Baseball is just the beginning of Carl Erskine's story explored in film showing at Bus-Chum

“The Best We’ve Got: The Carl Erskine Story” blends baseball and Special Olympics history, as Indianapolis filmmaker Ted Green dissects the wonders of Carl Erskine, his wife, Betty, their son, Jimmy, and a trove of Indiana history most people don't know.

In 1907, Indiana was the first state to pass a sterilization law. Lawmakers hoped to keep "feeble-minded people" from having babies. Green said they worried undesirable people would slow industrial progress.

Progressing from that frightful 1907 compulsory sterilization command, by the early 1970s, Indiana had changed into the first state with a paid Special Olympics director and has long been among the highest in athlete participation. How is a central part of the film showing at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater Dec. 1.

Green specializes in Indiana-based documentaries. His subjects include Holocaust survivor Eva Kor, Indy's Crispus Attucks High School and Indiana University basketball's Bobby "Slick" Leonard.

From baseball fame to the Special Olympics

Erskine, from Anderson, Indiana, won major fame as a baseball player in the 1940s and 1950s and now, at 95, he is the last man standing of the Brooklyn Dodgers' esteemed "Boys of Summer."

The unlikely future success of the little Erskine boy would have been story enough. The kid who said, "Something good is gonna happen to me" really did have great things happen to him.

Erskine's off-the-field actions are as cheer-worthy as his overhand curveballs. With teammate Jackie Robinson, Erskine influenced racial diversity. With his son Jimmy, who has Down syndrome, Erskine not only battled prejudice against people with disabilities, but brought credibility to the Special Olympics, an event that, as Green points out, had been popular but under-respected.

"Indiana has gone from being the very worst state to live in for people with intellectual disabilities 100 years ago to one of the very best today, and people going way back with the Arc of Indiana and Special Olympics say the No. 1 reason for the sea change was (baseball's) No. 17: Carl Erskine," Green said.

Sell out showings in Indiana

So far, the film has caught more attention than Yogi Berra's baseball mitt. Its premiere sold out the 1,450-seat Paramount Theatre in Anderson and had an encore in front of 800 people two days later. Next, all seats were taken at Indianapolis' 500-seat premiere.

Partnering with Special Olympics Indiana and with help from IU's I Association (letter-winning IU alumni) the film looks to be another sellout for Green, as was his last film on Eva Kor, which also screened at the Buskirk-Chumley.

Green, who has a bachelor of arts degree from Princeton University and a master’s from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, got the Erskine story idea a decade ago as he began his documentary on “Slick” Leonard.

"I went up to ('Slick's') house and the very first thing he said to me was, 'Boy, you’re doing a film on the wrong guy. The guy you want is up in Anderson, name of Carl Erskine.'"

Erskine turns 96 soon, and those who knew him as a boy are few. The film's interview with American sportscaster Vin Scully was, it appears, the last Scully did on camera before he died. That same day, American pitcher and manager Tommy Lasorda, Erskine's close friend, was scheduled for an interview but went into the hospital, never coming out.

"(Also), our interview with Bobby Leonard was the last he did on camera. You could just sense Bob didn’t have that many breaths in him, but it was so important to him to pay tribute to Carl, he insisted on doing it."

Green had longed to tell this kind of story. Growing up, his best friend was "a beautiful, sunny kid. We were like brothers."

Apparently that friend had a learning disability; watching him changed Green's own life for good.

"I’ll never forget the day our first-grade teacher made him wear a sign around his neck that read, 'I am dumb.' It got worse, and ended in a tragedy I think about every day."

Green hoped that beginning his film with Erskine's baseball career, including Erskine's friendship with Jackie Robinson, would attract a new audience interested in what Erskine did after baseball. "Several times people have approached me after a screening, often with tears in their eyes, and said simply, 'I had no idea.'"

Tackling prejudice in a racist world

Green credits Erskine's parents with much of who their son was.

"Here’s a father who, during a terribly fraught racial era in Indiana, was great friends with many African-Americans and encouraged Carl to bring his new friend Johnny Wilson over for dinner night after night."

That was big, and unusual.

Doing research for "Crispus Attucks High School" enlightened Green on our state's racism, especially before Indianapolis' Attucks opened in 1927.

Green learned, too, how writers can frame history to suit their own purposes. Racial and other prejudice was inescapable in Indiana during Erskine and his parents' youths, much of it hiding in cowardice and denial.

As Green re-read Roger Kahn's “The Boys of Summer” he stopped to imagine Erskine's first memory, the 1930 lynching in Marion, Indiana. Erskine had seen the pictures of the lynchers. They were not ashamed or fleeing, but smiling as two dark bodies swayed, rope-tied at the neck.

Erskine wasn’t there, but his father drove the 4-year-old to the site the next day to show him hate's horrors.

Erskine tackled prejudice against those with special needs, too. The first Special Olympics Games in Chicago in 1968 had most people talking about the 1,000 athletes who participated.

What they did not mention was that only 14 spectators bothered to attend.

Caregiving for family members featured strongly in Green's decision to do the Erskine story. Green has taken on the caregiver role and knows what that means.

His film points out that for the Special Olympics really to work it had to be a county-to-county affair. So that’s what Erskine did. And Erskine was more than a celebrity; he was an athlete's parent. Instead of doing a quick photo op and rushing off to a fancy lunch, he and Betty lived it — all day, all night. They exulted in their son Jimmy’s wins and suffered through his disappointments, and they sat in the front row for Opening Ceremonies for the Indiana State Games in Terre Haute for 50 years, not just for Jimmy, but all the athletes.

Green writes, "Those long drives, that painstaking work to help that child get up in the morning, or get to the kitchen table, or get to the school bus, or find his way simply to get in the game . . .."

Green referred to a novel that won the Pulitzer Prize called “The Overstory.” This line lingers: “The best argument in the world won’t change a person’s mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.”

If you go

WHAT: “The Best We’ve Got: The Carl Erskine Story” — film with Bob Costas introduction, by Ted Green

WHEN: 7 p.m. Dec. 1  Doors open at 6:30 p.m.

WHERE: Buskirk-Chumley Theater, E. Kirkwood Ave.

TICKETS: $7 at  online through the theater’s website and at the door on the night of the show, while supplies last.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Carl Erskine documentary set to show at Buskirk-Chumley Dec. 1