|
Ken
Burns’ Baseball Documentary
Tenth Inning
A Review by Jean
Damu
Part I: Ken Burns—A Sly Story
Teller
Just yesterday a
friend commented that former Philly playground god and
NY Knicks guard
Earl
Monroe’s,
Black Magic, was the best sports documentary
he’d ever seen. Then, serendipitously, last night PBS
aired the first installment of Ken Burns,
Tenth Inning.
|
Wow!
What a great piece of current historical
journalism. While it doesn’t blow
Black Magic out f the water, it’s
right up there among the very best
documentaries on sports, far more riveting
than his acclaimed series on the history of
baseball.
From
the first installment it’s not clear exactly
where Burns is going with his newest work
but it could have been subtitled, “How
steroids saved baseball,” or “Barry
Bonds: the man who resurrected the
former national pastime.”
From
what we saw last night Bonds is the central
character in this great American drama and
this is as it should be because ultimately
Barry Bonds will be remembered as the
Jack Johnson the 21st Century, the other
worldly gifted black athlete crushed beneath
US racism. |
 |
Two weeks ago on
ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball broadcast Hall of
Famer Orel Hershiser commented, “Barry Bonds was the
greatest offensive machine I’ve seen in my lifetime.”
So clearly,
Barry
Bonds is not just another run of the mill Hall of
Famer—a Hall of Famer who likely never will be a Hall of
Famer.
But Burns seems to
be the first to tackle this riveting story from an
apparently politically left and humanistic point of
view.
Tenth Inning has a Frontline quality to
it, that PBS investigative journalism magazine that made
60 Minutes seem irrelevant.
But Burns, after
all these years and all these documentaries, is a sly
storyteller. Never once does he mention racism.
However, as Burns
story of baseball’s use of steroids unfolds, at least in
what we’ve seen so far, the adulation heaped upon
Mark
McGuire and
Sammy
Sosa added to the denial and disinterest in the
topic by the nations’ sportswriters in contrast to the
treatment Bonds was to receive is laying the basis for a
great study in national racism. Whether it plays out in
ensuing installments remains to be seen.
The dark storm clouds of racism and
hypocrisy are billowing on the horizon.
But how can racism be a factor?
After all, Sosa is
Sosa!
Not so fast. In the
curious social milieu of the US in particular and the
Western Hemisphere in general, according to where you’re
standing, you’re considered either black, Latino, or
Afro-Latino. In the Dominican Republic,
Sosa’s
home, if you’re a crook you’re black and Haitian. If
you’re a baseball player, you’re Dominican. In the US
Afro-Latino players are given a pass, and like apartheid
South Africa used to grant honorary white status to
Japanese, America considers Afro-Latino players honorary
whites. Most Afro-Latino players gleefully embrace this
status and some even attend Glenn Beck rallies.
It’s doubtful Burns
will get into any of this, and we stray.
Set against the
background of the 1994 players strike that for the very
first time cancelled the World Series and the
dispiriting, sordid Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal
consuming the nation, Burns argues all of America
embraced the
Mark
McGuire-Sammy
Sosa home run derby as a happy diversion, all the
while (apparently it seems) calibrating a building
racist rage after McGuire and Sosa’s use of steroids was
revealed and readying to loose it upon Bonds in the
coming years.
That’s just one
viewer’s opinion of the direction Burns seems headed but
without a doubt Bonds is the central character.
Burns’ genius is
that he recognized the Homeric quality of Bonds’ story
and seems to have found a compelling way to tell it.
Here’s hoping Burns fulfills the
promises of the first installment and doesn’t strike out
in the
Tenth Inning.
* * *
* *
Part 2:Ken Burns—Bottom of Tenth
As you may recall,
in the top of
Tenth Inning Ken Burns launched a lovely, arcing
projectile over the left field wall. It plopped down
into McCovey Cove, that small piece of the SF Bay that
nestles against an outside concourse of the Giants
stadium-the destination of only the longest hit home
runs.
In other words
Burns beautifully set up the first segment of his two
part series on contemporary baseball. He led us from the
1994 baseball strike that resulted in drastically
diminished fan attendance to the looming steroids issue
that had fans rushing back to the nations ballparks. The
central character Barry Bonds was warmly delineated. We
were deliciously set up for a Homeric level dramatic
conclusion.
The scene is set.
Burns steps into the batters box once again. This is the
most fearful moment in all of sports. A virtually
unprotected player facing a world-class athlete
preparing to launch a potentially lethal object straight
towards him.
In the Bottom of
the Tenth, part two of his documentary, Burns gets to
bat again.
This time though
Burns blinks, his knees buckle and as his body twists
toward the plate in self-defense. The ball accidentally
caroms off his bat and dribbles down the third base
line. Shocked, Burns runs like hell and barely beats the
throw to first. Scorers debate whether to award Burns a
single or charge the third baseman with an error. The
nod goes to Burns, a mere single. The hit has value and
is welcome but it doesn’t come near to his earlier
homer.
The great promised
drama is lying on the cutting room floor somewhere.
(Well they don’t cut and splice film anymore, but you
get the idea.)
Or to lavishly
engage in yet another metaphor, in part two Burns hauls
out his bucket of Tom Sawyer whitewash, buys Aunt
Polly’s story about the fence and tries to sell it to
the rest of us.
Some of us ain’t buyin’ it. What a
letdown but we’re not surprised. Burns does have
corporate sponsors to satisfy after all.
Despite the
extravagant excess of this essay’s lead, the Bottom of
the Tenth has some really good reporting.
The interviews and
thumbnail biographies of
Pedro Martinez, the great Dominican pitcher of the
Boston Red Sox and Japan’s
Ichiro Suzuki, internationally known simply as
Ichiro, and even today arguably the best athlete in the
major leagues, were classic in their simplicity and
clarity.
Another highlight
was the segment devoted to the Oakland A’s and their
groundbreaking method of utilizing statistical data to
reanalyze other teams castoff ballplayers whom the A’s
felt were undervalued. With enough statistical data in
their favor the A’s often picked up discarded players
and got good performances from them. Consequently the
A’s have been able to consistently field competitive
teams while maintaining one of the smallest payrolls in
the majors.
On the desultory
side of the scorecard Burns seems to have totally bought
into MLB commissioner
Bud
Selig’s version of history. One can argue this
understandable given that without Selig’s approval the
documentary would never have gotten off the ground.
But Burns is not
nearly skeptical enough of Selig’s version. After all,
this is the same Bud Selig, who as owner of the
Milwaukee Bucks was found guilty, along with his
sleazebag, Chicago White Sox-owning buddy,
Jerry Reinsdorf, was found guilty of collusion
(making back room deals regarding players contracts) and
thereby hoodwinking the players union out of $50
million. Oops! Forgot to mention that, huh Ken.
OK. OK. It happened
more than 20 yeas ago, but among the Neanderthal racists
that make up the MLB owners, Selig’s guilt became a
badge of honor and made him a logical choice to replace
former commissioner Fay Vincent, after the owners ran
him out of town for attempting to inject some civility
into the relationships between owners and players.
Bottom of the Tenth
often looses focus. Almost 30 minutes are devoted to the
New York Yankees-Boston Red Sox rivalry. Compelling
stuff likely if you live somewhere between NYC and
Boston-but for the rest of the nation-Zzzzzz!
Another Burns
misstep was the total absence of any mention of the
second largest scandal in MLB-that would be the near
elimination of African Americans.
Admittedly there
are many reasons for the dearth of African Americans in
the majors. However, it was Burns duty as a journalist
and historian to question Selig about his role in
getting another of his buddies, then president
George W. Bush, a former MLB team owner, to advocate
for a liberal change in immigration laws.
These drastic
changes opened the floodgates and allowed MLB to import
an unlimited number of foreign baseball players at
one-tenth the cost of what they have to pay Americans.
This issue was
confronted in the very real and accurate movie,
Sugar, about minor league ballplayers—but Burns
doesn’t come within the distance of a ten-foot pole of
the issue. Very unsatisfactory.
Throughout the two
part series narrative is provided by Keith David. This
fellow has to be a magna cum laude graduate of the
Paul Winfield School of Narration. Producers for
“City Confidential,” should sign him immediately, He was
one of the best elements of the series.
A real downer for
many viewers likely will be the talking heads sprinkled
throughout the series. They are particularly annoying in
Bottom of the Tenth.
Mike Barnicle, celebrated sports columnist for the
Boston Globe, historian
Doris Kerns-Goodwin, Washington Post resident
pig
George Will and MLB shill
Bob
Costas were particularly galling.
What’s discernible
from these folks is how baseball is perceived by many to
be a reverse transmission to earlier times, or as Marcel
Proust famously wrote,
Rememberances of Things Past.
One of Kern’s testimonies is
instructive but bordered on the delusional.
She reflected back
and informed us when she was a girl her Dad had taught
her how to record the box scores—she shared precious
memories of listening to baseball games on the radio
with him and keeping the box scores.
“When my granddaughter gets a little older I’m going to teach her how
to keep box scores,” Kern intoned with a determined
delight.
We’ve got news for
sister Kerns. When her granddaughter gets a little
older, and if she is as consumed by sports as her
grandmother was then likely she’ll conform to the tastes
of the 21st Century which is pretty much all NFL, all
the time.
Football, and the
NFL in particular has become the monster of television
and beyond.
NFL viewership,
some circles report, is twice that of MLB and the NBA
combined.
But here’s what’s
really interesting. Football has become so much a part
of the electronic culture, play calling strategies
devised on the ubiquitous Madden video games are now
impacting play calling inside the NFL stadiums.
No other sport is
as comfortable with modern culture as football.
Given those
circumstances it’s not likely Doris Kerns Goodwin’s
granddaughter is going to be much interested in learning
how to keep box scores, unless she’s one of those rare
kids that likes to play with spinning wheels and bronze
axes.
Burns’
Tenth Inning, like most of his work is high
quality but in this case deeply flawed by its
interpretations and omissions. If you’ve only got time
to watch one part take the first one. Whiff on the
second.
30 September 2010
* *
* * *
Jean Damu is
an educator, journalist, trade unionist and political
activist. In his capacity as a former member of the
National Committee of the Venceremos Brigade and as a
private citizen he has traveled to Cuba 18 times (and
counting), Africa, Asia and Latin America. He is also a
member of NʼCOBRA (the National Coalition of Blacks for
Reparations in America) and serves on the steering
committee of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration.
He has written on numerous topics and has a special
interest in Africa.
* *
* * *
 |
Baseball: The Tenth Inning
Directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick
1992 -
2009: As the tumultuous twentieth century is
drawing to a close, and a new millennium
begins, baseball continues to reflect the
complicated country that created it. In an
age of globalization and speculation, the
players and the owners wage a cataclysmic
battle over money and power; dazzlingly
talented Latin and Asian stars transform the
game; Cal Ripken becomes the game's new Iron
Man; sluggers Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and
Barry Bonds do things that have never been
done before; the Yankees build a dynasty
while their arch rivals, the Red Sox, stage
the greatest comeback in history. And in
September of 2001, at a time when America
seems most threatened, baseball offers the
hope that things will one day return to
normal. The national pastime is more
popular, and more profitable, than ever, but
suspicions and revelations about performance
enhancing drugs keep surfacing, threatening
the integrity of the game itself. Still,
through it all, baseball endures, a game of
infinite possibility and surpassing beauty.—PBS |
* * *
* *
Tenth Inning a worthy update
to Ken Burns' Baseball—by Bruce Dancis—Baseball
has always reflected the culture and society in
which it exists, for better and for worse. As
documentary filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick
showed in “Baseball,” their wonderful nine-part PBS
series from 1994, the U.S. national pastime has had
its cyclical dark sides and positive eras.
The
cheating and gambling that was so prevalent in the
early decades of the 20th century led to a “fixed”
World Series in 1919, but was also quickly followed
by the emergence of Babe Ruth as a national sports
hero. While racial segregation shamefully kept
African Americans out of the Major Leagues from the
1880s through 1947, the game’s integration helped
push the wider American society to end legal
discrimination, leading to baseball’s “golden age”
of the 1950s and ‘60s. Burns and Novick ended their
series on a note of optimism, as baseball appeared
to be entering a new era of unparalleled performance
and popularity.
Now Burns and Novick, plus
co-writer/co-producer David McMahon, have brought
the story of baseball up to 2009 in their two-part
documentary
The Tenth Inning. . . .
As in the
original series—and in Burns’ historical
documentaries in general—the filmmakers combine
vintage photographs and film footage with interviews
of former players, baseball officials and
knowledgeable journalists. Where the original series
introduced some very entertaining commentators on
baseball—especially Buck O’Neil, a former Negro
League player and manager and the first
African-American coach in the Major Leagues,
historian Doris Kearns Goodwin and writer Steve
Early—“The Tenth Inning” brings in some new,
engaging voices, including sportswriters Howard
Bryant and Tom Verducci. Sacramento Bee columnist
Marcos Breton (full disclosure: Breton is a friend
and former colleague of this writer) may be the most
valuable new addition to the series, as he provides
expert and moving comments on several of the key
issues of this era. These include the expanding role
of Latin American ballplayers in the Majors, the
widespread use of steroids and human growth hormones
by players (and the belated effort by the players’
union and baseball officials to eliminate them), and
the spectacular and controversial career of the San
Francisco Giants’ Barry Bonds.—MontrealGazette
* * *
* *
Baseball: The Tenth Inning knocks it right
out of the park—by Craig Shapiro—Ken Burns is
only half-kidding when he says he made this sequel
because his beloved Red Sox finally won the pennant.
The bigger reason, as he eloquently points out, is
our narrative is more than a list of presidencies
punctuated by war. The issues we confront also are
refracted through the prism that is baseball, and a
lot has happened in the 16 years since his original
series aired.
The strike of
1994. The taint of steroids. Baseball's darker
chapters are part of the story. But so is the lesson
the sport learned when Cal Ripken Jr. eclipsed Lou
Gehrig as the game's iron man - to honor its players
and celebrate its defining moments: Greg Maddux and
Ichiro Suzuki; the '96 Yankees, and the way nine men
playing a kids' game rallied us after 9/11. Other
players—Barry Bonds—and other moments—the Mark
McGwire-Sammy Sosa home run chase—are more complex.
Among those
sharing their insights are MLB Commissioner Bud
Selig; Donald Fehr, former head of the Players
Association; broadcaster Bob Costas; historian Doris
Kearns Goodwin; pitcher Pedro Martinez, and a host
of writers - George Will, Mike Barnicle and Steve
Wilstein, who was slammed for writing about
McGwire's use of androstenedione. A story that Keith
Olbermann recalls from the days after the terrorist
attacks will move you to tears.—HamptonRoads
* * *
* *
* *
* *
|
People's History of Sports in the United
States
250 Years of
Politics, Protest, People, and Play
By Dave Zirin
Zirin (What's My Name, Fool!), writer of
a politically minded online sports
column, examines the intersection of
sports and politics, chronicling the
struggles of America's oppressed,
starting with Choctaws playing lacrosse
and slaves in the South, and reaching
all the way to a critique of Michael
Jordan as an apolitical athlete. There
are many worthy and deserving stories of
courage and conscience in this vast
canvas; however, the telling suffers
from Zirin's term paper–like prose that
relies far too much on overly long
quotes from source material. For
example, three pages about NFL player
Dave Meggyesy has a short introductory
paragraph by Zirin and then excerpts
Meggyesy's autobiography for the bulk of
the section. This book would have been
more engaging and logically organized as
a reference book with entries on each
athlete or group, rather than a linear
historical narrative of sports.—Amazon |
 |
The Greatest, My Own Story
(Muhammad Ali)
Shrovetide in Old New Orleans (Ishmael
Reed) /
Airing Dirty Laundry (Ishmael Reed)
* * *
* *
 |
The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball
Leagues
James A. Riley
(Editor), Monte Irvin (Foreword)
EditorRiley is an
accomplished writer and a recognized authority on the
Negro leagues, having published numerous books on the
subject (e.g.,
Too Dark for the Hall, T.K. Pubs., 1991). His
comprehensive reference book documents the careers of
4000 players on teams of major league caliber between
1872 and 1950. Notable Hall of Famers included are Hank
Aaron, Satchel Paige, Ernie Banks, and Jackie Robinson.
Arranged alphabetically, the citations contain a variety
of biographical and statistical information. This
valuable compilation also provides illustrations, team
histories, an appendix on players, plus an exhaustive
bibliography detailing books, periodicals, booklets, and
newpaper articles. Public libraries should purchase
where demand warrants.—L.R. Little,
Penticton P.L., British Columbia, Library Journal
|
* *
* * *
ChickenBones Store
(Books, DVDs, Music, and more)
posted 9 October 2010 |
