'The Saint of Second Chances' is a moving tale of Mike Veeck's baseball redemption
In Netflix's new documentary, the scion and baseball impresario tells his only-in-America story, from his father to his children, and from Disco Demolition Night to pigs on the field in St. Paul.
Mike Veeck, it turns out, doesn't actually hate disco music.
That's one of many surprises in The Saint of Second Chances, the astonishing new documentary that debuted on Netflix this week, following a brief festival run.
Veeck's story — some of it, anyway — is well-known to baseball fans. He is the son of Bill Veeck, the legendary owner of the St. Louis Browns and later the Chicago White Sox, and a man whose greatest contribution to the game was his flair for over-the-top stunts. He sent 3-foot-7-inch Eddie Gaedel to the plate for the Browns and had the Sox take the field in Bermuda shorts.
Mike Veeck learned that style of baseball showmanship from his father and made his own career out of it. But as promotions director of the White Sox in 1979, he planned the stunt that flew too close to the sun: The Disco Demolition Night debacle, which was to feature a burning of disco records between games of a doubleheader at old Comiskey Park. This led to a riot and the forfeit of the second game. By the next year, Bill Veeck had sold the team and his son was essentially blackballed from the game.
The younger Veeck resurfaced in the early 1990s as owner and impresario of the St. Paul Saints, an independent minor league team that successfully drew fans with a seemingly endless series of gimmicks and promotions, starting with the colorfully named pigs (“Little Red Porkette,” “867530-Swine,” and “Mud Grant” are three recent ones) who bring the baseballs to the umpires.
But there's a lot more to Mike Veeck's story than that, as the film by co-directors Morgan Neville and Jeff Malmberg demonstrates.
The 90-minute film has three distinct movements. The first tells the story of Bill Veeck, Mike's complex relationship with him, up through the Disco Demolition Night debacle and Mike's exile. The second is about the rise of the Saints, along with other minor-league teams Mike bought. And third deals with Mike Veeck's short and ill-fated return to Major League Baseball, as well as his relationships with his children, including his daughter Rebecca — who suffered for years with a neurological disease — and his son, whose name happens to be Night Train.
Veeck began his career as what might be called a "failson," or a "nepo baby," depending on which subculture was making fun of him at the time, and has spent much of it trying to redeem himself in various ways. The film proves him an engaging on-camera subject, and also a man who has learned, as both a son and a father, from his mistakes. In a series of vignettes, Charlie Day very effectively plays the younger Veeck — with an overpowering air of insecurity — while Jeff Daniels provides a capable narration.
Mike Veeck's regrets include everything from not being around his children enough at times, to the Disco Demolition stunt itself, which he swears wasn't motivated by any personal animus towards disco music or those who liked it- after all, he says, the White Sox had hosted a pro-disco promotion two years earlier.
He also acknowledges the interpretation, shown everywhere from recent documentaries to RuPaul's Drag Race, that Disco Demolition Night had an air of racism and homophobia, with a mostly white, rock-loving crowd gathering to protest music that was initially created by Black and gay people.
Neville, the co-director, has in recent years become one of the most prolific documentarians, winning an Oscar for 2013's 20 Feet From Stardom and also stringing together archival footage in 2015's wildly entertaining Best of Enemies; Buckley vs. Vidal. He also made docs about both Mr. Rogers (Won't You Be My Neighbor?) and Orson Welles (They'll Love Me When I'm Dead) in 2018. His 2021 Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain was both underwhelming and raised ethical alarm bells with its use of AI, but other than that I've enjoyed all of his work. Malmberg, the other co-director, previously made the amazing documentary Marwencol.
Veeck proves a fine subject for the filmmaking duo. The parts with Mike Veeck and his daughter, towards the film's end, are likely to bring many to tears. Stories told in the movies of families being brought together by baseball are very common, but this one finds a new and unique way of doing so.
The Saints section of The Saint of Second Chances is especially enjoyable. Growing up in Minnesota, I went to Saints games from time to time, and it really was a fantastic experience, one that was truly influential on the way minor league (and even major league) games are staged and promoted today.
In addition to the pigs, and one game I remember where they had a tuba player perform the ballpark music that's usually played by an organist, the Saints often signed big names like Jack Morris, Leon “Bull” Durham, and Darryl Strawberry after they washed out of the majors. When the Phillies failed to sign #2 overall pick J.D. Drew in 1997, he played for the Saints for a summer before going back into the draft. They signed a female pitcher, Ila Borders, and even a player with no legs, Dave Stevens.
Borders, Stevens, and Strawberry are all interviewed in the film and Strawberry talks about how he went to the Saints after losing his big league career due to drug suspensions- just as Veeck himself ended up in St. Paul after the majors exiled him. Straw signed with the Yankees later that year and won the 1996 World Series with them.
The film doesn't quite get at one thing central to the Saints' appeal: The Minnesota Twins, for the first 20 years of the Saints' existence, played at the Metrodome, while the Saints were outdoors, and because the season didn't start until June, they managed to avoid the sort of chilling April weather that Twins fans have suffered ever since they moved to the outdoor Target Field in 2010.
The Twins going outside didn’t kill off their crosstown counterpart. The Saints have since moved to a downtown stadium, and are now the Twins' Triple-A affiliate. They've remained a key part of the local sports scene, despite Mike Veeck selling his stake in the team earlier this year. "The St. Paul Saints they waved me through" is even a lyric by the Minnesota-inspired band The Hold Steady, combining three of their favorite subjects in Catholicism, baseball, and Twin Cities lore.
I seem to remember that Bill Murray once wanted to make a Bill Veeck biopic called Veeck as in Wreck, based on the elder Veeck's autobiography of that name — also today Night Train's social media handle — but that never happened. Murray, however, did go on to partner with Mike Veeck in owning the Saints, and the actor sports a Saints hat throughout the first Space Jam movie.
But now we have a film, at last, that pays even greater tribute to the Veeck baseball legacy of three generations.