Goofs for
The Natural (1984)

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• Continuity: During the game in which Roy Hobbs bats for the first time and knocks the cover off the ball, there are two different home-plate umpires: The ump who comes to the dugout to talk to Pop Fisher is not the same ump who later calls a strike on Hobbs and then stares him down.
  
  
• Continuity: Glass in the restaurant scene.
  
  
• Continuity: When Roy splinters "Wonderboy", we clearly see from the shot behind home plate that the swing didn't break the bat. But as he walks back to the batter's box, the bat is in two.
  
  

• Continuity: When young Hobbs pitches at a circle that his father drew on the side of the barn, he breaks one of the boards. After a cutaway, the next close up shows that a different board is broken.
  
  
• Continuity: After Hobbs splits "Wonderboy", he tells the bat boy to pick him a winner. The bat boy gives him a bat called "Savoy Special". When Hobbs hits the game winning home run, supposedly with "Savoy Special" you can see the lightning bolt from "Wonderboy" in his hands.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Hobbs hits four home runs in Chicago, the announcer states on two occasions that it is the bottom of the inning when Hobbs bats. The NY Knights, as the visiting team, would have batted in the top of each inning.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When years later Hobbs makes just "one" pitch at the end of practice, ...the ball zooms across the plate and lodges into the net behind. You can clearly see a string attached to the ball as it lodges into the net.
  
  
• Continuity: At the beginning of the movie when Hobbs is waiting for the train to take him to New York, he only has one bag. The trombone case in which he carries Wonderboy is not there, but when he arrives at Knights Field he is carrying the case. [This is explained/corrected in the Director's Cut, which re-edits the film's opening into a flashback structure, showing Roy returning to his now-dilapidated childhood farmhouse to retrieve the bat.]
  
  
• Continuity: When Memo Paris reaches over to touch Roy Hobbs' bullet wound, the background of the close-up is clearly different than that of the wide-angle shot.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The baseball cards of Roy Hobbs rolling off the printing press are clearly meant to be those manufactured by the Playball Company (which produced cards from 1939-41). And though the film takes place during the 1939 season, the card style corresponded to Playball's 1941 set. They also did not print sheets with just one player. Many players were printed on one sheet. The card sheets in the film only depict Hobbs.
  
  
• Continuity: Soon after the Knights all add the Lightning Bolt Patch, there is a shot of a Knight crossing home plate without the patch on his right sleeve.
  
  
• Factual errors: Although the first night game in the majors took place in 1935 (Franklin Delano Roosevelt threw the light switch from the White House), the first post-season night game was Game 1 of the 1971 World Series.
  
  
• Factual errors: Bump Bailey's bronze plaque shown briefly after his funeral is misspelled "IN MEMORIUM"; the correct spelling is "MEMORIAM."
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: One of the newspaper clippings shown has is headlined "Knights on a Hot Streak" but the surrounding text, while sports-related, makes no mention whatsoever of the Knights.
  
  
• Continuity: After Bump's funeral (and after the lightning patch has been added to the uniforms) there is a batting practice scene where Bump (#7) is seen wandering around behind the backstop. The lightning patches are also missing. The scene is combined with the managers trying to guess the names of songs.
  
  
• Continuity: When Bump returns to the dugout and claims he lost a fly ball in the sun, the catcher is wearing a different uniform number than he was moments ago when he was behind home plate.
  
  
• Continuity: In the game where he breaks the clock, Hobbs comes to bat in the top of the first inning. The scoreboard lists Chicago has already having a base hit, even though they are the home team and would not have batted yet.
  
  
• Continuity: When Max Mercy is umpiring the match-up between Hobbs and the Whammer at the carnival, he takes several steps back after the first pitch. Before the next pitch, he is directly behind the catcher in a crouch, and then as Hobbs pitches the ball, he is once again several steps behind the catcher.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: In the at-bat when Roy Hobbs breaks the clock, before he sees the woman from his past, strike two is a swing and a miss in the audio, but visually, Roy Hobbs connects with the ball. The hit ball can be seen streaking across the top of the picture.
  
  
• Continuity: In the game against the Phillies when Bailey runs into the centerfielder causing the error, Roy is shown in the dugout with no hat on, leaning over. Immediately after that cut, he is shown sitting up with his hat on.
  
  
• Anachronisms: In the scene depicting the team on a passenger train streaking across country as the Knights make their "run" at the pennant, the drumhead on the observation car says "Super Chief". This would make it a Santa Fe high-speed train running daily between Chicago and Los Angeles. Since the movie is set in 1939, they would not be riding that train because there were no major league baseball teams west of St. Louis in those days.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: The bullet the Doctor hands Roy in the hospital is pristine. If it were shot through the barrel of a gun, it would show markings due to the rifling of the barrel. It would also be highly unlikely that the lead bullet would be completely undeformed if Roy were shot with it...Maybe if he swallowed it, but not if he got shot with it.
  
  
• Continuity: After Roy starts dating Memo, the Knights start losing, and there's a newspaper headline that reads "Cold Knights in August." When they start winning again, under the headline "Knights in 3rd" is a dateline of "Boston, July 8."
  
  

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