Baseball: Inning Four 'A National Heirloom' (1994)
**** (out of 4)
The fourth episode in Ken Burns series takes a look at the years between 1920 and 1929. As usual, narration, photos and video help show what was going on in the sport during this period and we get stories about such things including Ray Chapman's death when he was hit in the head by a ball, the Negro Leagues continuing to grow, the sport writers, the radio broadcasts, building Yankee Stadium, Walter Johnson winning a World Series, the death of Christy Mathewson, Murderers Row and Ty Cobb's retirement. We also look at players like Rube Foster, Rogers Hornsby, Lou Gerrig but the majority of the running time is given to Babe Ruth. Overall this is another terrific episode that baseball fans should love and even those not too familiar with the sport should enjoy because it's simply so well made and entertaining. The majority of the running time is devoted to Ruth, which is quite understandable considering all the ways he changed the sport. We hear about his troubled upbringing, the personal details of his horrid and tragic marriage as well as the countless issues that he ran into with managers, fans, the commissioner and umpires. Then, of course, there are the countless home runs, popularity and everything else that the man did. As with the previous films, this one here features all sorts of terrific photos but more importantly is all the video footage. Considering a lot more stuff was being filmed during this decade it makes sense that we get more video footage so getting to see some of these legendary players in motion was great fun to see.
**** (out of 4)
The fourth episode in Ken Burns series takes a look at the years between 1920 and 1929. As usual, narration, photos and video help show what was going on in the sport during this period and we get stories about such things including Ray Chapman's death when he was hit in the head by a ball, the Negro Leagues continuing to grow, the sport writers, the radio broadcasts, building Yankee Stadium, Walter Johnson winning a World Series, the death of Christy Mathewson, Murderers Row and Ty Cobb's retirement. We also look at players like Rube Foster, Rogers Hornsby, Lou Gerrig but the majority of the running time is given to Babe Ruth. Overall this is another terrific episode that baseball fans should love and even those not too familiar with the sport should enjoy because it's simply so well made and entertaining. The majority of the running time is devoted to Ruth, which is quite understandable considering all the ways he changed the sport. We hear about his troubled upbringing, the personal details of his horrid and tragic marriage as well as the countless issues that he ran into with managers, fans, the commissioner and umpires. Then, of course, there are the countless home runs, popularity and everything else that the man did. As with the previous films, this one here features all sorts of terrific photos but more importantly is all the video footage. Considering a lot more stuff was being filmed during this decade it makes sense that we get more video footage so getting to see some of these legendary players in motion was great fun to see.