox “pet” charity for children’s cancer research. In public, he used his induction into baseball’s Hall of Fame as a platform to call for the inclusion of Negro League stars, denied by segregation their chance to play in the majors.

But if baseball was his obsession, fishing was his passion. He retired to Florida where he could indulge himself with deep-sea fishing, where he held a number of world-record catches, and was equally adept with a fly rod, the same vision, coordination and patience that made him a great hitter of baseballs made him a great caster of lures.

Aged 38, and slow afoot, Williams still batted .388. Two years later, he retired. John Updike chronicled his final game in a famous New Yorker magazine essay, “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu”. In his final at-bat in Boston’s Fenway Park, Williams hit a home run. After he took his place in left field, he was replaced, allowing the fans the chance to give him one final ovation. He trotted back into the dugout, without tipping his cap, and disappeared. Despite prolonged cheering, he never returned. As Updike explained, “Gods do not reply to letters”.