It starts with a thump. Not a punch, not a kick—this thump is hips-on-hips, bodies in motion, skates slicing across hardwood with the confidence of a linebacker and the grace of a ballerina. This is roller derby, baby. And on this episode of The Adrian Moment, Ocean Murff and Jim Pullen don their metaphorical elbow pads and dive helmet-first into Whip It, Drew Barrymore’s underdog sports flick that zips, zags, and jabs its way into the coming-of-age canon.

This is a play-by-play from two guys who know the smell of stadium nachos and the sacred geometry of the underdog arc. Ocean recounts a real-life Rose City Rollers bout—600 strong in a Portland warehouse—and frames the chaos with a journalist’s eye and a fan’s heart. Jim’s got questions. About penalties. About player names. About why Lauren Much didn’t skate that night. And together, they break down not just the sport, but the spirit that keeps it rolling.

Of course, they tackle the film’s plot: Bliss Cavendar, the small-town Texas teen who trades pageants for pads and becomes Babe Ruthless. But they’re really after something deeper—the tension between expectation and ambition, the line between rebellion and identity, and the way a mother’s reluctant blessing can carry more weight than a gold medal.

They question whether the movie’s final bout matters as much as the heartbreak that precedes it. They wonder if roller derby’s fake-outs and body blows are a metaphor, or just a damn good time. And of course, they trade derby names—because how else do you honor a sport where every player is part athlete, part alter ego?

If you’ve ever felt torn between who you’re told to be and who you might become, if you’ve ever yelled “We’re number two!” and meant it with all your heart, this one’s for you. Strap in. This one hits like a Witch Slap and lingers like a bruised memory.

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Baseball is a game of numbers. Nine innings. Twenty-seven outs. Ninety feet between the bases. It is a sport where precision is worshipped, where history is measured in statistics, and where perfection—true perfection—is almost impossible.

But every so often, the improbable happens. A pitcher stands alone on the mound, the weight of history pressing down, and achieves something transcendent: a perfect game.

This week, Ocean Murff and Jim Pullen review For Love of the Game, the 1999 Kevin Costner film that is as much about loss as it is about baseball. It is a film where the act of throwing a baseball is about memory, regret, and the search for meaning in the final moments of a career. It is about what happens when the thing that has defined you for decades is slipping away, and you have to decide—right there, on the mound—what comes next.

What happened to baseball’s grip on the American imagination? In 1999, the sport was still a cultural monolith, capable of stopping a city in its tracks. Today, it struggles to command attention beyond its most loyal devotees. Why? What changed? And does For Love of the Game inadvertently capture the last gasp of baseball’s golden era?

In this episode, Ocean and Jim approach the film’s love story, its poetic treatment of baseball, and its place in the broader shift of America’s relationship with its so-called national pastime. Along the way, they reflect on the myth of the perfect game, the unseen forces shaping modern sports, and whether baseball—like Billy Chapel—has already played its final masterpiece.

Links & Notes

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What makes a legend? Is it the weight of history, the whispers of truth passed down through generations? Or is it something more ephemeral—an idea, a story, a narrative so compelling that it becomes real in the telling?

Ocean Murff and Jim Pullen set out on an odyssey of their own, peeling back the layers of myth and spectacle surrounding Hidalgo, the 2004 film that dares to ask whether a man and his horse can outrun not just their rivals, but their own pasts. At first glance, Hidalgo is a sports movie—an underdog story set against the backdrop of a 3,000-mile endurance race across the Arabian desert. But is that all it is? Or is it something stranger, something more elusive?

Frank T. Hopkins, as the film would have you believe, was a legend—part cowboy, part Lakota warrior, a man who rode his mustang into history. But reality, as Ocean and Jim discover, is far messier. What if the race never happened? What if the stories were never more than stories? What if, in the grand tradition of American myth-making, Frank Hopkins was less a historical figure and more a talented fabulist, a man who understood that the right story, told the right way, could become indistinguishable from truth?

This episode is about a film. But it’s also about the nature of belief. It’s about why we cling to legends even when the facts refuse to cooperate. It’s about what happens when a lie is so beautifully constructed that we want—desperately—to believe in it anyway.

Because Hidalgo isn’t just the name of a horse. It’s an idea. And ideas, as history has shown us time and again, can be more powerful than reality itself.

Links & Notes

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• More episodes of The Adrian Moment
• The Long Rider's Guild on Frank T. Hopkins

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Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. It's just $5/month or $55/year. Visit our website to learn more.