Has Hollywood Finally Gone Too Far?

The 1970s, aka THE best decade for couples yachting.

Ben and Casey Affleck (henceforth “Ben Affleck”) and Matt Damon are working on a movie about the whole Fritz Peterson/Mike Kekich wife-swapping thing from the 70s (tentative title: “The Trade”). To me this sounds ok. The story’s old news, but it could make a good movie.

Unless… wait a second. Is it possible that well-known Red Sox propagandists Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, in making a film about a controversy involving Yankee players, are actually committing a deeply violative act? Is this in fact a veritable crime, being perpetrated upon honest Yankees of yore by partisans of a pathetically incompetent and unredeemably racist rival team? In a dark paroxysm of vindictive hypocrisy?

Yahoo! Sports Contributor Network contributing user Roy A. Barnes thinks so.

Some choicer morsels:

“As a fan of the New York Yankees for more than 30 years, I find this utterly disgraceful that these Hollywood elites would try to dig up a dubious chapter in the personal lives of former Red Sox rival players for profit.”

Whenever someone uses “elite” pejoratively, I think to myself: You don’t understand what words mean.

“Let the smug Hollywood elites Affleck and Damon go back to the first glory days of the Bosox, a time when they were a baseball powerhouse in the first part of the 20th century. That is, until the team owner Harry Frazee had the brilliant idea in late 1919 of selling off Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees so he could raise money for his theatre productions on Broadway. What a swap indeed (for the Yankees)…”

Odd spelling of “theater” from an elite-bashing Yankees fan. Is Mr. Barnes actually an elite-loving Anglophile in disguise, merely masquerading here as a lunchpail Yankees diehard? Or worse, could he actually be Canadian, and therefore ineligible for true citizenship in Yankee Nation?

“Ben Affleck and Matt Damon like to wring their hands and open their pie holes over various social causes, so let them do a movie take on why their beloved team was the last club to allow an African American to play for them, and thus, finally showing some racial tolerance.”

Probably a movie that should be made. Point: Roy A. Barnes.

“Keep your noses out of Bronx Bombers’ ‘family business’ that’s over and done with. Neither one of you exploiters are truly welcome to focus on anything sensitive (or otherwise) having to do with Yankee Nation.”

First, it’s unusual to see someone describe celebrity wife-swapping as “family business,” as if it deserves grade-A sacrosanctity. Second, what’s the real danger to Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich’s privacy? Everybody already knows this story! It’s documented on Wikipedia! Also: they were players for the Yankees, and they SWAPPED WIVES! Could these guys have had a reasonable expectation that the world would forget about that, ever, for the rest of their lives?

Roy A. Barnes, self-appointed guardian of “anything sensitive (or otherwise) having to do with Yankee Nation,” feels Matt Damon and Ben Affleck have gone too far. I disagree. But then, I’m a Red Sox fan, so I would.