Sports

Preamble

I need to say this first: I am not much of a sports spectator. My wife — a fan of watching college football — would bribe me with the promise of paying for drinks and wings to watch Ohio State games. (This was early in our courtship.)

I may watch a Cubs game if it’s on in a bar when I’m out reading. I do like participating in a noncompetitive way in sports because I like to throw myself around, but watching? I appreciate the drama and conflict, but I have so many other things to watch.

I’ll note: when I grew up in Vermont? Vermont did not have any professional sports teams, only minor league teams. (Don’t even mention the New England Patriots to me.) The closest professional baseball team we had were the Expos. The Montreal Expos. Yes, the closest professional baseball team was in a completely different country.

Lastly: I will be using the term ‘football’ here instead of ‘soccer’.

WELCOME TO WREXHAM is an FX/Hulu show that posits the question: What if two entertainment big-wigs wanted to help revitalize a down-on-their-luck city by bolstering their once proud football club (FC, for short) and try to elevate the football club from the National League to the Premiere League? In this case, the big-wigs are the charming duo of Ryan Reynolds (DEADPOOL and DEFINITELY, MAYBE) and Rob McElhenney (IT’S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA).

In someone else’s hands, this could be a treacly, by-the-numbers TV documentary of oversea saviors lending their time and cash to pridefully take credit for inspiring a city most in the U.S. have never even heard of.

Thankfully, WELCOME TO WREXHAM is not that sort of TV documentary. The story here isn’t so much the football club, but how the Wrexham FC acts as the fulcrum for Wrexham and how the upswing of a community sports team — it’s worth noting that the Wrexham FC’s board is community-based — can help bolster a city that has seen better times.

The end result feels more like FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS than say 30 ON 30. A number of episodes are light on both football gameplay and Rob & Ryan and instead focus on folks in the city, folks in the FC’s orbit. A recent episode spent almost the entirety of its running time on one autistic youth who is an avid Wrexham FC fan, as well as one of the Wrexham FC players who has a young autistic child. Other episodes feature the long-standing bar near to the Wrexham FC stadium -The Turf- and its landlord Wayne Jones, as well as a stable of other townspeople and folks who are true believers in their local team.

Episode after episode, for better or for worse, you see the city transform — both emotionally and financially — as Rob & Ryan infuse Wrexham with their dollars and spirit and hope.

Apparently when Rob pitched this idea to Ryan, of helping to shepherd a sports underdog story, neither of them had much of a relationship, but you wouldn’t know it based on the show. They have an instantaneous camaraderie and act more like old friends who feel genuinely comfortable with each other, joshing and poking fun at the other in a very heartfelt manner. It’s a surprisingly amazing example of a healthy male friendship, one that oddly isn’t portrayed on-screen often, especially not in a serialized sports documentary.

While this TV documentary could have been shot like any other doc — as a bunch of talking heads, interspersed with football footage — no one involved is willing to settle for that. WELCOME TO WREXHAM feels as vibrant as early Errol Morris works. Rob & Ryan often interrupt the voice-over, and one episode recreates a sort of SPORTSCENTER episode, and even the football footage feels energetic due to some magnificent music supervision with inspired needle-drops.

It feels unlike any TV doc I’ve ever seen. It’s deftly inspired and emotional and empathetic and endlessly engrossing, despite how little you may care about sports.

While WELCOME TO WREXHAM is not exactly playing out in real-time, you still don’t quite know how all of this will play out. You know there will be an endpoint. Obviously, Rob & Ryan can’t keep this up forever, and there will be consequences when that happens. It’s a tense drama, but in the meantime, it’s a supremely hopeful work and one worth watching.

The second season is now playing on FX/Hulu, but I definitely suggest starting from the beginning. You will not regret it.

(Prime) As a youth I loved baseball. I loved the rules, the rigidity, the anything-can-happen pacing, but most of all I loved the underdogs. I’m not going to say I moved to Chicago — within spitting distance of Wrigley Field much less — because of the Cubs, but it didn’t hurt.

When I first played Little League baseball I was always tucked away in right field until one friend’s father saw something in my arm, then moved me to shortstop, then tried me as pitcher.

Reader: I sucked. And after every loss, I’d weep. Hell, I’d cry whenever I struck out, which was often because I was so nervous at performing in this sport I loved. So, yeah, while I realize Penny Marshall’s A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN is singularly about ostracized and misfit women to literally fill the void of men, I nonetheless identify with it.

Abbi Jacobson’s & Will Graham’s A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN repositions the narrative as a queer coming-of-age tale instead of one of self-actualization. That may sound like I’m splitting hairs, but the film was boosterism and the show is not. The show is a journey of people finding themselves, and discovering a world beyond them apart from baseball. Yes, only one character in the show is a teenager — and seventeen at that — but it’s the 1940s and a good number of these characters lived a pretty sheltered, demonstrative and fake life until they found the impetus to put themselves out there.

While the Rockwell Peaches act more as a found family, it’s the activities that occur on the fringes that really makes the show interesting. Front-and-center is the team’s catcher Carson (Abbi Jacobson, BROAD CITY) who falls in love with teammate Greta (D’Arcy Carden, a.k.a THE GOOD PLACE’s Janet), but there’s also aspiring pitcher Max (Chanté Adams, BAD HAIR) and both are finding and navigating their queerness on-the-side.

I’ve seen a lot of shows and films that try to portray that vibe and often it feels too heightened, not heightened enough, or downright disingenuous. However, A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN — thanks to the time and patience they take with the characters — unfurls slowly in ways that felt rather singularly to my youth. There’s an enlightened bewilderment portrayed by the show — the wonder that people can live these sort of misfit lives — that was absolutely eye-opening when I was a young teen goth. There’s one scene in a later episode when Carson follows someone to a club and, when she realizes that she’s in a queer underground club, you can see in her face just how life-changing it is for her.

Unlike other club depictions in media, this club is surprisingly quiet and chill (and also headed by Rosie O’Donnell) and it feels warm and safe (until it isn’t). While I’m not the club kid I used to be, I’ve lived in predominantly queer neighborhoods for most of my life, and when you know who you want to be surrounded by, you know, and that’s what this show is all about — both on the team and off of the field.

Given that Amazon sat on this show for so long gives me doubts it’ll receive a second season, and I’m not even sure it’s terribly sustainable unless they jump ahead in time — someone please pitch that! — but the first season is an exceptional love letter to Marshall’s film and also to all of the weirdos and misfits out there that reach out, that try to forge bonds and communities at great risk.

It’s about rewiring cultural attitudes and figuring out what’s best for yourself when you’re actively able to make said decisions.

WELCOME TO WREXHAM (2022-)

Preamble

A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN (2022-)