• Today’s Movie: The Rockford Files – Sticks and Stones May Break Your Bones, But Waterbury Will Bury You
• Year of Release: 1977
• Stars: James Garner, Cleavon Little, Simon Oakland
• Director: Jerry London

This movie is not on my list of essential films, largely because it’s not a movie at all.  It’s an episode from the third season of my favorite television show ever.

That’s because this installment of Sports Analogies Hidden In Classic Movies is being done as part of something called the We Are Family Blog-A-Thon being hosted by Taking Up Room. Thanks to her hosting this event and devising it’s theme, I get another opportunity to write about The Rockford Files.

You can see all the contributors to this blog-a-thon here:

• Days One, Two, and Three

The Story:

Upon returning from vacation, Jim Rockford (played by James Garner) finds fellow private investigator Billy Merrihew (played by Cleavon Little) “taping his door” (which is later said to be a surveillance technique). Billy wants to hire Rockford because he’s lost license after having been arrested for breaking and entering. He tells Rockford a woman named Odette Sorrel hired him to investigate the kidnapping of another woman, Janie Windolph. Billy entered a home on a tip only to find the police waiting for him, and the owners denied knowing the supposedly kidnapped woman.

Jim takes the case, but his investigation draws the attention of Vern St. Cloud (played by Simon Oakland) another private investigator (this is where James Garner’s brother Jack enters the story..as will be discussed below). St. Cloud is the photo-negative of Rockford; he’s abrasive and obtuse. But he also another investigator whose lost his license under circumstances circumstances. Rockford discovers all this after St. Cloud assaults him in the parking in front of his trailer.

After losing a brawl with Rockford, St. Clouds admits he was looking for Hugh Wechsler, the alleged kidnapper of Janie Windolph. Now Rockford, Merrihew, and St. Cloud pool together realizing there’s an organized effort to destroy private investigators. After this discovery, on another of Rockford’s usual trips to the police station he runs across Marv Potemkin (played by Val Bisoglio), another private investigator who was also working for Odette Sorrel. Even though he was working on a completely separate case, Potemkin is also about to lose his license after being booked for carrying a concealed weapon.

Rockford finds Odette Sorrel by tracking her out-going calls. He discovers that Sorrel is actually Susan Hanrahan (played by Katharine Charles) who just so happens to be an agent of the gigantic Waterbury Security Company. In another Rockford Files trope, he uses an assumed identity to enter the Waterbury Building and speak to Hanrahan and her associate Ted Clair (played by Anthony Costello). This encounter leads to the twist Clair is the Waterbury agent running the operation against the private investigators. Not only that, but Clair knows who Rockford is because he was on the list of targets, however he was on vacation when the Waterbury operatives contacted him.

Clair fears Rockford is aware of their operation, and in a discussion with his boss John LaPointe (played James Karen), it it implied the Waterbury people intended to kill him. The stakes go up when it is shown Waterbury is perfectly willing to kill people; they murder Marv Potemkin during an interrogation after they caught him staking out Susan Hanrahan’s apartment.

To get the evidence they need, Rockford concocts a plan to enter the Waterbury Building by using St. Cloud as a diversion by posing as a “jumper” on the roof. As the police, fire department, and a mob of on-lookers draw the attention of building security, Rockford and Merrihew enter the Waterbury’s files and collect damning evidence shining a light on their operation.

The episode ends with Clair in custody and Rockford’s friend L.A.P.D. Sergeant Becker (played by Joe Santos) asking him if he knew anything about the “anonymous” source of the evidence against Waterbury.

The Hidden Sports Analogy:

For a “family” event, today’s analogy doesn’t come from the star of the the show, rather from his brother Jack Garner. When it came to The Rockford Files, Jack was the king of the “bit part;” appearing in 24 episodes. In today’s example, he’s plays a bartender in a 40-second scene at 7:17 showing him as an informant for the aforementioned Vern St. Cloud.

While Jack was most known for being James Garner’s older brother, he was also an accomplished athlete. He was an all-state quarterback, a star pitcher, and as a point guard led Norman (Oklahoma) High School’s basketball team to a state championship in 1945.

After high school, Garner had an 11-year career in professional baseball as a pitcher. Instead of hanging up the baseball cleats, Jack Garner traded them for the spikes of a professional golfer. Not only was he a long-standing member of the Professional Golfer’s Association (PGA), Garner was the “club pro” at several country clubs in Florida and played in several PGA events. The end of his golf career was spent as the “pro” at Oakmont Country Club in Glendale, California. This is where he coached several people of note, namely teaching Dan Aykroyd how to play golf for his role in the 1996 James Garner film My Fellow Americans.

But baseball is where the guts of this hidden sports analogy can be found. While Jack Garner never made it to the major leagues, he pitched in the minors in the Pittsburgh Pirates organization for the entirety of his 11-year professional career.

1979 was not a great time in western Pennsylvania. Coal and steel were the two main industries of the area, and they were in a state of transition. Known as the “Steel City,” Pittsburgh bore the brunt of this uncertainty; it was where the “Rust Belt” met the sweat stain of what was going to become post-industrial America.

As such, Pittsburghers were searching for sources of pride in their down, but not out city. Sports fit that bill perfectly. Football’s Pittsburgh Steelers were the dynasty of the 1970s, but at the time, baseball was still “America’s Pastime.” With precious few exceptions, the Pittsburgh Pirates were relegated to the backwaters of baseball; more often than not being overshadowed by the “mega clubs” like the New York Yankees or Los Angeles Dodgers.

But 1979 was one of those exceptions.

The Pittsburgh Pirates were one of baseball better teams in the 1970s, but they often found themselves finishing behind the Philadelphia Phillies in the National League East. But 1979 was the “perfect storm” for the “Bucs.” After outlasting the Montreal Expos for the division crown, they had to get past the last vestiges of Cincinnati’s “Big Red Machine” in the National League Championship Series. The Pirates made short work of the Reds in that series, but not before America took note of the boys from the “Steel City.”

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First was their Mix-N’-Match “Garanimals Bumble Bee” uniforms, topped by the signature “stove pipe” caps. Then there was the fact this team was a collection of characters led by Hall-of-Famers Willie “Pops” Stargell and Bert Blyleven, should-be-Hall-of-Famer Dave “The Cobra” Parker, and Kent Tekulve…a relief pitcher who looked as if his arms had been installed backwards.

But the thing that made Pittsburgh “America’s Team 1979” was their adoption of a popular song. While it took the rest of the country until baseball’s “Fall Classic” to become familiar with the “We Are Family” Pirates, but the Buc faithful in western Pennsylvania already knew about the song adopted by the local nine.

Ironically…and in another piece fitting the theme of this event…it was recorded by an act from Philadelphia; Sister Sledge.

When “We Are Family” became the team’s anthem in June, the Pirates were 9 games back of the Phillies. But after that, Pittsburgh went on a tear, becoming the hottest team in baseball in the second half of the season. The Pirates went on to win 98 games, capture the NL East, sweep the National League Championship, and ultimately took down the powerhouse Baltimore Orioles in seven games marking Pittsburgh’s fifth world title.

And they were family.

The Moral of the Story:

The last installment in this series was all about a set of baseball brothers. While blood may be thicker than water, it isn’t necessary to define a family.

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