The Zen of Bobby V, one of a number of ESPN sports documentaries in this year's festival, stars Bobby Valentine, a former player and manager in major league baseball who's currently well into his second stay in Japan, managing the Chibbe Lotte Marines. Directed by Andrew Jenks, Jonah Quickmore Pettigreu, and Andrew Muscato, the picture is a friendly, puffy profile piece that makes the most of its subject's personable charm and low-pressure style. (Valentine to a player doing badly at batting practice: "It's okay, it's not like you're totally stinking out there." Player: "I am stinking out there!" Valentine: "Yeah, but not totally!") Valentine's wife turns up to tell the camera that when his team is winning, her husband is a pleasure to be around and "all right's with the world." The filmmakers, who kept him company over the course of a full season, stays close to him when he's winning and keeps a respectful distance when he isn't. (One quick montage of Valentine in smashing-rampage-tantrum mode is included, but it isn't made clear how many water coolers he goes through during the average losing streak.)
There is a larger and more interesting story that emerges, about professional baseball's meaning to the Japanese fans and the evolution of the game in that country, where it's in danger of having already evolved as far as it's going to. Japan, as Valentine points out, is the only country now where baseball is the number one sport in terms of fan appreciation. But now major league baseball in America has started poaching the best players who emerge there, and the fact that the Japanese players are apparently unable to resist the siren call from the States, partly because American baseball pays many times better but also because playing in the U.S. is seen as the ultimate proof of having made it, does nothing for the "inferiority complex" that a Japanese baseball executive readily admits most Japanese feel in relation to America. Valentine earns the right to serve as an entrance point for this subject because of his devotion to Japanese baseball. It's suggested at one point that he may have chosen to work in Japan partly because he can't resist a challenge, but the movie makes it clear that both his evangelical promotion of the game in the East and his love of Japan itself are deeply and truly felt. (Assistant talking on his cell phone to the States: "I'm climbing Mt. Fuji with Bobby Valentine. [Pause.] Well, I don't know how I can prove it to you.") Valentine may get his metaphors mangled when he compares the departure of Japanese players to the U.S. to the death of the Negro Leagues, but his ideas for trying to build up Japanese baseball by transplanting as much of the American business model as possible sound plausible, and the devotion he receives from the Japanese fans well-deserved. The filmmakers manage to describe this particular culture-clash without resorting to condescension or cheap shots, give or take the odd reference to the Japanese owners' attempts to beef up attendance with Geisha Night and Petting Zoo Night.
