DJariya

By djariya at 2010-09-28

Website:

http://www.pbs.org/baseball-the-tent...FRlLgwodQClR5A

4 1/2 hour documentary. It airs in 2 parts tonight at 8pm and Wednesday at 8pm

Tuesday's airing:

Top of the Tenth (2 hours):

Wednesday's airing:

Bottom of the Tenth (2 hours 30 minutes):

I have DVR conflicts both days, so hopefully PBS re-airs this during the weekend. I really want to see this documentary.

Otherwise, the DVD & BR will be released next Tuesday, if you can't DVR this.

mcnabb

Really looking forward to this! Cant wait to see how they portray the Strike of 1994, and the Steroid Era.

lisadoris

Saw Ken Burns interview last night and that got me really interested in this. My listings show that PBS is airing it back-to-back tonight and again at 1:30am EST if that helps with the DVR conflicts.

Cardsfan111

Definitely will be checking this out.

Red Dog

Fortunately my PBS affiliate is having multiple re-airings in the morning hours. I'll be interested in just about everything except the steroids issue, which has been talked about to death. I hope it addresses the biggest problem with baseball in the last decade: the widening economic disparity.

sinned

Thanks for the reminder. Will tape if they re-air it during the morning hours on my PBS affiliate.

coli

It is amazing to watch how they ruined Baseball in that 4-5 year period from 1994-98:

-Go on strike in 1994 and the cancel the World Series

-The Players Union (Headed by the biggest a-hole Donald Fehr) reject the owners proposal for a salary cap, revenue sharing, and drug testing.

-Come back in 1995 and the fans dont show up

-McGwire and Sosa break Maris record



Ramifications of those years:

-Large Market vs Small Market that still exists today

-Steroid Generation contains most of the great players from the 1990's: Bonds, McGwire, Sosa, Palmeiro, Clemens, A-Rod, Manny, etc.

-Tainted Record book with Bonds as the All-Time and single season HR record

-Should any of the steroid generation guys get elected to the Hall of Fame?




Final Thought:

-Selig and Fehr are fucking morons

DJariya

^^ So is that what they covered in Part 1? Now I'm really more psyched to see this. Unfortunately my DVR's conflicts won't let me do it. Hopefully there is a weekend re-air.

wmansir

Adam Carolla's latest podcast is an hour long 1-on-1 with Burns. He's promoting this show but they touch on a lot of other stuff.

The WaPo gave the doc a generally positive review, saying it's "only" about 45 minutes overlong. That's got to be a record for Burns.

Red Dog

The Sosa/Mac treatment was good to watch, particularly to show what hypocrites the holier-than-thou writers (and really most fans in general) are about the issue.

the big train

Did the doc emphasize this? It's what bothers me most about the whole affair.

starman9000

Started watching and was enjoying it, but I wasn't able to convince my 2 year old that he would love it because it was baseball. Hope I can catch a rerun, or I'll wait for Netflix.

whoopdido

I watched some of it and enjoyed it but didn't catch this part.

I'm just curious what you mean by the writers and fans being hypocrites about the situation.

Red Dog

It means the writers and fans were willfully blind to the situation (look at how quickly the Big Mac andro story went away) and loving every minute of it and then 5 or so years later, it became OMG....you horrible players ruined the game!!! F that.

djbrown

Interesting fact: Ken Burns first got the idea for The Tenth Inning after watching Jonathan Broxton try to protect a 3-run lead in the ninth.

whoopdido

Yeah but we really didn't know all the facts at that time. Everybody was caught up in it and I don't even remember when the adro stuff came out but if it did come out during the actual homerun chase wasn't it sort of heresay and nobody had all the facts? Once all the fever died down and the facts came out then people started to jump on him for being a cheater.

If the doc covered all this and I'm way off base then I apologize. Like I said, I didn't catch that part and am only going off memory and it was 12 years ago.

coli

I'll be 100% honest, I hated the McGwire/Sosa HR chase of 1998, as I thought something was up at the time. I just kept thinking, "Only 2 players in the history of baseball have hit 60+ Homeruns, and 2 guys are doing it in the same year???"

I first thought that the ball was juiced as MLB would do anything to be relevant back then, but once they reported that McGwire had Andro in his locker, I knew it was all a smokescreen and was suprised that everyone looked the other way.

I am still shocked at the level of outrage towards MLB and Steroid use and the fact that the NFL gets a pass. They keep talking about NFL players being 'stronger and faster' which is codeword for 'Steroids'. Just look at Clay Matthews on Greenbay, you can't tell me that guy's not juicing, he is playing like a beast this year.

Red Dog

The andro stuff came out in early August. It was a dead story by mid-August and people were jumping all over the AP writer who broke the story even though the facts were known that andro was a performance-enhancing substance banned by the NFL and IOC. Between this and other oddities (the bulking up of players, Brady Anderson hitting 51 HRs in 1996, HRs flying out of ballparks, etc), people (and particularly the writers) chose to ignore the facts because they were so caught up in the fun of the HR chase.


I've always noted how football got a free pass on it. Now in football's defense, they eventually addressed the issue themselves, but pro football exploded in popularity in 70s (the height of steroid use) and you never saw the writers criticize the sport for rampant steroid use.

whoopdido

Well, in any event I'm so glad that things are seemingly back to how they should be.

50 homeruns in a season should be a HUGE milestone and no...leadoff hitters should not be doing it.

Kinda makes you wonder about Jose Bautista this year though. The dude never hit more than 16 in his career and right now he's sitting at 52.

Say what you want about McGwire, Bonds and A-Rod...I'll say that all 3 are cheaters and douchebags, but at least they hit a large number of homeruns BEFORE they started juicing. This Bautista guy completely came out of nowhere.

coli

I have looked at Bautista from earlier years, and there isn't much different in his body. I remember George Foster hit 52 Homeruns in 1977, as he never hit came close to that before and after. Sometimes guys just have freak years.

whoopdido

Yeah I suppose.

Mikael79

It's painful all over again to see footage of Bonds breaking Aaron's HR record. Hank Aaron is such a fantastic man, but Bonds...not so much. Just my opinion, of course.

RoyalTea

I thought tonight's episode was supposed to be 2.5 hours

DJariya

My Directv DVR guide and PBS's website says it's 150 minutes. Was it only 2 hours?

coli

Wow, I forgot how unlikeable Barry Bonds really was. If you look up dickhead in the Encyclopedia, his face has gotta be there!