MLB: The Movie, Casting Kevin Youkilis

It’s a long running fantasy of mine and of my friends to build a comprehensive, dramatic film about MLB. Often this includes spinoffs — most recently one that features Razor Shines and Rance Mulliniks as ballplayers by night, buddy cops by day/late night, complete with Derek Bell as a no-nonsense Chief of Police. (Very possibly, a outline for this “film project” will appear at NotGraphs in the near future.)

Chief Bell

I’ve been searching for a way to kick off this MLB: The Movie idea here at NotGraphs, but didn’t really know how to get started. Then, last night, as I was perusing Craig Robinson’s glorious Flip Flop Fly Ball website — a must visit for any baseball aesthete — I happened upon his very funny painting of “Kevin Youkalyptus”:

“Kevin Youkalyptus” by Craig Robinson

Looking at this image, a casting idea hit me, and I became so enamored of it that I couldn’t wait any longer to begin my pitch for MLB: The Movie. That baggy body, which contains so much effeminate manliness, a strange corkscrew of rage and grace — it could be no other way . . .

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, Louis C.K. as Kevin Youkilis.

Wait, I guess it should be:

The two have more in common than just their pale, balding, ginger gourds and general frumpiness. For instance, both have ties to Boston; Youkilis’s is obvious, but Louis C.K. lived there for roughly fifteen years from late childhood into early adulthood.

Both have experienced name changes . . . sort of. In Louis’s case, C.K. is an approximate American pronunciation of his real last name, Szekely, which is Hungarian. Kevin’s great-great grandfather changed the family name from Weiner to Youkilis when he left his native Romania for Greece to avoid persecution by the anti-semitic Kossacks.

Both have some ethnic obscurity about them: people often think Kevin is Greek because of his name; Louis is the son of a native of Mexico with Hungarian-Jewish lineage, and an American Irish Catholic, though without said knowledge anyone might just identify Louis as “middle American.”

Both have acting careers: Louis is hitting his stride right now, as we all probably know, but did you know that Kevin was in the Melanie Griffith/Ed Harris rom-com, Milk Money when he was fourteen?

Both, one supposes, enjoy BBQ chicken pizza on the reg’.

As we know from Dayn Perry’s biography of the Young Kevin Youkilis, things might have been a bit awkward for Youk growing up. It’s easy to imagine that Louis C.K. can commiserate. If an actor needs to feel sympathy and connection with the character that s/he is to portray, then we need look no further in our casting call for the role of Kevin Youkilis in MLB: The Movie. Louis shall do.