It was the perfect day, the one children from every generation dream of: In John Hughes’ seminal comedy classic “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” the trio of high schoolers -- played by Matthew Broderick, Alan Ruck, and Mia Sara -- don’t just skip school, but suck from the very marrow of life as they gallivant across the Windy City. They go to the Art Institute of Chicago, dine at an exclusive French bistro, and -- most important for our purposes -- head to Wrigley Field to watch the Cubbies. Our hero even snags a foul ball in the contest.
Thanks to painstaking research from Larry Granillo, we can celebrate the 40th anniversary of the game they attended: A June 5, 1985, contest that saw the Braves defeat the Cubs, 4-2, in 11 innings. Thanks to the broadcast footage featured in the film, we even know that Ferris caught Claudell Washington’s 11th-inning foul into the left-field stands.
While that is the game in the film, that’s not the game the actors actually attended. Instead, they were at a rollicking 17-15 Expos victory that saw Montreal score 12 runs in the fifth before Chicago stormed back with 13 runs over the final four innings in a desperate bid for a comeback on Sept. 24, 1985.
The self-effacing Ruck, who plays Ferris’ hypochondriac best friend Cameron in the film, remembers the day well. Though the veteran actor admits he’s “not a natural baseball player,” having “always been a bag of bones” (“The only sport I was physically fit for was cross country. That’s a horrible sport: You run your ass off for two miles and then you throw up,” he joked), he had become a Cubs fan long before filming began. While attending the University of Illinois in nearby Champaign, he often found himself stopping by Wrigley Field before he later moved to the city and got his big break starring in the Neil Simon play “Biloxi Blues” alongside Broderick.
“I had gone to many baseball games as a Chicagoan, as a Cubbies fan, going out to the bleachers, eating Smokies and drinking too much beer,” Ruck told MLB.com recently. “Even though I'm from Cleveland originally, Chicago is sort of my adopted city, and so [‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’] was kind of like coming home.”
Though there was a little bit of movie magic in stitching together Washington’s foul ball and Ferris’ barehanded grab, the rest was all real. Forget a soundstage or a green screen: Director John Hughes filmed the actors at Wrigley Field, heading up into the grandstands on the morning of Sept. 24 before the gates opened to the public.
“They had us in the morning and we did the close-ups first of just Matthew and I and the people around us who are all extras,” Ruck explained. “In fact, John Hughes’ two young sons -- of course they’re probably close to 50 now -- were sitting behind us.”
After getting the close-up shots done, the gates opened and the cameras kept rolling: “I think we got some longer shots of Matthew holding the ball up and everything when some fans were allowed to filter in with us carnie trash,” Ruck said with a laugh.
Ruck remembers the actual game they were attending, too, thanks to cinematographer Tak Fujimoto and former Dodgers second baseman Davey Lopes, who was playing for the Cubs at the time.
“Davey Lopes was warming up out in the outfield, and all I know is that Tak yelled down, ‘Davey, we miss you in L.A.!’” Ruck recalled.
(While Lopes was 1-for-3 and was caught stealing in the actual game the crew filmed at, he swiped two bags in the June game the cast is meant to be attending.)
Even though the Wrigley Field scene is one short segment in a montage of remarkable moments, Ruck isn’t surprised that fans have figured out which game is featured in the film.
“I mean, there are fanatics in every walk of life,” Ruck said. “There are movie geeks, just like there's sports geeks and everything else. So actually, no, it doesn't surprise me, especially after all this time, that somebody somewhere would have gone to the trouble to find out absolutely everything there is to know about that movie.”
One thing movie fanatics probably couldn’t have figured out is the source of Cameron’s “Hey batter, batter, batter, sa-wing batter!” grandstand chatter. While it may seem like a bit of generic ballpark lingo, Ruck was actually inspired by an old ballplayer he knew from his teenage days.
“When I was in high school, there was a catcher on the baseball team. He was a great guy named Marc Hilow. What a great name, and he would say the craziest [stuff] when he was down in the crouch behind the batter. He would say, like, ‘Lucy! Lucy! His name is Lucy! Everybody knows Lucy!’ You know, stuff like that. So I said, ‘How about sa-wing batter?’”
Hughes agreed, suggesting he add a “Swing batter, batter, batter,” beforehand first. Ruck then also drew upon his brief ballplaying career, too.
“When I was in Little League -- back in my failed attempt at being a baseball player -- we played [a team] named the Orioles,” Ruck said. “When you get up to bat, the Orioles in the field would say, ‘He can't hit, he can't hit, he can't hit, he can't hit, he can't hit!’ They were just really awful, and so I just used a little bit of that.”
While "Bueller" continues to resonate with audiences 40 years after it was originally filmed, Ruck isn’t living in the past. This summer, he is set to reunite with his friend and Bueller co-star Broderick for a new film called “The Best is Yet to Come.”
“I’ve got to tell you, I've been really lucky so many times that I've just worked with people that I've really admired and who made me laugh,” Ruck said. “One of the things I think Matthew and I share is a similar sense of humor. That guy just cracks me up. He and I are going to make another movie this summer – and it's not a Bueller.”