BASEBALL - By Ken Burns

frankhardy

If you have not viewed this documentary, it is a "must see" for any baseball fan. I got the DVD set for Christmas, and I am watching it a second time.

I am sure some of you out there have seen it. Do they plan on adding to it? Alot has happened in baseball since they ended the documentary. Since the host, John Chancellor, has died since then, I don't know who they would get to host it.

Any comments on it? I absolutely loved it. THE BEST DOCUMENTARY I HAVE EVER SEEN!

fsjeter

Ken Burns is becoming the King of the documentary. He also has documentaries on Jazz and the Civil War. They are all very good.

HartlandMan

I met Mr. Burns shortly after he completed this project, and I got him to sign one of the baseball cards that was released in conjunction with the show, and I also had him sign a set of cassette tapes that provides you with the history but without the images.

There was a card in that set of Bill Clinton throwing out the first pitch at Jacob's Field. I got Gennifer Flowers to sign that one!

Ken Burns is a genius.

A terrific documentary.

Wondo

I was dissappointed in the production. Burns did such a great job on the Civil War, but the baseball one was lacking. Twelve hours is not enough time to explore and expose the intricacies of over 125 years of history. Remember, his Civil War documentary dealt with a six-year period in the same production time. IMHO

megatron

I have the set on DVD and agree that it is impressive; however, it left me with one big disappointment. As with Peter Gammons, someone has to remind Ken Burns that baseball does exist outside of New York and Boston. I was extremely disappointed with the lack of coverage for baseball in the Midwest. For instance, the Royals were absolutely awesome in the early 1980s, but I don't remember seeing much if anything about it on the DVD set.

The last part about the collectibles business was interesting.

frankhardy

"As with Peter Gammons, someone has to remind Ken Burns that baseball does exist outside of New York and Boston."

I agree. It seems as though NY and Boston are the only teams in baseball sometimes. Text

Tabe

Well, for all Burns seemed to care about race in this documentary, he spent no time covering the 1968 Tigers and the HUGE impact they had on calming the fires of racial hatred in Detroit at that time. AND Burns never once mentioned Denny McLain's historic 31-win season either

Tabe
www.tabe.nu

helionaut

Baseball was 18 hours, 9 2-hour innings, mostly broken up into decades. Like the Civil War, you could fill a library with books of stuff left out of the documentary. Remember, though, he did not set out to make a galactic encyclopedia of the sport, but to hit most of the highlights of it's 150+ year history while contrasting its growth with race relations, business, and America itself. To cover everything, he'd have to make a movie 150 years long.

So while the structure of the piece did not allow for much depth at all from 1976-on, it wasn't supposed to. There's plenty of material out there dealing with recent history, but most people couldn't tell you who what Tony Lazzeri's nickname was, or anything about Wilbert Robinson, let alone Rube Foster. And it's that depth that makes it so engrossing. And yes, while there's a lot of stuff on New York teams, that's kind of unavoidable unless you make a conscious effort to avoid it, in which case you really wouldn't be true to the subject. New York teams have won more than one-third of all World Series, and been involved in about half altogether, so there are naturally a lot of great teams and great players to talk about, even in skimming that area.

Back when it came out, and again when it came out on DVD, I read where Burns did want to go back and make a couple "extra innings" to cover topics like expansion and the labor wars, plus the host of great players and weird characters who have come along in the last quarter-century. But he's always got at least a couple films with his name on them going, so who knows when he'll get to them.

DirtyHarry

A lot missing, but great none the less. It's easy to be a critic. Nobody else has taken a stab at it, so kudos to Ken Burns.

qualitycards

DIRTY HARRY - I agree! When it 1st was aired on public television about a decade ago, Keith Olberman gave his list of errors each night on ESPN. Granted Keith knows his stuff, but it was such a noble effort by Burns, why blast the guy and the project? No one is standing in line to do their version, so I am thankful we have the finished project, because the alternative would be having nothing...jay