Nobody Owns This Game

It took only three days to watch the 24 hours of Baseball by Ken Burns. The first inning immediately gave me goosebumps, with beautiful waterfalls of words gushing from the likes of Whitman and Costas and Donald Hall, immediately illustrating the literary, reflective, and poetic qualities that always seem to gravitate toward this great game. But it was a slow and steady descent from there. Still enjoyable, and not without its moments of real brilliance -- particularly John Chancellor's easygoing narration through nine innings, and Keith David's tenor in the 10th -- the series gradually abandons its humor, playfulness, and eccentricity and instead falls into the same rhetoric of patriotic cliches and queasy nostalgia that is more becoming of Fox than PBS. Especially in the deplorable 10th inning which never shuts up about the goddamn Yankees and those pathetic Red Sox who finally break the Curse.


Most television documentary series simply follow the prefabricated narrative already entrenched in our collective memories, so why not do something more interesting and unexpected and enlightening? To be fair, the first and fifth innings did just that. Quirky personalities and idiosyncrasies are celebrated, humor plays a central role, and there's real poetry in the words and images. But the lingering images and stories are inevitably those of the latter innings, still fresh in the memory, and still stinking of sentimentality and sensationalist journalism. Hardly any players and no ordinary fans are interviewed. And in the 10th inning especially, we learn jack shit from the fatherly blatherings of some wealthy white BoSox columnist yacking on about Yawky Way providing an emotional bond between him and his pug-nosed son. Are we supposed to swallow this horse shit as if it means something to the rest of us?


Aw, I'm sounding like a sour old man. The series is definitely worth watching. But the series must go on, if only to redeem it from falling into a kind of hokey purity where the cursing and fun have vanished, replaced by stuffy old stiffs whose seriousness about scandals is just plain laughable, man. And enough with the goddamn national anthem already! Only the 8th inning, which starts with the infamous Hendrix recording from Woodstock, has any value after the first inning's predictable opening of blaring and honking horns playing the star spangled banner. Jimi's version shimmers as it always has; an epic departure from the status quo -- much like the social life and the style of baseball in the 60's and early 70's -- which were introspective and critical of stolid American institutions, and therefore insightful and provocative, paralleling the electrifying and truncated careers of players like Clemente and Koufax and Curt Flood. Disappointingly, these are the only three players discussed in any depth from this era, which otherwise is brushed over in favor of continual fawning over the dynasty teams.

It would've been more becoming of a PBS documentary to provide some insight into the smaller market teams, unsung players, and eccentric baseball cultures across America. Or to examine in depth one of the most amazing phenomenons in baseball history: Shadow Ball. The superficial treatment of such a complex practice didn't do it justice. In the tenth inning, nobody even comments on baseball finally coming to the great city of Denver and all the unique things about the Rockies playing mile high baseball, and how it has changed the game (statistical controversy, the humidor, etc.) Moreover, baseball isn't just "our game" as Burns and co. posit -- it is also the national sport in several other places around the world; the national teams of which usually kick the shit out of "our" boys. Cuba and S. Korea aren't even mentioned, and what little is said of Japanese or Caribbean hardball is of only passing interest to the director.


On that note, I just sent my dad a copy of "21" - the recently published graphic novel about Roberto Clemente, his favorite player. The text might not be great, but the illustrations provoke the imagination to wonder what he looked like playing with such exuberance in real life. And I'm finishing my copy of "A Zen Way of Baseball" by Sadaharu Oh tonight and will try to write a piece about it. Not familiar with the world's leading home run hitter of all-time? Not surprising; Burns and the gang fail to even mention his name once.