Out of Left Field
Chicago's kickball community gets ready for its close-up
Sometimes bad luck can turn into good luck. For instance, if some Logan Square bandit hadn’t pilfered director Ben Steger’s video equipment, the world might have never seen Left Field, a feature-length documentary that premieres Thursday 26. The film follows the ups and downs of a kickball league at Chicago’s Humboldt Park on the city’s Northwest Side full of artists, bartenders and others who haven’t taken up the normal 9-to-5.
Steger only committed to videotaping the remainder of the 2006 Sunday-night league, after which his partner, Chris Batte, would find an editor to polish off the mini-doc. But after someone busted into Steger’s apartment and stole his camera and all the interviews, the duo decided to go whole hog and document the entire 2007 season.
“I came to Chris that winter, and I said, Let’s just go for a feature-length film,” Steger recalls. “I think there’s something there. I think there’s compelling characters and interesting stories.”
The film centers around two newbies to Chicago (Sarah Hart and KC Haywood, originally from New Mexico) who “stumble upon a wild, fledgling community of anarchistic kickballers.” “This was their whole social end,” Steger says. “They knew little to no people here and soon had 100 best friends—all through the kickball league.”
Left Field also records the tension between those who are in it to win it versus the social athletes who might otherwise sit on the sidelines were it not for their beer muscles. “There’s definitely a lot of party animals in the league,” Steger says. Unexpectedly, tragedy also creeps into the footage. But the heart of the film covers those aforementioned misfits—players on teams like the Fighting Cocks—who have found something resembling a family on the field and don’t wanna grow up.
Steger points to a conversation—which ended up on the cutting-room floor—he had with one player in which the book Rejuvenile: Kickball, Cartoons, Cupcakes, and the Reinvention of the American Grown-up came up. Steger recalls how his subject said, “There’s this book about rejuveniles: all these people who want to go back and relive their youth or they’re not so willing to jump into the mainstream current of what an adult is supposed to be doing.” But when Steger pressed his subject on what the book meant to him, the interviewee confessed, “Well, I don’t know; I haven’t really read it.”
Steger also called on the kickball league players to show off their arty side for Thursday’s premiere. In addition to the Lowdown Brass Band pumping out its jams, Steger promises bits of naughty with Mistress Gia Maze putting together a brief dominatrix demo and the Go-Go troupe the Janes shaking their moneymakers.
So far, Chicagoans’ one chance to view Left Field is Thursday, though Steger hopes to schedule more local screenings. For now, Steger just wants to give back to his kickballing friends.
“This will be a special night because the community will be there,” he says. Left Field gets its kicks Thursday 26 at the Portage Theater.
