Ken Burn's Baseball

utdalltheway

Sexy Beast
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Aug 20, 2001
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I saw a part of this mini series the other night, the one where DiMaggio and Gerhrig were featured.

anyone else watch this?

Seems romanticized to me.

How come baseball is held in such high regard - and was it really better in the old days considering that some of the best players weren't allowed to play for the white teams?
America's pastime and all that malarky - without black people.
 
i saw it when it first came out and thought it was great. romantisized, sure. it was a romantic, innocent time. the game was about the game, not money, steroids, tv, memoribilia sales, etc. there were scandals, racial problems, that were overcome over the years. all part of a generation and sport growing up. the documentory dealt with all of that. there were players shown that people today never saw and probably never heard of. legends of the game. baseball was all there was then. not like today with several other sports to compete with. if he did a documentory on hockey in canada or football in england it would be the same way. i wish he'd do them...i'd love to see them.
 
Because it was the first true "national" sport in the US, one played by all across the nation, regardless of race, religion or income, even though blacks weren't permitted to participate in the MLB. It's the first sport that fathers and sons started to attend routinely, and hence sons carried on the tradition.

I remember an article or segment from a while back when a journalist or sports person in the US compared baseball to football (soccer in this context) and said that baseball rooted itself in the American culture before football and that had it been the other way around, football would be a huge in the US. As it is, gridiron football gained popularity followed by basketball and football was pushed further and further down the popularity list.
 
romantic, innocent time? probably was if you were white. not so innocent if you were native american, chinese or black.

I guess that's some of my point: the way they talk about the good old days. feck that! the good old days are now.

in the "Field of Dreams" Ray Liotta says that he'd have played for free. dunno if that's true of any players back then or now but it is a nice heart warming thought.

I remember my childhood and think of it as an innocent time with nice warm summers and lots of playtime. doubt my Dad would think of the same years in that light, he was breaking his arse to make ends meet.
 
there has been racism and predjudice since the beginning of time...in every country. it's been an american problem for 250+- years. not 3000+ like the rest of the world. an america populated primarily by europeans during those formative years. they brougt their predjudices with them and cultivated more as they mixed with everyone else coming here.
 
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