‘Southpaw: The Life and Legacy of Jim Abbott’ is a first-rate sports doc of the inspirational variety

The documentary, headed to ESPN on July 13, tells the story of the one-handed pitcher who once tossed a no-hitter.

The story of Jim Abbott – the man who was born with one hand, pitched ten years in the major leagues, and once threw a no-hitter — is an especially amazing and inspiring one, and it has not been revisited much since the 1990s, mostly because Abbott has been mostly out of the public eye for his post-baseball life.

I’m not exactly sure how Abbott’s story was never made into a Disney sports biopic, but instead it’s now the subject of a film from a different part of the Disney empire: ESPN, which is presenting Southpaw: The Life and Legacy of Jim Abbott, as an episode of the newsmagazine show E:60 on July 13. Directed by Mike Farrell, the film debuted late last year at the DOC NYC film festival.

Southpaw takes on the structure of the Kevin Costner movie For Love of the Game: A pitcher throwing a no-hitter in Yankee Stadium, and the film uses the no-hitter as a framing device to tell his life story.

We see Abbott in the stands at Yankee Stadium, interviewed by Jeremy Schaap, while they watch that September 1993 no-hitter on the scoreboard. When Schaap asks him what it’s like to be back, Abbott answers, accurately, that it’s not the same stadium.

The film flashes over to a few other things, including Abbott’s upbringing, his early career, and all the times he met children with missing limbs and inspired them. We also see Abbott at home with his sports memorabilia — he got to keep the pitching rubber from Yankee Stadium, on the day of the no-hitter — and delivering a motivational speech.

Abbott also explains how he came up with that motion of throwing the ball, moving the glove to his left hand, and then field his position (the answer- he’s been doing it since he was about 6 years old.) And he even played football, starting at quarterback for his high school team in Flint, Michigan.

There’s also some interesting context for the moment when the no-hitter arrived. Abbott did it in August, for a not-particularly good Yankees team, on which not many of the mainstays from its 1990s dynasty teams had arrived yet.

The no-hitter was against a very strong Cleveland lineup that included future Hall of Famer Jim Thome and standouts Albert Belle, Manny Ramirez, and Carlos Baerga. You can see, in footage of the no-hitter, that the game isn’t especially well-attended and the upper deck, at least on one side, looks empty.

Abbott was the 8th overall pick in the draft, went straight to the majors, and looked early on like one of the best young pitchers in the game. But the film also makes clear that while Abbott had some highs in his career, his Yankees tenure was mostly a disaster, other than the no-hitter. Like so many other players in the ‘80s and ‘90s, he was a high-profile acquisition who underachieved with the Yankees, and soon after had ugly run-ins with the New York media.

Abbott also played most of his career in the American League, so he didn’t have to bat, although he did get a couple of hits late in this career when he played for Milwaukee (both of them happened to be against the same pitcher, the Cubs’ Jon Lieber, in two different games.)

There’s almost no mention of Abbott’s wife and two children, except for one picture at the end. Nor is there much about anything Abbott has been up to since he retired from baseball in 1999.

It’s inspirational, yes, but not in a saccharine way that this type of story too often falls into. Abbott is a fascinating documentary subject, and this is one of the better sports documentaries of the year.