An iconic scene in the 2000 survival movie Cast Away sees actor Tom Hanks break down over shedding Wilson – a volleyball.
The ball, named after the firm that manufactured it, was his character’s sole companion after being stranded for years on an uninhabited island in the Pacific Ocean.
But Hanks seemed to have lastly reunited with Wilson throughout a baseball sport in the metropolis of Cleveland on Friday (April 15), the place he threw the first pitch.
The two-time Oscar winner approached the pitcher’s mound with Wilson in hand to cheers from spectators.
The sport’s commentators questioned if he can be throwing the volleyball as an alternative of a baseball, however at the final second, Hanks positioned Wilson on the floor, and introduced an everyday baseball out from his pocket.
But in what many netizens speculated was a gag involving distant management, Wilson saved rolling away earlier than the Forrest Gump (1994) actor might make his throw. Finally, after some false begins, Hanks lastly threw the pitch.
In Cast Away, which was directed by movie legend Robert Zemeckis, Hanks’ character inadvertently anthropomorphises Wilson the volleyball by smacking it with a bloody handprint, which resembles a face.
The volleyball that featured in Friday’s baseball sport will not be the actual deal although. The precise ball has grow to be such an integral a part of movie historical past that it offered at public sale final November for £230,000 (RM1.3mil).
An undated submit on the Wilson Sporting Goods’ official weblog experiences that the firm “nonetheless (sells) 20-25,000 Cast Away balls per 12 months”.
The baseball sport in Cleveland, in the American Midwestern state of Ohio, was the season opener for the Cleveland Guardians, who went on to lose to the San Francisco Giants at Progressive Field.
Hanks has a robust connection to the metropolis, having began his performing profession there with an internship at the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival in the Nineteen Seventies.
He additionally has a connection to baseball, having performed a baseball supervisor in A League Of Their Own (1992), which additionally starred Geena Davis and Madonna. – The Straits Times/Asia News Network
