Product Description

530 illustrations in text

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #111005 in Books
• Published on: 1994-09-04
• Released on: 1994-09-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 483 pages

From Library Journal
Baseball is indeed a mirror of American life, and Ward and Burns show how well America's story is told through baseball. Their book is the companion to a nine-part PBS television documentary scheduled to begin on September 18. In format and approach it resembles the authors' previous best seller, The Civil War (LJ 9/1/90). Each chapter, or "inning," proceeds chronologically with a dominant theme and dramatis personae. The profusion of striking illustrations add an extra dimension to each chapter. Another nice feature is the interlaced essays by such fine writers as Roger Angell, Robert Creamer, and Thomas Boswell on the hold that baseball has on ordinary people. The narrative gains force and momentum in sections examining the injustice of segregation and the forgotten heroes of the Negro leagues. Because the book is based on a documentary filmscript, the narrative sometimes seems a bit episodic, jumping from scene to scene and story to story. Overall, however, this rich and suggestive history is one of the finest books produced on baseball. Highly recommended.
--Paul Kaplan, Lake Villa Dist. Lib., Ill.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From AudioFile
As you'd expect in a history of baseball, all the legends are here. So is the story of the game's growth from the Elysian Fields of New Jersey to the multi-million dollar entertainment it is today. But Ward and Burns do more than chronicle the exploits of heroes. They examine "America's pastime" in the context of our history, showing a relationship between the game and events, trends, and customs that shaped our country. The one disappointment in this production is its reader. Burns has a high voice, which doesn't modulate enough to reflect context. This lack of variety makes everything sound crucial. P.B.J. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
Baseball comes to PBS? Don't worry, all you public-broadcasting snobs. It's not as bad as it sounds. Your local PBS affiliate hasn't outbid the major networks for the Game of the Week. Instead, Ken Burns, whose Civil War documentary won more than 40 film and television awards, has turned from Bull Run to Bull Durham, producing a new, nine-part video on baseball that will air in the fall. Published in conjunction with the PBS program, this lavishly produced, gorgeously illustrated history of the game rises far above the often dreary companion volume genre. Coauthored by Burns and Geoffrey Ward, the book devotes its nine chapters (or innings, as they're called) to a decade-by-decade survey of the evolution of baseball. Complementing the historical material are more than 500 photos, some in color, and several impressionistic essays by various luminaries including Thomas Boswell and George Will. Perhaps surprisingly, the essays are the only weak link. Yes, baseball inspires us all to flights of rhetorical fancy, but isn't it time to call a moratorium on this sort of thing: America is about hope and renewal. And gloriously, so is baseball, pulsing with the mystery of the seasons and life itself. Thanks for sharing that, John Thorn, but the pictures and the unadorned facts presented here say it far more eloquently. Baseball doesn't need purple prose; the game's faces, names, dates, and numbers carry their own poetry, and Ward and Burns, unlike some of the essayists, wisely avoid the temptation to wax lyrical. Fans will find plenty to quibble about in these pages (too much Mantle; not enough Mays), but with the exception of The Baseball Encyclopedia, there is no better one-volume history of the sport. Bill Ott

Customer Reviews

A great piece for lovers of the game.
This is as the title says the story of baseball, but it is also the story of the United States, which gives the piece its power and depth. Logically divided into 9 innings, you travel through time in what is a monk's work of film and still archives, from the once claimed origins of the game in Cooperstown to the Post-Gulf era in Toronto and Los Angeles. In here, every important moment, every important player, and every important place is talked about from the point of view of sportswriters from the time and avid onlookers from today. The two downers would that the soundtrack is almost entirely based on the star spangled banner, which makes it a bit mind numbing, especially if you watch a few episodes in a row. The other downer is inevitable as for docs that are historical pieces about something that is not yet over. The last 15 years of the game, the booming salary inflation, the Jeter-era Yankees, the performance enhancement scandal, and the league expansions and team relocations are of course not in here. But for those who wanna know more about Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Ty Cobb, and wanna know who was Josh Gibson, Walter Johnson and Branch Rickey, this is for you.

View it as entertainment, not as history
Ken Burns is becoming well-known as much for what he leaves out of his documentaries as for what he tells you and how he tells it. One sees it somewhat in the Civil War documentary (unless of course you are a Lost Cause devotee, in which case you view that series as horribly biased and riddled with errors), and it is definitely (and troublingly) evident in his Jazz documentary, where 40 years of jazz is virtually glossed over in favor of an almost obsessive fixation on Louis Armstrong. In the case of "Baseball," Burns again leaves out huge chunks of the story, although the end result is nonetheless entertaining.

In the case of "Baseball," the unrelenting focus is on New York City, Babe Ruth & Jackie Robinson, and to be fair, there is no way you could discuss the subject of baseball without devoting a great deal of time to these subjects. However, the title of the documentary is "Baseball," not "The New York City, Babe Ruth, and Jackie Robinson Story," and it is possible to watch this documentary at times and come to believe that nothing else was happening out side of New York most of the time.

I recall reading a Sports Illustrated article a few years ago that discussed the Philadelphia Athletics from 1929-1931, and made the case that that team was better than the famed "Murderer's Row" Yankees of 1926-1928, and possibly the best team in baseball history. The article's author crunched the numbers, compared the stats, and made a pretty compelling case. He then asked why so little attention has been paid to the A's over the years, and posited that because most of the nation's important papers and sportswriters were based in New York City; by default the majority of the great sportswriting was devoted to the Yankees, while relatively backwater Philadelphia languished in obscurity. It seems to be the same situation with Burns. While other incredibly dominant teams such as (in the early years) the Chicago Cubs, the A's, the Pittsburgh Pirates & the Detroit Tigers are given passing mention, they are quickly shoved on the back burner in favor of the Boston Red Sox & New York Giants. Then the Yankees & the Dodgers begin to coalesce, and it is all New York, all the time. One gets no feeling for how dominant the 1929-1931 A's (or the St. Louis Cardinals of the mid-1930's) were, because Burns continually focuses on Babe Ruth & the Negro Leagues.

When Burns gets to the 1950's he can be excused, because really it was a New York-dominated decade like no other. However, the other decades did in fact see a more competitive balance, and one would not get this impression from the documentary.

It would have been nice if Burns hadn't crammed the last quarter century of his story into one "inning." Are you telling me that the stories since 1970 aren't as compelling as the early years of baseball. I don't believe that Burns would have had to devote that much more time to the post-1970 era to make it feel less cursory and rushed. This is a somewhat annoying tendency of his that was more griveously evident when he made "Jazz."

Also, I get a little tired of the "poetry of baseball" school of thought. It isn't as though I am some knuckle-dragging troglodyte who gets all his news from sports radio; I am just as likely to go to the opera as to the ballpark. This baseball as metaphor for how the cosmos works gets on my nerves after a while (although I consider Roger Angell's comment "there's more Met than Yankee in all of us" to be priceless beyond description). It's not that baseball doesn't imbue our life with a little extra something special, it's just that some of these talking heads tend to get a little overwrought.

I enjoyed watching the documentary the first time, and I have watched it probably half a dozen times since over the years. By comparison, I have watched "The Civil War" about 15 times, I would guess. I was so disappointed with "Jazz" that I managed only a second viewing. In any case, "Baseball" is very entertaining, and that is what largely accounts for my 4-star rating I would only caution those who don't know their baseball history that this documentary omits a great deal of what is a very good story.

Costas at his best
You don't have to love baseball like I do to enjoy this documentary about Americas pastime. Although I got a little tired of Ken Burns style (I think it's unnecesary to quote someone and THEN state the name of the person being quoted, a Ken Burns trademark) the material is just too great and too American to be disliked. The best part? I was mesmerized by Bob Costas' description of events that took place in the BoSox clubhouse during their 9th inning collapse in game six of the 1986 World Series. When he recollects his "What do I do if they tie it?" remark to his producer it is fascinating, thrilling, and in the end, very sad. Just more proof that baseball is "designed to break your heart". Trust me on this one.