LAST COMISKEY director Matt Flesch's latest production is an examination of a true baseball lifer, a man who had several connections to the greats--and the great moments--of the game.
JEFF TORBORG: A WONDERFUL BASEBALL LIFE covers a decades-long MLB career that involved stints as a player, coach, manager, and broadcaster. In only his second season as a backup catcher in 1965, Jeff Torborg would be behind the dish during Sandy Koufax's perfect game. In his very last season as an active MLB player, Torborg would be on the receiving end of Nolan Ryan's very first no-hitter. Those are only a couple of exceptional moments that this documentary details.
Torborg played and managed in both the American and National League, and that enabled him to gain an incredible amount of inside knowledge and lasting friendships as he moved from team to team and job to job. Torborg managed five different franchises, and he also spent an amazing ten years as a New York Yankee coach in the 1980s (amazing due to the fact that he was never fired by George Steinbrenner).
There's plenty of great baseball stories and rare footage in this film, but the real heart of the project deals with Torborg's life off the field. Married to the same woman for over 60 years, Torborg's beliefs and family were more important to him than the game. The world of Major League Baseball could be rather wild & wooly during the Seventies and Eighties, but through it all Torborg never compromised when it came to his convictions, and despite managing in two of the biggest media markets in the country (Chicago and New York), he never changed his attitude or his personality.
A major part of this film deals with Torborg's time as manager of the Chicago White Sox (in some ways this is a bit of a semi-sequel to LAST COMISKEY). Torborg made a major impact on that team and its players--Ozzie Guillen (who would go on to be a World Series manager) states that Torborg was the best dugout boss he ever played for. A number of former players, coaches, and broadcasters appear in this documentary, attesting to Torborg's strengths as a baseball expert and as a man.
I'm a huge lifelong baseball fan, and I certainly knew the basics about Jeff Torborg's life and career--but this documentary gave me a true complete picture of the man. Torborg was involved in MLB in one way or another for most of my time as a baseball fan, so I have to admit I never really appreciated what his overall career entailed. Jeff Torborg wasn't a Hall of Farmer, but he certainly had a wonderful baseball life, and this film celebrates a time of the game when on-field experience and one-on-one interactions were considered more important than analytics and statistical theories.
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