Baseball When It Was a Game. (Film Review)

George Roy, Steven Stern, and David Harmon. Baseball When It Was a Game. New York: Black Canyon Productions in association with HBO Sports. 1992 and 2000. Editor, George Roy. This three-part series, which covers 1925 to 1970, is a brightly colored and highly entertaining potpourri of nostalgic memories created by scenes of happy and graceful players cavorting in the sun on God's greener-than-green grass in the romantic past of an Edenic time in baseball history. The heavily saturated colors of these 8mm and 16mm movies, made by players and fans alike, endow the scenes with an endearing vividness, befitting the purpose of recapturing the sense of baseball as the imagined youthful and exuberant past of us all when the players frolicked like young colts in various poses of playfulness and camaraderie. These are home movies, and they have that joyful, somewhat unprofessional quality that heightens the sense of spontaneity, but they are not amateurish in the worst sense of that word. At some moments, the beauty of baseball is captured, almost serendipitously. For example, in one quick shot, we see a youthful Ted Williams at spring training getting ready to take a splendid swing. The bright red of his socks matches the red earth of the batter's box as he digs in; in the background, players are warming up, and a sprinkling of fans sit in the wooden stands under the hot sun and the blue sky. Ted strides into the pitch, moving his bat effortlessly forward into the hirting zone, and ends with a long graceful follow-through that leaves his legs twisted and his head majestically raised to follow the flight of the ball. This is athletic ballet and poetry as we witness Achilles, as he is later called, do what he loved best and did better than almost anybody who has played the game. Another major advantage of these films is that, unlike most sports documentaries, the voice-overs of the various celebrities do not impede their flow and rhythm. In Ken Burns's documentary history of baseball, the commentators serve as talking heads, with the result that the rhythm is interrupted when the screen is filled with their presence and pronouncements. But in Baseball When It Was A Game, the narrator announces the name of the ensuing voice-over and we hear the person as the action continues. In addition, many of the voice-overs are of players who, as they reminisce about themselves and other players, are shown in scenes that fit their statements. This technique produces a seamless and cohesive quality, which enhances the overall effect of the onrush of memories. The key to the overall intention of these documentaries is found in the title, which begins with the one-word declaration of the subject, followed by an adverbial clause that indicates the documentaries' perspective on the past as a time when the game of baseball was enjoyable for players and fans alike, when it was not a business dominated by multimillion-dollar contracts, expansion, dilution of talent, and home run-happy hitters, to mention only a few of the current ills. We are told repeatedly that the players in those days were regular guys who had to work all year long to support their families, who were not made inaccessible to fans by huge salaries, and who belonged to their teams and communities in ways that today's players do not. These simple values are stressed through emphasis on such facts as the minimum salary up to 1967 never being higher than $6,000 and by the reading of a humble request from Alex Grammas in 1953 to Gabe Paul, general manager of the Cincinnati Reds, asking him for something more than the $7,000 he was offered. His letter is a masterpiece of deference made even more obsequious by our awareness of today's contracts and perks, such as Kevin Brown's having a private jet at his disposal for familial travel. Grammas's plea was heeded, and he was given a $1,500 raise. But the grizzled Cardinal veteran Enos Slaughter recounts his having to pay for some of his equipment, including his jockstrap, and for a sandwich between games of a doubleheader. …

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