Ken Burns' "Baseball"

Civil war buffs have problems with that series, so it isn't suprising that jazz and baseball fans have their gripes with Burns. There is no one in the baseball series that comes off like Shelby Foote in the Civil War documentary, Foote acts like HE fought in the war, not studied it.

But yeah, the modern era got screwed. Did the '91 Series even get five seconds?

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=12088

Then you look at Derek Jeter. I’m a Boston fan, and therefore a Yankee hater, and you watch him dive into the stands and come up bloody to catch a foul ball. Or you find him on the wrong side of the third base line to catch an errant throw from the right fielder, or pitch the ball to Posada to tag out a standing Jeremy Giambi—one of the greatest defensive plays of all time—you don’t have a statistic for that.

....

Apparently "blood-drawing put-outs" would tell us more than VORP.

sometimes you can get so deluged by statistics that you lose sight of some of the other things.

Like blood, dirty uniforms, and veteran presence. WHY DOESN'T ANYONE LOOK AWAY FROM THEIR LAPTOP AND RECOGNIZE VETERAN PRESENCE?

some folks were griping that Griffey is barely in inning 10.

Someone above mentioned the original's use of pop music. Absolutely loved that: "Take Five" for Koufax, "Oye Como Va" for Clemente, "String of Pearls" for Ted Williams, "Burning Down the House" for Reggie, "Get Together" for Earl Weaver, "Radar Love" for Rose...had to have been a dozen inspired matches. 10th inning: "Poker Face" as various guys lie to Congress.

Griffey isn't griping though, he said in an interview to not sleep on watching this.

Don't think I'll have time to see all this, let me know who wins.

Baseball is the greatest game that has ever been invented. There is nothing like it. In all the other sports you go to your best player all the time. You hand off to O.J. Simpson, or you throw it to Jerry Rice, or you inbound the ball to Michael Jordan. Derek Jeter comes up only once very nine times at bat.

what a fucking idiot

"Obvious jokes/puns that people always make as though they were the first persons to think of them"

zmg just lolzin... i thought it was an omarlittle parody at first.

caught a couple minutes of Ripken/Torre hagiography, couldn't take anymore

i liked this, but i was an obama volunteer

also they talked about how barry was pissed that when he hit his 400th homer to make him the first player ever with 400 homers & 400 steals it was overshadowed by mcgwire/sosa -- they showed the 400th homer against the marlins & i was at that game

I think it's fairly well established that being put in McG/Sosa/Junior's shadow by the media made Barry say fuckit, bring on the cream & the clear.

i know i was just setting up the context for me to point out that i was at the game where barry hit his 400th hr

could you sense his impending turn to the dark side

i think so, but that might've just been me furiously searching for some shade

I stupidly didn't clue into the fact that this was on tonight, and didn't start watching until about 45 minutes in. Even though it is common knowledge by now, I thought Bonds' appearance right at the end, with McGwire and Sosa's adulation as the context for what happened with him (and the way the camera panned over to Bonds on the right of the frame) was dramatic.

I thought Pedro made a good Buck O'Neill. I missed the origninal's knack for great period music. The Allman Brothers on endless loop for Atlanta's '95 win was like 20 years out of step.

One good bit of music tonight (I saw somewhat more than half): the White Stripes, who I normally don't care about, for Johnson and Schilling. I thought Mike Barnicle talking about his son's devastation after 2003--corny though it might have been--was good. (I'm quite sure that most of the people who post here teared up.) I'm always amazed when you go back a relatively few years and names that seem like they're a century ago are still playing. That's how I felt when Ruben Sierra turned up in the 2003 Yankees-Red Sox series.

yeah, it feels like bonds has been gone for MUUUUUCH longer than three years

this one was kind of corny, but 03/04 red sox/yankees alcs' don't get old for me

was kind of butthurt that they glossed over the marlins dumping on the dreams of cubs fans, but oh well

Reliving the Giants lost WS was harder than I thought.

Aside from Bonds, Steroids, and the Red Sox I basically missed the last decade in baseball, so this was pretty informative.

Really want to know more about this stats-based approach to evaluating players that the A's brought in. Anyone know a good link/source?

just read the book Moneyball, best primer imo

^^^OTM, it's well written and a bit of a cult classic.

Also it's fun to read about perennial all-star Jeremy Brown's early years.

Or you could wait for the movie!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1210166/

Royce Clayton ... Miguel Tejada

(I think we've laughed at this, but why not one more time?)

what is a 'stat'

Guke there's also The Numbers Game (?) by Alan Schwarz, diving into statistical analysis as done 60 or more years ago til now

Is it true there was a wacky treatment of new metrics like "VORP, huh?" in tone?

Also it's fun to read about perennial all-star Jeremy Brown's early years.

― funky house skeptic (polyphonic), Thursday, September 30, 2010 1:14 PM (15 minutes ago)

Jeremy Brown's career MLB slash #s:
.300/.364/.500

nothing to scoff at imo! dude just walked away from the game afaict

nothing to scoff at imo! dude just walked away from the game afaict

I have made this point before but couldn't resist the easy joke.

Also, you are talking about 11 plate appearances.

I'm just saying it's not like he didn't "pan out" or was a Moneyball failure, dude was obviously very skilled but just chose a different career/life path than MLB.

I only saw bits and pieces of this, not the whole thing, but damn there was a lot on the 2003-04 Red Sox seasons.

That's how I felt when Ruben Sierra turned up in the 2003 Yankees-Red Sox series.

Ha, I thought this too.

Is it true there was a wacky treatment of new metrics like "VORP, huh?" in tone?

I wouldn't say that. Jon Miller had some fun with it, but as always with Miller, he was more making fun of his own inability to keep up.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/scocca/archive/2010/09/30/mike-barnicle-fraud-and-plagiarist-helps-guide-america-through-baseball-s-era-of-shame.aspx

oh god they talk to mike fucking barnicle?

They talk to him A LOT.

Ken Burns is a disgrace.

is Doris Kearns Goodwin in this one too for full plagiarist coverage???

Yes she sure is!

This documentary does a very good job of covering all the stuff that has already been covered better by other people, and ignoring everything else!

i've been watching these over the last few weeks.
just finished the 7th.
i think this was the first one i was awake for the entirety of - and i regret it.

I remember absolutely LOVING the original Ken Burns Baseball when I was a kid, so maybe nostalgia is clouding my judgment, but holy crap does The Tenth Inning disappoint. OK so I'm only halfway through the bottom of the inning (pushed stop right at Aaron Boone HR), so maybe it gets better later on. But so far the biggest and most glaring problem is the lack of player interviews. You can't devote an hour of screen time to the Home Run/Steroids thing without hearing from at least one of Canseco, Bonds, McGwire, or Sosa. You just can't. And so since Ken Burns couldn't find enough players and managers to do the talking, he had to settle for historians and Chris Rock. WTF? Remember in the original Baseball when Bill Lee would talk about all his different pitches and Ted Williams would sulk bitterly about how sure he was they'd win that Series? Well there's almost none of that here. I mean, it's OK to hear from Thomas Boswell because at least he was THERE writing about Jose Canseco milkshakes in the 1980s, but why are we hearing from John Thorn and the Eight Men Out guy? Oh, and the narrator for the whole thing is just AWFUL. And Sabermetrics is reduced to nothing more than a two-minute glossover and VORP is a funny word to say and, oh, the Oakland A's made a couple playoff appearances.

Positives? OK, since Pedro and Joe Torre seem to be the only active baseballers who really cared about devoting their precious time to this film, they both do a pretty good job. Even though it means so much screen time you'd think baseball for the past twenty years was Red Sox, Yankees, and no one else. Highlight for me so far is when he goes into detail about the Grady Little inning. Because it's illuminating when players talk about games they've played.

John Thorn is a pretty smart guy.

rewatching 10th inning tonight

http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlla/files/original/ken_burns_large.jpg

"oh hey, y'all"

lol @ pic

for xmas my bf got me the ken burns baseball book. not knowing about his gift to me, i got him the audiobook. we loled

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty- seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.

There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.

In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name "Mr. James Dillingham Young."

The "Dillingham" had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, though, they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called "Jim" and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.

Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn't go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling--something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim.

There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the art.

Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.

Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim's gold watch that had been his father's and his grandfather's. The other was Della's hair. Had the queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty's jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy.

So now Della's beautiful hair fell about her rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet.

On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street.

Where she stopped the sign read: "Mne. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds." One flight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the "Sofronie."

"Will you buy my hair?" asked Della.

"I buy hair," said Madame. "Take yer hat off and let's have a sight at the looks of it."

Down rippled the brown cascade.

"Twenty dollars," said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand.

"Give it to me quick," said Della.

Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim's present.

She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation--as all good things should do. It was even worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Jim's. It was like him. Quietness and value--the description applied to both. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 87 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain.

When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends--a mammoth task.

Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.

"If Jim doesn't kill me," she said to herself, "before he takes a second look at me, he'll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do--oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty- seven cents?"

At 7 o'clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.

Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned white for just a moment. She had a habit for saying little silent prayer about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered: "Please God, make him think I am still pretty."

The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two--and to be burdened with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.

Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face.

Della wriggled off the table and went for him.

"Jim, darling," she cried, "don't look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold because I couldn't have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It'll grow out again--you won't mind, will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say `Merry Christmas!' Jim, and let's be happy. You don't know what a nice-- what a beautiful, nice gift I've got for you."

"You've cut off your hair?" asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labor.

"Cut it off and sold it," said Della. "Don't you like me just as well, anyhow? I'm me without my hair, ain't I?"

Jim looked about the room curiously.

"You say your hair is gone?" he said, with an air almost of idiocy.

"You needn't look for it," said Della. "It's sold, I tell you--sold and gone, too. It's Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered," she went on with sudden serious sweetness, "but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?"

Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year--what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.

Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.

"Don't make any mistake, Dell," he said, "about me. I don't think there's anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if you'll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a while at first."

White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.

For there lay The Combs--the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jewelled rims--just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.

But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say: "My hair grows so fast, Jim!"

And them Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, "Oh, oh!"

Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.

"Isn't it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You'll have to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it."

Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled.

"Dell," said he, "let's put our Christmas presents away and keep 'em a while. They're too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on."

The magi, as you know, were wise men--wonderfully wise men--who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.

When It Was A Game is about 10 times better than any Burns doc.

i love when it was a game

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies

Hold the phone. 60 cents of the $1.87 was in pennies. So the other $1.27 was NOT in pennies. But unless there was coinage back then I'm not aware of, at least 2 more pennies would be needed. The storyteller is a LIAR!!

part of it was a check

When It Was A Game is a bullshit title, of course.

hey roxy,

that o henry outburst wasn't a trollle. if you two are giving each other the same gifts then he's pretty much a keeper.

i didnt think it was a troll! haw. tbh i did sell stuff to get his presents - not hair

I enjoyed this! Not really a baseball person, but have always wanted to learn more so it was a pretty helpful primer, even if it seemed to be mostly a 'Yankees Red Sox oh and some other guys' history.

But I nearly kicked in the tv during the 'why baseball is better than football' arguments in the 9th inning.

Also David Okrent made me LOL in the original episodes, the way he's always lounging side-on, looking off into the distance, all faux-relaxed and pretentious-seeming. Made it very hard to take him seriously. Also his glasses matched his sweater.

I have always imagined watching this would be like having hot splinters forced under my toenails.

You should read Ball Four by Jim Bouton! It is a terrific book. Instead of an all-encompassing history of baseball, you get one season, 1969, told in diary form by an over-the-hill pitcher trying for a comeback. But in the telling of the story, you feel the whole history of baseball sort of seeping in on you. It's anti-hagiographical. The guy is brutally honest about himself and everything he sees around him. I just finished it the other day and I can honestly say it's one of the best books I've ever read.

I peeked in the Baseball Books thread and saw that one get repped quite a few times, so I will check def check it out. Mookieproof recommended me The Glory of Their Times, which I'm planning on reading next.

A really unforgivable bit was how Burns emphasized the awesome 1960 World Series: O Tragedy, the Yankees lost a World Series one time.

Yes! And the way the Marlins beating the Yankees in 03 was still told as a "Woe heartbreak, Yankees lose" story.

Ball Four is good, but I'd probably recommend Dirk Hayhurst's The Bullpen Gospels and Out of My League in that vein. Career minor leaguer finds a little success (in the first one) and then spends some time in the majors (in the latter). There's no 'warts and all' presentation ala Ball Four (though there may be fewer really juicy warts to detail today ala the stories about beaver shooting etc. in Ball Four), but they're good reads and more contemporary by 40 years.

if you can find them, the When It Was A Game DVDs are worth watching - home-movie footage of baseball from the '30s-'50s. Super-reverent portentous voiceovers but the footage is amazing

thanks milo, I'll look for it!

note: I should have put beaver shooting in quotes. There are no guns involved.

Mookieproof recommended me The Glory of Their Times, which I'm planning on reading next.

― Peppermint Patty Hearst (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, July 5, 2012 3:53 PM

Yeah, I second this.

Also David Okrent made me LOL in the original episodes, the way he's always lounging side-on, looking off into the distance, all faux-relaxed and pretentious-seeming. Made it very hard to take him seriously. Also his glasses matched his sweater.

Yes! I remember him coming across as very knowledgeable and likable (at least relative to some of the other dudes), but yeah, that lounging pose! So classic! I'd love to interview him and just keep asking him variations of "Why were you sitting like that in the Baseball thing?"

Also, would like to see the outtakes from the Happy Chandler interview session.

I don't remember the 'why baseball is better than football' arguments in the 9th inning, but all you need is George Carlin.

If it had just been George Carlin it would have been an easier pill to take because I love that bit of his. But it was George Will and one of those other dusty fellows pondering the violence and it made me mad.

Happy Chandler made me so teary! I loved seeing him sing Take Me Out to the Ballgame, I'm such a big softie.

About halfway through the series I joked to my friend that by the 9th Inning, Okrent would be lying on the floor speaking up at the ceiling.

I know there are lots of sweater-and-bow-tie guys like Okrent and Will in Baseball--unavoidable, it's baseball--but I remember them being fairly balanced by the likes of Buck O'Neil, Bill Lee, and Studs Turkel. Ditto the music: way too much "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," balanced by lots of pop music.

It took me so long to adjust, especially in the early episodes with the particularly raucous ragtime music, to the way he has the background music jangling away at the same volume level as the commentary.

"Baseball is marvellous becau-[BABADAPABAPAPBAOBAOAO] pastoral, rememberance of a childhoo--[BABADAPBAPABAPBABAPBAPP]"...

This is superb primer for a total newbie like myself.