Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon in “Fever Pitch,” an Ode to Red Sox Fandom

A memoir about soccer was transformed into a romcom about baseball and spawned a life of its own.

by Rich Watson

In 1992, Nick Hornby, the English novelist and screenwriter, released a memoir called Fever Pitch, a love letter to his favorite sport, soccer. GQ called it “tears-running down-your-face, read-bits-out-loud-to-complete-strangers funny, but also highly perceptive and honest.” Time Out said it “transcends the mundane and the sporty to say something about the way we live.” 

One might not have suspected Hollywood to have taken interest in a highly personal volume about a sport that never quite caught on in America the way it has in other countries. Hornby, however, was hot, and often, that’s enough.

So how did the movie version get turned into a romantic comedy about baseball?

‘Fever Pitch’ the book: Hornby’s mad obsession 

I wasn’t as consumed by baseball growing up as Hornby was by soccer (sorry, European readers, but to me “football” means something else), so I didn’t find the book as funny as his novels. Arsenal, his team, doesn’t even play in his hometown. He discovered them by chance and took to them pretty much from the start. Give him credit: in depicting the level of his devotion, he makes himself look insane.

But it’s that level of self-reflection that makes Fever compelling. Hornby’s fandom is disturbing in many ways, but he recognizes this in himself and others. He writes about it in a fashion that’s clear-headed, intelligent and funny, even if you may not get the soccer references. 

Through him, we follow the Arsenal team from the late sixties into the early nineties. We see what being an Arsenal fan means to Hornby, the son of divorced parents desperately looking for an identity as a child. He found a sport which lay at the heart of a contradiction:

I’d been to public entertainments before, of course.... The audiences I had hitherto been a part of had paid to have a good time and, though occasionally one might spot a fidgety child or a yawning adult, I hadn’t ever noticed faces contorted by rage or despair or frustration. Entertainment as pain was an idea entirely new to me, and it seemed to be something I’d been waiting for. It might not be too fanciful to suggest that it was an idea which shaped my life.

We also see the dark side of European soccer and soccer fandom: the racism, the exploitation of the fans by management, and above all, the violence. Hornby acknowledges and condemns “hooliganism,” yet also recognizes fighting as an essential part of the soccer-watching experience, even from the players:

...We are entering doubtful moral territory here—obviously players have a responsibility not to provoke a highly flammable crowd.... [but] there is nothing like a punch-up to enliven an otherwise dull game. The side-effects are invariably beneficent—the players and the crowd become more committed, the plot thickens, the pulse quickens—and as long as the match doesn’t degenerate as a consequence into some kind of sour grudge-match, brawls strike me as being a pretty desirable feature...

Fever the book is full of moments with such honesty on Hornby’s part. I found it difficult yet enlightening.

The 1997 British ‘Fever Pitch’ film

The 2005 movie was not the first adaptation of Hornby’s memoir. In 1997, Channel 4 Films in the UK made a Fever Pitch movie, based on a screenplay by Hornby himself, his first, starring Colin Firth. 

Hornby took the 1988-89 season, in which Arsenal faced Liverpool for the championship, and attached a rom-com story to it. Firth is the Hornby stand-in, a die-hard Arsenal fan who falls for Ruth Gennell but of course, his soccer fixation gets in the way. The New York Times’ lukewarm review said, “If you don’t know the team, and the film keeps its distance from Arsenal, what’s to cheer or cry about?” 

Hornby’s subsequent screenplays were better received. He became a double-Oscar nominee and an Emmy winner for his original series State of the Union.

Hollywood steps to the plate with a remake

In Hollywood, meanwhile, director Shawn Levy, a Hornby fan, wanted to direct a remake for 20th Century Fox. Hornby was a hot property following the film versions of his novels High Fidelity in 2000 and About a Boy in 2002. 

Lowell Ganz & Babaloo Mandel, who co-wrote the women’s baseball film A League of Their Own, among others, changed the milieu in their screenplay to baseball and the Red Sox. Levy left the project but was replaced by Peter & Bobby Farrelly.

Jimmy Fallon, the Saturday Night Live alumnus turned late-night talk show host, played the Americanized version of Hornby’s stand-in. Drew Barrymore, currently a daytime talk show hostess, was cast as the love interest.

The devotion of Red Sox fans

Few baseball teams have a following like the Red Sox do, but for generations, the franchise struggled mightily to win a World Series. In some quarters, it was believed the team’s futility was the result of selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1920. 

In the decades since, the Red Sox ventured close to a championship on a number of occasions. One year they came within one strike of winning before unraveling. The fans, though, never wavered in their loyalty and their belief that their team would rise to the top... not unlike Hornby’s devotion to Arsenal.

This version of Fever is in the spirit of the book in that it’s about a sports nut. The rougher edges, however, have been sanded down. The result is a romantic comedy that’s pleasant enough—anyone with a pop culture fixation of some sort will recognize themselves in it—but is ultimately a safe, middle-of-the-road date movie. Needless to say, Red Sox fans will appreciate it more.

Sox’ success forced a new ending

Fever was filmed during the 2004 Red Sox season, and in the original version the team loses in the end. After eighty-six years without a championship, no one expected anything different. 

The Red Sox, however, surprised everyone by entering the playoffs as a wild card, defeating their bitter rivals, the Yankees, in a best-of-seven series after being down three games to none, and going on to win the World Series. (They would win three more championships in the next fourteen years.)

The Farrelly Brothers were forced to change their movie’s ending. Ganz and Mandel revised their script, Fallon and Barrymore flew to St. Louis, where the Red Sox played the Cardinals for the title, and the Farrellys received permission from MLB to carefully shoot their new scene around the Red Sox celebration at home plate, with their stars in character.

The Farrellys and Barrymore discussed it with Fallon on The Tonight Show years later:

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Have you seen the movie Fever Pitch and/or read the book?