Whether he’s writing a television pilot, a comic book, or one of the greatest superhero movies of all time, Sam Hamm always has Virginia basketball on the brain.
Hamm’s Cavaliers hoops fandom ignited in his native Charlottesville, Va., on his way to becoming a multi-generational graduate of his hometown college the University of Virginia. Virginia basketball greats Barry Parkhill and Wally Walker helped forge Hamm’s life-long support, a loyalty that has seen the highest of highs and the lowest of lows in college basketball.
Hamm was the first member of his family in generations to not major in law at Virginia (he majored in English literature) and he jokingly calls himself “the shame of the family” for being the first Hamm in four generations to not be a lawyer. Hamm justified going against family traditions when he went out west to Hollywood, eventually settling in San Francisco, and wrote the movie “Batman.” The 1989 Tim Burton film starring Michael Keaton is still considered a live-action, comic book-inspired, cinematic masterpiece that predates the modern superhero movie era in Hollywood. In other words, Hamm wrote a film ahead of its time.
Given his continued significance as a part of the 85-year pop culture history of Batman, Hamm’s key to Gotham City still works. He’s currently writing a comic book sequel to his 2021 mini-series “Batman ‘89” for DC Comics called “Batman ‘89 Echoes.” The “Batman ‘89” comics universe, written by Hamm and illustrated by artist Joe Quinones, is a continuation of the Keaton/Burton Batman world in comic book form. If you’re a Batman fan who never got over the fact that Keaton and Burton didn’t make more than two bat-movies together (Keaton did return as Batman last year in “The Flash”), these comics are for you, written by the person who mapped out Keaton’s first onscreen bat adventure.
If you collected the Topps trading cards inspired by the “Batman” film, these comics are most certainly for you.
In “Batman ‘89 Echoes” Hamm places Batman undercover in Arkham Asylum as an inmate. In the second issue of the series, Virginia basketball fans might recognize some familiar names when one of the prisoners begins shouting a make-believe play-by-play broadcast of a Gotham Knights basketball game for the amusement of his fellow captives.
The names of the stars of the imaginary game? A writing Easter egg trick Hamm has used before in other heroic worlds he’s created: Virginia men’s basketball players.
“He’s using the names of players from the 2019 (Virginia) championship team, who have all apparently been drafted and are now playing for the Gotham Knights,” Hamm said. “He’s doing a little dictation on this imaginary playoff game and all the other people in the asylum are sitting around waiting to see who’s going to win.”
The championship-winning Virginia stars who made cameos in the scene were shooting guard Ty Jerome and power forward De’Andre Hunter. Eventually a prisoner “changes the channel” with a remote just as real as the broadcast, which causes the play-by-play man to switch into a news report of a political scandal featuring aliens and a Virginia senator named “Williford” — yet another Easter egg as the senator is named after Virginia associate head coach Jason Williford.
This isn’t the first time Hamm has brought his Virginia basketball pride to one of his projects. He says his scripts for television and movies were always full of Virginia basketball player names but rarely do those names make the final draft.
Sometimes they do stick, though. In the early ‘90s, Hamm teamed up with future “Spider-Man” trilogy director Sam Raimi and actor Carl Lumbly (who can be seen in next year’s “Captain America: Brave New World”) on the short-lived television series “M.A.N.T.I.S.” A supporting character on “M.A.N.T.I.S.” was named Yuri Barnes, the same name as Virginia’s backup center while Hamm and Raimi were developing the show.
When Virginia was the visiting team against Stanford before “M.A.N.T.I.S.” debuted, Hamm attended the game and told the real Barnes there was a surprise for him if he watched the show.
Before you think about asking, no, Hamm has never written a character named Ralph Sampson, after perhaps the most legendary Virginia basketball player of all.
“At that point we would have been trying to get the cameo from the actual Ralph Sampson,” Hamm said, laughing.
Rooting for Virginia basketball for most of his life has brought Hamm feelings of “a nut punch” and “nirvana.” He’s seen it all. And for a while, it was all bad. When Virginia was ranked No. 1 in the country in 1982 and lost to Chaminade in Hawaii, Hamm thought the “shocker” headlines in his newspaper meant Chaminade lost by less than what bookies had predicted. Hamm shed tears when he realized Ralph Sampson had played his final game for Virginia against NC State without winning a national title.
“I think it’s the only time I’ve cried at a basketball game,” Hamm recalled.
By the time Virginia lost to UMBC in 2018 and became the first ever No. 1 seed in NCAA tournament history to fall to a 16 seed, Hamm had no more tears. He even found a Virginia angle in the historic defeat. UMBC’s coach at the time was Ryan Odom, the son of former Virginia assistant coach Dave Odom, who went on to coach Tim Duncan at Wake Forest.
“(Ryan Odom) was a ball boy. And then he comes up in this historic game and he knocks us out of the tournament when we’re number one and he’s number 16,” Hamm said. “It was so weird and incestuous and by then I had already been Chaminade-ed. It seemed like, sure, this is the kind of thing that happens when you’re a Virginia fan.”
“I just thought, ‘Fate, what else you got for me?’” Hamm continued.
Then Virginia head coach Tony Bennett led the Cavaliers to a national championship the next year in 2019. And Hamm felt something he’d never felt before as a Virginia basketball fan.
“I was sort of stupified. I didn’t know what to do,” Hamm said. “I didn’t know what to think. My wife told me afterward, she said, ‘Boy, I think you’re going to have to go see a psychiatrist…your entire life narrative just changed.’ And I thought…she’s kinda right. I was basically hunched over waiting for the nut punch all the way through the (2019) tournament and amazingly it never came.”
And then Tony Bennett shockingly retired as head coach of Virginia basketball on October Oct. 18 of this year. How did Hamm handle that punch?
“Poorly,” Hamm said. “It’s a rough thing to digest because it seemed like we had achieved a certain level of nirvana while Tony Bennett was the coach. Even if he had a bad year, it was still a better year than we were accustomed to having as Virginia fans. By all accounts he’s such a great guy and such a good human being that you can’t help but feel awful about seeing him go.”
Which leads to the most obvious question of all for Hamm, now that the most successful era of Virginia basketball he’s ever known is over: Will a hero or villain named “Tony Bennett” show up in “Batman ‘89: Echoes” before the mini-series ends?
“I haven’t quite finished that script for issue six yet,” Hamm said.
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(All photos courtesy of DC Entertainment, Top photo of Hamm: Tom Zito)
