Baseball (TV series)
Baseball | |
---|---|
Genre | Documentary film |
Created by | Ken Burns |
Written by | Geoffrey C. Ward Ken Burns |
Starring | see text |
Narrated by | John Chancellor |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language | English |
No. of episodes | 9 |
Production | |
Producers | Ken Burns Lynn Novick |
Running time | approx. 18.5 hours total |
Production company | National Endowment for the Humanities |
Original release | |
Network | PBS |
Release | September 18 September 28, 1994 | –
Related | |
The Tenth Inning |
Baseball is a 1994 American television documentary miniseries created by documentary filmmaker Ken Burns about the history of the sport of baseball.
First broadcast on
Format
Baseball, like Burns' previous documentaries such as
The documentary is divided into nine parts, each referred to as an "
The Nine Innings
- 1st Inning – Our Game
- This inning serves as an introduction to the game and the series, and covers baseball's origins and the game as it evolved prior to the 20th century, to where professional leagues make the game grow in popularity, and notoriety, throughout the growing nation.
Original airdate: Sunday, September 18, 1994.[2]
- 2nd Inning – Something Like A War
- This inning covers approximately 1900 to 1910, and includes the formation of the American League and its integration with the National League, culminating in the establishment of the World Series, as well as the emergence of the game's first great stars, Christy Mathewson and Honus Wagner, who help to clean up baseball's previously bad reputation as a rowdy, brawling game. Ty Cobb is discussed in-depth (the title of this inning comes from one of his many quotes). Many of the quotes used in this inning and of the other early innings are taken from Lawrence S. Ritter's best selling The Glory of Their Times.
Original airdate: Monday, September 19, 1994.[2]
- 3rd Inning – The Faith of Fifty Million People
- This inning covers approximately 1910 to 1920, and follows baseball as it goes through its greatest era of popularity yet. It heavily focuses on the Black Sox Scandal, taking its title from a line in the novel The Great Gatsby. The line refers to how easy it was for gamblers to tamper with the faith people put in the game's fairness.
Original airdate: Tuesday, September 20, 1994.[2]
- 4th Inning – A National Heirloom
- This inning covers approximately 1920 to 1930, and focuses on baseball's recovery from the Black Sox Scandal, giving much of the credit to the increase in power hitting throughout the game, led by its savior Babe Ruth. The title comes from what sports writers called Ruth. During an interview given to MLB Network during the series' re-airing in 2009, Burns stated he originally wanted to title the 4th Inning "That Big Son-of-a-Bitch", a name given to Ruth by many in the game during that era. However, the companion book uses this title.
Original airdate: Wednesday, September 21, 1994.[2]
- 5th Inning – Shadow Ball
- This inning covers approximately 1930 to 1940. A great deal of this inning covers the Negro leagues, and the great players and organizers who were excluded from the Major Leagues. Also, the episode deals with organized Baseball's response to the Great Depression, as well as the sad decline of its most iconic star, Babe Ruth, and the emergence of new heroes, like Bob Feller, Hank Greenberg, and Joe DiMaggio.
Original airdate: Thursday, September 22, 1994.[2]
- 6th Inning – The National Pastime
- This inning covers approximately 1940 to 1950. The emphasis here is on baseball finally becoming what it had always purported to be: a national game, as African-Americans are finally permitted to play Major League Baseball, led by Jackie Robinson. This inning also looks at how the game responded to World War II and how the game became, more than ever, a symbol of America itself.
Original airdate: Sunday, September 25, 1994.[2]
- 7th Inning – The Capital of Baseball
- This inning covers approximately 1950 to 1960. Burns emphasizes the greatness of the three teams based in New York (the New York Giants, and Brooklyn Dodgers). This inning also covers one of baseball's golden eras and how America's own changes, such as leaving urban areas and heading west to more open suburbs, caused baseball to follow.
Original airdate: Monday, September 26, 1994.[2]
- 8th Inning – A Whole New Ballgame
- This inning covers approximately 1960 to 1970. As the nation underwent turbulent changes, baseball was not immune, as Babe Ruth's beloved record of 60 home runs in a season is threatened by a sullen and complicated player, Roger Maris, and for the first time in decades, pitchers, led by stars Sandy Koufax and Bob Gibson, dominate the game. The loss of home run power and betrayal to the game's past, combined with the meteoric rise of football, cause many to turn their back on baseball. Expansion and labor are major topics in this inning.
Original airdate: Tuesday, September 27, 1994.[2]
- 9th Inning – Home
- The final inning covers approximately 1970 to 1992. While baseball survived the 1960s, the changes were not over, and in some ways, its most bitter conflicts were just beginning. Major topics included the formation of the players' union, the owners' collusion, free agency, and drugs, as well as gambling, scandals. However, the game manages to win back the hearts of many with such moments as the excitement of the 1975 World Series and the return of the New York Yankees to dominance. The documentary ends with an ironic boast baseball (and indirectly the World Series) had survived wars, depressions, pandemics, and numbers of scandals and thus could never be stopped. The 1994 World Series, the series to be played the year the film first aired on PBS, was cancelled due to a players' strike. This marked the first time since 1904 the World Series was not played.
Original airdate: Wednesday, September 28, 1994.[2]
- 10th Inning – (Episode 1, Top of the 10th)
- This two part, four hour encore presentation covers stories from 1992 to 2010. The first part discusses the labor stoppage of the 1990s, which disgruntles fans as well as Mark McGwire's and Sammy Sosa's pursuit of the home run record in 1998.
Original airdate: Tuesday, September 28, 2010.
- 10th Inning – (Episode 2, Bottom of the 10th)
- This two part, four hour encore presentation covers stories from 1992 to 2010. The second part spends a fair amount of time covering the steroid scandal in the 2000s, as well as the role baseball played in helping the nation heal from 9/11, and how the game, even in the midst of America's greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression continue to become as popular as it has ever been.
Original airdate: Wednesday, September 29, 2010.
Interview subjects
The following is a non-exhaustive list of people not involved in baseball who were interviewed in the documentary:
- Arthur Ashe, tennis player
- Roger Angell, editor and writer, The New Yorker
- Mike Barnicle, writer
- Washington Postcolumnist.
- Howard Bryant, writer, ESPN
- Mario Cuomo, former governor of New York (and a former prospect in the Pittsburgh Pirates system)
- Robert Creamer, writer, Sports Illustrated
- Billy Crystal, actor, comedian
- Gerald Early, Professor of Modern Letters, Washington University in St. Louis
- Shelby Foote, writer and historian
- Doris Kearns Goodwin, writer and historian
- Stephen Jay Gould, evolutionary biologist
- U.S. Poet Laureate
- Gary Hoenig, journalist
- Manuel Marquez-Sterling, historian
- Charley McDowell, journalist
- Willie Morris, writer
- Daniel Okrent, public editor, The New York Times
- Keith Olbermann, broadcaster
- Thomas Phillip "Tip" O'Neill, Jr., former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives
- George Plimpton, writer
- Washington Post
- John Sayles, filmmaker (most notably Eight Men Out)
- Studs Terkel, writer and journalist
- John Thorn, historian
- TBS and the MLB Network
- George Will, political commentator
The following is a non-exhaustive list of people who were more involved in the game of baseball, and were interviewed in the documentary:
- Hank Aaron
- Red Barber, broadcaster
- A.B. "Happy" Chandler, Commissioner of Baseball
- Bob Costas, broadcaster
- Charles "Chub" Feeney, executive, New York/San Francisco Giants
- Donald Fehr, MLBPA President
- Bob Feller
- Curt Flood
- Milt Gaston
- Billy Herman
- Bill "the Spaceman" Lee
- Mickey Mantle
- Pedro Martínez
- Marvin Miller, union organizer for Major League players
- Buck O'Neil
- Double Duty Radcliffe
- Jimmie Reese
- Rachel Robinson, widow of Jackie Robinson
- Mamie Ruth, sister of Babe Ruth
- Commissioner
- Vin Scully, broadcaster
- Clyde Sukeforth, scout and manager, Brooklyn Dodgers
- Ichiro Suzuki
- Joe Torre
- Omar Vizquel
- Ted Williams
Voices
The following provided voice-over readings in Baseball:
- Adam Arkin
- Philip Bosco, as Albert Spalding and Ban Johnson
- Keith Carradine as "Shoeless Joe" Jackson
- David Caruso
- Billy Crystal
- John Cusack
- Ossie Davis
- Doris Kearns Goodwin
- Ed Harris
- Julie Harris
- John Hartford
- Gregory Hines
- Anthony Hopkins, as Henry Chadwick and George Bernard Shaw
- Jesse Jackson
- Derek Jacobi
- Garrison Keillor as Walt Whitman
- Alan King
- Stephen King
- Delroy Lindo
- Al Lewis
- Amy Madigan
- Arthur Miller
- Michael Moriarty
- Paul Newman
- Tip O'Neill
- Gregory Peck, as Kid Gleason and Connie Mack
- Jody Powell, as Ty Cobb
- LaTanya Richardson
- Jason Robards, as John McGraw, Kenesaw Mountain Landis and Harry Frazee
- Jerry Stiller
- Studs Terkel, as Hugh Fullerton
- John Turturro
- Eli Wallach
- M. Emmet Walsh
- Paul Winfield
Reception
Critics and audiences praised the series but criticized its length and detail. At 18.5 hours, the runtime of the series is one of Burns' longest.[3]
The first episode more than doubled PBS's average primetime ratings with a
The Tenth Inning
At a preview screening of his 2007 documentary
During in-game coverage of a Texas Rangers game during July 2009, Burns was interviewed, and said The Tenth Inning would air "about a year from now" on PBS. He also stated that it would be two two-hour programs. One would be the "top of the 10th", and the other would be the "bottom of the 10th". He also said that "the good Lord willing", there would be an 11th Inning and a 12th Inning in the future. His aim was to air the 11th Inning in 2020 opening with Armando Galarraga.[6] Burns also said that Baseball is the only one of his documentaries to which he was ever interested in doing a "sequel" (of sorts).
The Tenth Inning premiered on PBS on September 28, 2010, narrated by
Critical reception
David Hinckley of New York Daily News wrote, "Ken Burns hits another one out of the park."[7]
See also
References
- ^ "Baseball – Awards". IMDb. Retrieved March 11, 2015.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Hits, Runs and Memories The New York Times
- ^ Sandomir, Richard (September 24, 2010). "Baseball Continued: Between Rebirth and Calamity". The New York Times. Retrieved May 18, 2020.
- Daily Variety. p. 1.
- ^ [1] Archived August 31, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Chen, Albert (September 28, 2010). "Richard Deitsch: Ken Burns returns to baseball with "The Tenth Inning" – More Sports – SI.com". Sports Illustrated. Retrieved July 21, 2014.
- ^ Hinckley, David (September 27, 2010). "Ken Burns hits another one out of the park with his sequel to 1994's 'Baseball'". New York Daily News. Retrieved December 8, 2019.
External links
- PBS page on Baseball
- Streaming from PBS
- The Tenth Inning website
- Baseball at IMDb