Third Degree Burns? Not quite
Overall, of course, it's a grand documentary. But too much of the time Burns seems to think that baeball was invented somewhere between White Plains NY and Brocton MASS, and that anything played outside of the Boston NYC corridor really doesn't count as major league at all.
Another small but, I think, important observation. In covering the 1960 Series (whose outcome is lamented by NY born and bred author and part-time plagiarist Doris Kearns Goodwin), Burns uses Chuck Thompson's exciting and excited voice-over of the bottom of the ninth. On the whole, Thomson's call was absolutely dead on the money, except for a few minor errors. I think I can recall the way it ran pretty clearly.
Thompson: "Well, a little while ago, when we mentioned that this one, in typical fashion, was going right to the wire, little did we know. Art Ditmar throws .. THERE'S A SWING AND A HIGH FLY BALL GOING DEEP TO LEFT ... THIS MAY DO IT ... BACK TO THE WALL GOES BERRA. IT .. IS .. OVER THE FENCE, HOME RUN THE PIRATES WIN!"
Except Art Ditmar wasn't on the field -- he was warming up in the bullpen. Ralph Terry threw that pitch. So the thompson voice-ever has been doctored to have him say "Ralph Terry throws ... " There was also an error in Thompson's call of the final score, though I can't remember it as clearly. But the new "call" gets everything exactly right.
So what's the big deal? Doctor a few tapes. So what? (I think I'll just leave that alone and let it stink for a while.) So what is that Historian Burns should know lots better. You know he wouldn't have thrown in a few faked Brady photographs in "The Civil War." Why do it here?
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