"Baseball" (1994) TV series

User Rating:

9.2/10   

Seasons:

1

Release Date:

18 September 1994 (USA)

Genre:

Documentary | History | Sport

Plot:

A documentary on the history of the sport with major topics including Afro-American players, player/team owner relations and the resilience of the game.

Plot Keywords:

Baseball | Prejudice | 1900s | Labor Union | 1800s

Awards:

Won Primetime Emmy. Another 2 wins & 2 nominations

Cast

Mamie Ruth Moberly

...

Herself (1 episode, 1994)

Runtime:

1140 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White | Color

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Company:

Florentine Films

Trivia:

When discussing Yogi Berra's many interesting quotes, a friend of Yogi's is alleged to have said, "Hey, Yogi, what do you know?" Yogi allegedly replied, "I don't even suspect anything." This exchange is actually taken from an exchange Charles Chaplin had in a Parisienne café in Monsieur Verdoux (1947).

Quotes:

Narrator: It is played everywhere. In parks and playgrounds and prison yards. In back alleys and farmers' fields. By small children and old men. Raw amateurs and millionaire professionals. It is a leisurely game that demands blinding speed. The only game in which the defense has the ball...

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "Homicide: Life on the Street: The Documentary (#5.11)" (1997)

Telling it like it was

Baseball is a well-researched, thorough documentary of the history of baseball made by Ken Burns, and anyone should find it enjoyable. Burns' overfocus on labor and blacks can be a bother at times, but that is the perspective he chose and he does well with it, and I certainly enjoyed "Shadowball." The real problem is the surfeit of commentary from people like George F. Will (besides, I do not wish to hear what he thinks about anything) and Doris Kearns Goodwin, all of 'em. What I want to hear is the baseball personalities, whom Burns did so well with, not the continual ruminations of celebrity nonexperts -- a little is enough. The worst moment is hearing them sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." The result was underemphasis of some areas of substantive baseball, like some great Philadelphia A's teams of old and various aspects and personalities of the most recent baseball at the time the documentary was made. But for the most part, thumbs up to Burns for his efforts.