The Tampico Stogies are a last-place baseball team based in Tampico, Florida. The team competes in the lowest-level professional Gulf Coast league during the summer of 1957. It is unclear if the team is affiliated with a major league franchise; if so, it receives minimal, if any, support in money or players from the parent club. The Stogies are owned by a pair of corrupt and scheming local Tampico businessmen, Hale Buchman and his son, Hale Buchman Jr.. They refer to themselves as sports moguls, despite the team being heavily mortgaged. Their star player and manager is an aging Cecil "Stud" Cantrell, a hard-drinking, hard-playing, and hard-loving man's man. Signed out of high school by the St. Louis Cardinals, Cantrell was a onetime rookie standout in the organization, coming up in the same group as Stan Musial, but he never made it to the big leagues because of a war injury he sustained in World War II during the Battle of Guadalcanal. At a game against the Crestview Cats in Alabama, Cantrell meets a beautiful young woman just voted Miss Strawberry Blossom of 1957, Dixie Lee Boxx, botching the lyrics of the Star-Spangled Banner, but still wowing the crowd in her skimpy skin-tight outfit. What Cantrell initially intends to be a one-night stand soon develops into a semi-serious relationship. Cantrell signs a slick-fielding but light-hitting second baseman named Jamie Weeks. Weeks soon falls for a virginal and church-going local girl, Esther Wrenn, who is looking to escape Tampico. Cantrell also signs a power-hitting, strong-armed catcher, Joe Brown, who is African American. Because this is the Deep South during the 1950s, to keep local bigots and Ku Klux Klan off his back, Cantrell lies that Brown is a Venezuelan named José Luis Brown who can't speak any English. With the addition of these new players, the Stogies go on a red-hot winning streak. On the verge of a pennant, however, Cantrell is told that throwing the big game would give a substantial boost to his sagging career. He is offered a managerial position in the minor leagues with the Cardinals organization, on the condition he does not show up for the final game. If he plays, his future managerial career is over. Brown, poverty-stricken since childhood, is also bribed not to play. The team's owners, the Buchmans, are involved in the match-fixing as well. They set up a trivial yet undeniable scandal in which Cantrell could be implicated in betting on his team's games, giving them leverage by which they can threaten to have him suspended for life. While the pennant-deciding game is being played at Tampico, Cantrell and Brown meet at a local bar where they discuss their moral and ethical dilemmas. Brown erupts in anger, smashing his new car with his baseball bat. They elect to hurry to the park and play, much to the anger and regret of the owners. Brown instructs the PA announcer to introduce him by his actual name, Joe Louis Brown.
Cast
Reception
Released in 1987 by HBO, Long Gone is a little-known and difficult-to-obtain film that has consequently made it somewhat of a sports cult film. It has been described as "three parts Bull Durham, two parts Slap Shot, add a dose of Bingo Long and a pinch of The Longest Yard". It has also been described as the bestbaseball movie most of you never saw. A book, The Baseball Filmography, 1915 Through 2001, described Long Gone as one of the most thoroughly enjoyable baseball comedies made in the last two decades. Robert Creamer, a writer for Sports Illustrated, wrote that it was probably the best made-for-television movie he had ever seen. John O'Connor, a writer for The New York Times, wrote that Long Gone makes classics such as The Pride of the Yankees look like promotional fantasies. The Bleacher Report wrote that this film deserves to be included in anyone's collection of baseball features. Newsday called it one of the bestsports movies ever made. Long Gone was ranked 50th in The Ultimate Book of Sports Movies: Featuring the 100 Greatest Sports Films. It also rated a mention in another book, The Great Baseball Films, which stated Long Gone was an above-average comedy-drama that is full of bite, grit, and good feelings. Despite the positive reviews, Long Gone has been largely overlooked by mainstream media and remains extremely difficult to buy on DVD.
Awards
Director Martin Davidson won an ACE Award for the film under the category, Writing award for Biography.
