One of the greatest and most nimble actors of his, or any, generation, Robert Redford had the innate ability to play characters who were cerebral, rugged, sensitive or jock-ish—often at the same time.
Taught to play baseball by his father, Redford—a lefthanded slugger whose hero was Ted Williams—was a high school teammate of Hall of Fame pitcher Don Drysdale, who once called Redford “a pretty good ballplayer.” Redford, who died Tuesday at age 89, went to the University of Colorado to play baseball, but things didn’t pan out. (“I discovered drinking instead and flunked out,” Redford said.) As he explained to Sports Illustrated’s Ron Fimrite in 1984, “I just lost interest in team sports. I stopped caring. I believed from the beginning that you played by the rules and that it was how you played the game, not whether you won, that counted. My disillusionment came when I realized that that wasn’t the way things were at all. It was winning that counted. I wanted to put some of that in Downhill Racer.”
