Baseball - A Film by Ken Burns

Rating:
Summary: Ken Burns does not realize his film is hypocritical.
Review: 'Baseball' is yet another mega-documentary by Ken Burns, a filmmaker who thinks he is cracking down on race relations in America. Although there are certain moments that are very powerful, most of the movie is like the game of baseball itself, boring. Burns covers some important moments in the history of the game, but he doesn't realize how hypocritical his movie is.
For example, he exposed many of the racial prejudices that have existed in the game since it began, but he does not spend that much time on black ballplayers. Yes, he does cover the Negro League extensively, but that was still not enough.
First of all, he hardly covers the carrer of Henry Aaron. Aaron has to be one of the most underrated athletes of all time. His 755 home runs is arguably the greatest record in sports by a single player. Burns barely touches on his carrer and focuses mostly on the two seasons when he was chasing Ruth's record. Burns spends almost entire videotapes covering the carrers of Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Mickey Mantle, and Joe DeMaggio. Yes those players were great and are very influential, but plenty of black players were just as great and influential.
He does the same thing with Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente, Lou Brock, and a number of other black superstars. He doesn't give them justice, he just does not spend enough time on them.
Certain moments of the film are worth watching, but other parts of just plain bad. Here are some low points. Burns feels the need to play different versions 'The Star-Spangled Banner' and 'Take me out to the ballgame' about 50,000 times throughout this film. He doesn't realize just how annoying those songs get after a while. He treats those two songs like they are sacred songs from some religious text. The most embarrasing moment is the section titled 'The 7th Inning Stretch'. Here a group of semi-famous people try to sing 'Take me out to the ballgame', and they are screwing it up. It is a bad and unnecessary part.

Burns also feels the need to show the same photographs and film clips over and over again. I don't know how many times they showed the same photograph of Curt Flood or the same vidoeclip of Ted Williams skipping the bases, but I was ready to shoot the T.V. For crying out loud, man, but find some clips or photographs nobody has seen.

Rating:
Summary: Awesome!
Review: Awesome! Awesome! Awesome!
If you are a true fan of the game, this is must have!

Rating:
Summary: The world's greatest game
Review: I wasn't so fortunate to see the series, but very much enjoyed this comprehensive and well-illustrated book. Ward does a great job of presenting America's favorite pastime down through the ages, from the early games in the polo grounds to the free agency disputes in the 70's. This book covers it all and is augmented by wonderful anecdotes and illustrations of some of the game's great players.

For afficianados of the game there will be many glaring omissions but for the general reader this book is all you need to get a handle on the history of the game, casting aside the Doubleday myth (Spalding's invention) and treating yourself to the early New York Knickerbockers who wrote the rules of the game, which have essentially stayed the same ever since. Ward has an eye for detail, noting that Cartwright took the game to Hawaii, from where it eventually spread to Asia.

Ward spends a great deal of time on the divisions in baseball, not just that between the American and National leagues, but black ball and white ball. He gives an engaging discription of the Negro leagues and the eventual integration of the game with the immortal Jackie Robinson joining the Brooklyn Dodgers. He also notes many of the other negro greats who weren't so fortunate to be called up to the big leagues.

He also gives a good look at the free agency disputes of the 70's, which opened the doors to the astronomical salaries players get today. There is also a requiem on Mr. Baseball, Pete Rose, and the gambling that has plagued the game throughout its history. The most notorious example being the Chicago "Black Sox." Despite these lapses, the game has not only managed to survive but flourish into quite possibly the world's greatest game.

Rating:
Summary: THE BEST IN THE WORLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
Review: YOU MUST BE A TRUE BASEBALL FAN. REMEMBERING WHEN IT TRULY WAS ALL YOU COULD THINK OF IS A GOOD THING IN ORDER TO APRECIATE THESE DVD'S.

IT IS SO SAD THAT THE GAME HAS BECOME MORE FOR THE NAME ON THE BACK OF THE PLAYERS JERSEY INSTEAD OF THE FRONT.

Rating:
Summary: complete Baseball history
Review: Ken Burns has produced another high quality documentary that rivals his Civil War series. Ken Burns covers the orgins of baseball from its beginings in the 1800s to the present (1992). He uses both interviews and pictures. Each part covers a decade of baseball (except the first and the last). The first covers the origins up to 1900 and the final part covers from 1970 to the present.

One part that sticks out for me is Jackie Robinsion's breaking the color barrier and the racism he had to face. Jackie Robinson's entry into the big leagues lead to more African Americans enreing the majors and the eventual decline of the Negro Leagues. This racism prevented great players such as Sachel Paige from realizing their full potential.

Another part that sticked out was the "Blacksox" scandal when 8 Chicago Whitesox were acused of throwing the 1919 world series to gamblers. This almost led to the destruction of baseball. Baseball was eventually saved by the legendary Babe Ruth. There is talk of reinstating Pete Rose. Personally I feel Joe Jackson and the other seven WHitesox players should be reinstated before Pete Rose. Pete Rose knew full well what he was doing. The Chicago Whitesox players were nieve and did not have a full understanding of what they were getting into. I am not condoning their actions but, if Pete Rose is reinstated then they should be reinstated.

Babe Ruth was the center of the most heated rivalries in baseball. The then owner of the Boston Redsox, Harry Frazee, traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees. He was a theatrical producer and loved the theatre more than his own team. He wanted to finance a play so he traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees. According to the video when ever Frazee wanted to finance a play he would trade one of his top players. Most of those players whent to the Yankees. This led to bad feelings between the two clubs that still exists today. The trade turned the Yankees around and was the begining of their dynasty. Up to this point it was the Giants, not the Yankees, who were the major baseball team in New York.

The history of baseball is always being written. The series ended in1992. It did not include the strike in 1994 and the cancelation of the world series. The documentary did not include Sammy Sosa and Mark Mcguwire going for Roger Maris' single season home run record and Barry Bonds breaking Mcgwire's record a few years later.

Ken Burms vividly captured the the culture of each time period. Baseball is very much a part of American society , culture and history.

Rating:
Summary: Good, with some reservations
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Error
Review: I looked up Curt Flood in the index, turned to p. 339, and found a story told by Flood that is quite obviously inaccurate. Flood said that in 1957 he had a very distasteful experience with a segregated clubhouse. This is the same story he told to Ken Turan of the LA Times a year or so before his death. But then he placed the story in 1956, when he was playing in a different league. Unhappily, there appears to be no substance to the story. A check with Bill White, former president of the Nat'l League in Danville where Flood placed it, elicited the response that no such situation existed. Othere attempts to corroborate the story also fell short. One has to conclude that if there is one serious error in the book, the rest of the stories might also be invented.

Stuart [e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: Turned me into a baseball fan!
Review: I am not sure why I picked up this series at the public library--probably because I'd enjoyed Ken Burns and figured anything he'd done was worth watching. I wasn't a baseball fan at the time, so it wasn't the topic that caught my eye. But that was soon to change!
Before I knew it, I was purchasing the complete boxed DVD set, as well as one of the individual episodes (the one about Jackie Robinson) as a gift for my grandpa--who remembered seeing Jackie play.
In short, this documentary turned me (and my husband) into absolute, total, die-hard baseball fans. Seriously. I wish I'd been around 50-60 years ago in baseball's heyday--but with this documentary, I can vicariously relive some of those glory days with people who WERE there. Thank you, Ken Burns!!

Rating:
Summary: About as good a baseball documentary as one could hope for
Review: Despite its obsession with civil rights and rascism (its a documentary about BASEBALL) and an absurd preoccupation with the Brooklyn Dodgers (1 World Series victory in 50 years...The Oakland A's have won 4 in 30 yrs and apparently deserve only 2 five minute segments) this documentary is a spectacular accomplishment. The account of Jackie Robinson's integration ordeal is touching, brillant and inspiring. The 1st disk is about the very early history of baseball in America and is truly captivating. Ty Cobb, The Babe, The Gashouse Gang, the Negro Leagues, the 1919 Blacksox scandal, Mickey Mantle and Joe Dimaggio and their dominating Yankee teams of the 40's and 50's, Stan Musial, Bob Feller, Hank Aaron, Satchel Paige, Christy Mathewson, John McGraw, the Red Sox agonizing failures, Lou Gehrig, Curt Flood, Sandy Koufax, Pete Rose, Bo Jackson and much much more are exhaustively (and sometimes exhaustingly) covered. Many former players and executives and a few dozen fans are repeatedly interviewed. Their love for the sport, nostalgia and insights are invaluable to undertanding America's sport. Tremendously enjoyable and worth repeated viewings. I watch it straight through every Spring at the start of the season.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Collection for the Avid Baseball Fan
Review: I decided to dish out the $150+ for this set a couple summers ago after walking away from it a number of times in the store. I am a huge fan of baseball history, so this type of set is right up my alley. If you want a very comprehensive collection of clips, insightful interviews, and intelligent narration then you will not regret buying this set. Even the first couple of "innings", which cover the very early development of the game are entertaining to watch. The highlight of this collection in my opinion, is the disc on Babe Ruth. There is a lot of great footage of Ruth with audio that really convey just how important this man was to the game. For diehard fans this is a must-have. For casual fans, you'll no doubt find a solid amount of material to keep your interst for hours.