Hopefully, most of you are familiar with Ken Burns’s Baseball, a documentary on the history of the game. If not, I suggest you go drop $120 on the box set. While the creator says he’d never revisit any of his other works, he’s currently working on an update to the series. It’s a year away, slated for spring 2010 on PBS, and will be titled The Tenth Inning.
A great segment from the Houston Chronicle article:
“There was a guy named Pete O’Brien who said in 1858, ‘You know, they don’t play baseball the way they used to,’ ” Burns said. “Every 10 years, somebody is saying the same thing — that it’s all over.”
Burns clearly does not subscribe to that theory.
“Think of it. Since the end of (the original Baseball documentary), we have seen Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine and John Smoltz and the Braves,” he said. “We have seen the Yankees finally coalesce under one of the game’s most gifted managers (Joe Torre), throwing off the buy-buy mentality of George Steinbrenner to give him time to develop Derek Jeter and Jorge Posada and Mariano Rivera.
“Sure, we had steroids, but, man, look at what else we have to offer. The Red Sox. We have Ichiro. We have Cal Ripken. Think of the Willie Mays catch (in the 1954 World Series). Now we have a caliber of play and athleticism that produces similar (catches) all the time. The Marlins won the World Series, twice. The Rays made it to the World Series.
“We are in the middle of a baseball renaissance, as (commissioner) Bud Selig says, and, working on this, I have to agree.”
As Burns contemplates the steroid era, he looks at it through the filter of American life at large.
“We live in the age of Viagra,” he said. “People take (medications) to make things better. Why would players be any different?”
The series moves forward from the 1992 World Series. Count me among those who will watch this with rapt attention.
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