Yesterday I got to spend a little time with award-winning actor Kevin Costner.
Kevin has always been the ultimate gentleman and his skills as an actor and storyteller are outstanding.
I have to be honest and say that the reason I first started to admire and then appreciate his work was because he reminded me of the historic Academy award-winning actor Gary Cooper who I truly idolized.
They both have that soft approach as actors that can blow up like a volcano in a very positive way.
Like Cooper, no matter what character Costner is playing you want to root for him.
Whether it was Bull Durham or Field of Dreams or recently Yellowstone you forgive him even though you know that the character may be acting like a villain.
For me, the Costner film that touches my heart is the baseball/love story For the Love of the Game.
To me, it was personal because of my relationship with Cy Young award-winning pitcher Doc Gooden. Like the character in the film, Doc was pretty much at the end when he pitched his no-hitter in 1996. It seemed as if the baseball gods put him in that situation with a small gun and not too many bullets in the chamber however somehow he was preserved.
In the preproduction of that film, there was a lot of back-and-forth verbalization with George Steinbrenner and the production people because the Boss didn’t like the way the film ended. I actually lost the opportunity to work in that film because the Boss was literally that angry. It took the strong hard-core charm and let me say acting skills of Costner to convince the Boss to allow the film to be made.
At the end of the day, Costner and the Boss collaborated in as good a way as possible and the Boss caved in ( a miracle in itself) let me add that the Boss did have big-time respect for Kevin.
The Yankees did become World Champions that year and he actually gave Kevin a World Series ring.
Kevin does still have the ring that he keeps in a safe place but out of respect to major league players, he just doesn’t feel that he is worthy of wearing it.
I can honestly say that the Boss actually shed some tears in watching that film and I believe that the Boss would be proud if Kevin Costner wore that ring every now and then.
