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51 of 61 people found the following review helpful:
View it as entertainment, not as history, July 8, 2004
Ken Burns is becoming well-known as much for what he leaves out of his documentaries as for what he tells you and how he tells it. One sees it somewhat in the Civil War documentary (unless of course you are a Lost Cause devotee, in which case you view that series as horribly biased and riddled with errors), and it is definitely (and troublingly) evident in his Jazz documentary, where 40 years of jazz is virtually glossed over in favor of an almost obsessive fixation on Louis Armstrong. In the case of "Baseball," Burns again leaves out huge chunks of the story, although the end result is nonetheless entertaining.In the case of "Baseball," the unrelenting focus is on New York City, Babe Ruth & Jackie Robinson, and to be fair, there is no way you could discuss the subject of baseball without devoting a great deal of time to these subjects. However, the title of the documentary is "Baseball," not "The New York City, Babe Ruth, and Jackie Robinson Story," and it is possible to watch this documentary at times and come to believe that nothing else was happening out side of New York most of the time. I recall reading a Sports Illustrated article a few years ago that discussed the Philadelphia Athletics from 1929-1931, and made the case that that team was better than the famed "Murderer's Row" Yankees of 1926-1928, and possibly the best team in baseball history. The article's author crunched the numbers, compared the stats, and made a pretty compelling case. He then asked why so little attention has been paid to the A's over the years, and posited that because most of the nation's important papers and sportswriters were based in New York City; by default the majority of the great sportswriting was devoted to the Yankees, while relatively backwater Philadelphia languished in obscurity. It seems to be the same situation with Burns. While other incredibly dominant teams such as (in the early years) the Chicago Cubs, the A's, the Pittsburgh Pirates & the Detroit Tigers are given passing mention, they are quickly shoved on the back burner in favor of the Boston Red Sox & New York Giants. Then the Yankees & the Dodgers begin to coalesce, and it is all New York, all the time. One gets no feeling for how dominant the 1929-1931 A's (or the St. Louis Cardinals of the mid-1930's) were, because Burns continually focuses on Babe Ruth & the Negro Leagues. When Burns gets to the 1950's he can be excused, because really it was a New York-dominated decade like no other. However, the other decades did in fact see a more competitive balance, and one would not get this impression from the documentary. It would have been nice if Burns hadn't crammed the last quarter century of his story into one "inning." Are you telling me that the stories since 1970 aren't as compelling as the early years of baseball. I don't believe that Burns would have had to devote that much more time to the post-1970 era to make it feel less cursory and rushed. This is a somewhat annoying tendency of his that was more griveously evident when he made "Jazz." Also, I get a little tired of the "poetry of baseball" school of thought. It isn't as though I am some knuckle-dragging troglodyte who gets all his news from sports radio; I am just as likely to go to the opera as to the ballpark. This baseball as metaphor for how the cosmos works gets on my nerves after a while (although I consider Roger Angell's comment "there's more Met than Yankee in all of us" to be priceless beyond description). It's not that baseball doesn't imbue our life with a little extra something special, it's just that some of these talking heads tend to get a little overwrought. I enjoyed watching the documentary the first time, and I have watched it probably half a dozen times since over the years. By comparison, I have watched "The Civil War" about 15 times, I would guess. I was so disappointed with "Jazz" that I managed only a second viewing. In any case, "Baseball" is very entertaining, and that is what largely accounts for my 4-star rating I would only caution those who don't know their baseball history that this documentary omits a great deal of what is a very good story.
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40 of 74 people found the following review helpful:
Sentimentality run amok, September 5, 2004
I will acknowledge that I'm a once avid baseball fan who has soured on the sport, in part because it's become of a case of the rich get richer (read that the Yankees and Mr. Steinbrenner) and in part because of "innovations.'' I loathe the designated hitter and while I've come to appreciate the wild card for its ability to keep teams in the race long after they should be out, I still think it's a perversion of the sport I grew up with.
But what really turned me off was the segment on baseball in NY between the 50s and 60s, which is when I grew up as a fan of the Dodgers. The segment, it turns out, is 75 percent Yankees without mentioning that they were just as Steinbrenneresque in those days as they are now. (How CAN anyone be a Yankee fan if it's a lost season when you make it to the World Series and lose?)
So we get all about Mantle and Stengel and the Yankees (cleansing the part about Mantle's carousing shortening his career _ it's mentioned and brushed off). For all anyone can tell, the only players on the Dodgers and Giants were Robinson and Mays (Burns' description of the plight of black ballplayers is a strong part of the documentary, but that's overdoing it.) A little Snider and Campanella, no Hodges and Furillo and Don Newcombe, one of the best pitchers AND hitters of the era only in passing. A little Monte Irvin. No Don Mueller, Alvin Dark, Hank Thompson (hey, he forgot an African--American), Davey Williams.
There are factual errors _ Ralph Branca's career did NOT go downhill because of the stress caused by Thomson's homer. It went downhill because he had a sore arm that he hurt as a rookie. They didn't have Tommy John surgery or other medical advances in those days.
And omissions. As noted, Burns spends a lot of time on the plight of black players. He NEVER notes in this segment that the Yankees were one of the last teams to have one and the best _ Vic Power _ was shipped to what amounted to their farm team, the Athletics, because he wasn't the "right'' kind of black.
OK, I'm biased. I'm soured on baseball and my team the Mets, who grew from the ashes of the Dodgers and Giants, are horrible and mismanaged right now. (Another omission: nothing about the greed that drove O'Malley to California.) In fact, Burns has Stoneham taking the Giants there first when in truth, it was O'Malley who got Stoneham to agree that they would go together.
There's some good stuff here. Buck O'Neil is a wonderful character, certainly very positive for a man barred by his color from playing in the major leagues. But too many flaws. Too many mistakes.
Sorry, but only three stars.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
A tribute to baseball by Ken Burns and his team, December 25, 2007
This volume contains a lot that is very good. Its structure is a bit forced (nine innings, or periods, of baseball history). The 9th inning, as others have noted, covers a large time frame compared with earlier "innings." I'm not sure that the decade is the best way of organizing baseball history, either. Still and all, that's more a matter of taste than anything else.
The book's authors candidly observe that they will focus on eastern teams, e.g., Boston Red Sox and Brooklyn Dodgers, "because we felt their stories especially rich in the human drama that accompanies the history of every team." However, I agree with a reviewer (who bears the name of one of Detroit's best first basemen ever) who laments that this really does slight the deep baseball history that covers much more territory than New York to Boston. Again, though, certainly not a fatal flaw by any stretch in this book.
This book is seen as complementary to the documentary series on PBS, designed to elaborate certain issues in ways not possible in the TV medium. Some of the special features in both the documentary and book are the recollections of Buck O'Neil; interviews with historians, writers, managers, and players. Finally, essays by a number of "guests" represent an interesting twist. Roger Angell has a wonderful Introduction, "Hard Lines," in which he juxtaposes the apparent ease of playing baseball with the harsh realities of players often fighting just to stay in the big leagues or losing the joy for the game (note the brief discussion on Carl Yastrzemski). He observes that: "Once we understand how really hard it is, we become citizens of baseball, admiring its laws and just paths, even when the luck of the day hasn't gone our way." Other guest commentators include George Will, Bill James, and Doris Kearns Goodwin.
But the book is about baseball, so the nine innings are themselves the heart of this book. The early years, up until 1900, feature a strange game to us today, with very different rules--as well as the origins of racial segregation in the game (the issue of race is one of the main themes of the book). The second inning discusses the game as "Something like a war," when players played and fought hard. And so on. No need to provide a full chronology. Some special segments: the role of Babe Ruth, in the Fourth Inning, helping baseball dig out from under the disaster of the Chicago Black Sox, who threw a World Series. The Sixth Inning features the end of segregation in baseball, with Jackie Robinson's big league debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
A final quotation from Buck O'Neil illustrates how the game can be addictive--to players (and even to fans), when he says: "There is nothing in life like getting your body to do all the things it has to do on the baseball field."
All in all, an ambitious work, trying to capture the spirit of baseball, its sins, and its contributions. While I do have some questions about this volume, as already noted, it ends up not quite being a home run, but it surely is extra bases.
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10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
America's Documentarian Tackles The National Pastime, November 15, 2005
I see lots of reviews here curmudgeonly dissing Ken Burns "Baseball" for what it is NOT rather than what it is. For a baseball fan who doesn't mind the film's devotion to teams of New York it's a slice of heaven.
It's futile to condense 18 hours of screentime into a few paragraphs, but it's worthwhile to note a few things I feel are wonderful about the film.
The entire opening "inning" (the film is divided into 9 segments of 2 hours each) is devoted to the origins of the game - both as a game, then as a game played for money. The widely held misconception that Abner Doubleday "invented" baseball is taken apart immediately.
Burns spends a lot of time documenting the historical and social context of where America was as a country at the same time events were occurring on the diamond. In that way he presents the perspective that baseball's single greatest moment was the day Jackie Robinson walked onto Ebbett's Field with "Dodgers" across his chest. It's useful for us as people to not only appreciate the baseball achievements of Jackie Robinson and, later, players such as Willie Mays and Hank Aaron, but also to acknowledge the widespread racism and outright barriers they had to overcome that their white counterparts didn't even have to consider.
He similarly contrasts virtuous players with non-virtuous ones. In inning two the film triumphantly reports the victory of mild-mannered Honus Wagner's Pirates over hated Ty Cobb's Tigers.
It's a little disconcerting how little time is allocated to recent years - most "innings" cover a decade, but the most recent 24 years of baseball (1970-1994) are covered in a single disc. Since that is the time most of us are most familiar with it's easy to feel a little slighted.
If you think baseball is just "some game" this film is clearly not aimed at you. But if you love to talk about baseball and to hear stories of towering home runs and crafty pitchers - "Baseball" is like a long love poem to the game.
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35 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
An annual rite of spring: watching "Baseball", April 1, 2001
Every spring I watch Ken Burns' celebrated documentary "Baseball" on the weekend of Opening Day. Even if I am not sitting glued to the tube while it is on, listening to John Chancellor tell the story of the game is an enjoyable experience. Each "inning" takes on a specific focus, providing a defining element in the way Ty Cobb played the game, the Black Sox Scandal, the way Babe Ruth played the game, the struggle of the Negro Leagues, the dominance of New York temas in the Fifties, the creation of Free Agency, etc. Concise profiles of many of the game's greatest players and managers are spread throughout the nine volumes. More importantly, virtually every great moment in the history of the sport is to be found, not to mention some wonderful old-fashioned baseball songs.Clearly, the climax of the documentary comes in Inning 6, "The National Pastime," when Jackie Robinson starts playing for the Dodgers. The series begins with a prologue on Ebbets Field and Robinson is laid to rest in the final episode. While the focus is on the Major Leagues throughout, Burns always checks back in with what is happening with the black players and the Negro Leagues, building towards Robinson breaking the color barrier. I think it is fair to say the documentary loses some steam after that point, but then that is the point where the series gets to players and moments that overlap our own lifetime. Once we get to colored images from television there is a different feel to "Baseball" from the black & white images to which we have become accustomed. Also, the more you know about the history of baseball the more you will see the glaring omissions. Stan Musial is the obvious example cited by other reviewers, but he is eclipsed in the episodes covering the 40's and 50's by Jackie Robinson and the New York teams, just as he was during his career. In terms of the talking heads it is hard to appreciate Billy Crystal and George Will, devotees of the game though they are, after listening to Buck O'Neill (who is the breakthrough "Shelby Foote" of "Baseball"). However, I prefer to ascribe these shortcomings to editorial decisions and the fact this is only a nine-tape set instead of maliciousness. So, yes, it could be better, and maybe it is too reverent, but there is a fundamental love of the game here comparable to such treasured feature films as "The Natural," "Bull Durham" and "Field of Dreams." All of these are necessary spring training workouts for preparation of enjoying the boys of summer.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
Good, with some reservations, August 6, 2003
Ken Burns and his team are absolute masters at putting together a visual picture of past eras from archived footage, still and documents, and this series is no exception. It protrays the history of baseball as the great pastoral American pastime as portrayed in "Field of Dreams". As historial documentation, though, Burns films fall a bit short.The problems is that wherther he's filming baseball, the Civil War, Jazz or whatever, Burns' method is to take an era or a theme he may not know much about, find one person or theme that strikes him as central, and use that person or persons as the central theme to build his story around. He also tends to pick one "authority" to tell his story, and he's not always a terribly good judge of who to choose. The result is good storytelling, but not very good history. In the case of "Jazz" it was Louis Armstrong, and in the case of of "Baseball" it's Jackie Robinson. Both important figures (Armstrong especially so) but in both cases he missed important parts of the big story by spending so much time with his favorite character. Like all Burns' films, "Baseball" is a wonderful collection of images that will delight the fan and at the same time infuriate the knowledgeable viewer. Veiwers unfamiliar with the history of baseball- even those who dislike watching baseball- will also find it fascinating viewing, although they should realize that Burn's story isn't always the real one.
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23 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
The Flaws Stick Out Too Much, November 5, 1999
"Baseball" had the misfortune to come out at a time when I wanted nothing to do with baseball, the 1994 strike and the cancellation of the World Series. It took me a couple years to finally get around to watching the series, and I can not believe how Ken Burns botched a golden opportunity to tell the story properly.To be sure, there are many commendable segments. But there are also too many sore thumbs that stick out too much. Let's start with the political bias that permeates this series, just in terms of the talking heads (Gould, Goodwin, Terkel) and then we are subjected to reams of stuff about Mario Cuomo's forgettable minor league career. It just so happens that there are two members of Congress, both U.S. Senators, with stronger connections to the game than Mario Cuomo. One is Jim Bunning, a Hall of Fame pitcher who won 100 games in both leagues and threw a perfect game, the other is Connie Mack, grandson of one of the all time great managers. But both of them alas, happen to be conservative Republicans, which perhaps accounts for why they were deemed less significant than Mario Cuomo. Finally, there is Burns's obsession with depicting players in the best light in their labor struggles all the way up to the present. This is valid in the early days, but to see this go on into the greed-obsessed 80s is where Burns loses me completely. He devotes several minutes to the owners collusion scandal of 1986 to show how terrible the owners are, yet he devotes not one second to the players strikes of 1972, 1981 and 1985 which were far more significant events and raised questions about whether players have abused their privilege of free agency. And another thing to Burns, regarding his obsession with Bill Lee. If you want to make a folk hero out of a talking head, don't bother with one who thinks its noble to wear a hat emblazoned with a CCCP banner.
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