Baseball Documentary

[Anthony S.]

I found the following anecdote on another website, TBob:



I had the chance to hear Ken Burns speak at Messiah College in Pennsylvania a few years ago. He related this anecdote.

Burns said he was sitting in a restaurant, when a man came up to him and asked, "Excuse me. Are you Ken Burns?"

Burns replied that he was.

The man said, "Well, I'm from Minnesota - and I hate you."

Burns replied, "I know - Harmon Killebrew."

For Burns had realized, to his great chagrin, but much too late to make changes, that he had produced a nine-part epic documentary history of baseball, and not once in the whole documentary had the name of the Twins' great slugger been mentioned.

Well, for Twins' fans' sake, I hope he manages to work Harmon's name into the "Tenth Inning" somehow or other.

[Jim VB]

Originally Posted by Anthony S.

I found the following anecdote on another website, TBob:



I had the chance to hear Ken Burns speak at Messiah College in Pennsylvania a few years ago. He related this anecdote.

Burns said he was sitting in a restaurant, when a man came up to him and asked, "Excuse me. Are you Ken Burns?"

Burns replied that he was.

The man said, "Well, I'm from Minnesota - and I hate you."

Burns replied, "I know - Harmon Killebrew."

For Burns had realized, to his great chagrin, but much too late to make changes, that he had produced a nine-part epic documentary history of baseball, and not once in the whole documentary had the name of the Twins' great slugger been mentioned.

Well, for Twins' fans' sake, I hope he manages to work Harmon's name into the "Tenth Inning" somehow or other.

Personally, I think he should only mention hitters with a career BA over .260., but that's just my opinion.

[Anthony S.]

Originally Posted by Jim VB

Personally, I think he should only mention hitters with a career BA over .260., but that's just my opinion.

I'm just happy he's only covering real cities.

[Jim VB]

Originally Posted by Anthony S.

I'm just happy he's only covering real cities.

Don't get me wrong. I liked Killebrew, as a kid. But, statistically speaking, he falls somewhere in the middle between Dave Kingman and Jim Thome.

[barrysloate]

The best part of last night's show for me were the clips. I got to see some of the greatest moments of the era, and some of the greatest swings taken by Bonds, Sosa, McGwire, and Griffey, all condensed into a two hour show. That was fun.

[Jim VB]

Originally Posted by Anthony S.

I'm just happy he's only covering real cities.

I spend a fair amount of time in the Twin Cities area. I find it to be one of the nicest cities in the country for 9 months out of every 12. I'm not so fond of it when I visit in December, January, or February.

[tbob]

Originally Posted by Jim VB

Personally, I think he should only mention hitters with a career BA over .260., but that's just my opinion.

Yup, 25 minutes on Bobby Bonds and 0 on a guy who hit 559 homers and was the face of the franchise, that's about right
P.S. Dave Kingman and Jim Thome have both been mentioned and shown...

[Jim VB]

tbob,

I'm only half kidding on Killebrew. To me the "face of the franchise" carries much more weight than the HR's.

Kingman (all stats from memory): .235, 1200 RBI, and 440 HR, played for 7 teams in 16 years. (I know one season he played for 4 teams.)

Thome: .280, 1600+ RBI, and almost 600 HR, played for 5 teams

Killebrew: .256, just under 1600 RBI, and 570 HR, played for 21 years with the same franchise (and then one somewhere else, KC?)


I know that Killebrew helped legitimize baseball in MN. Without him there was little reason to watch that team. He paved the way for that to become one of the best franchises in the AL. I was speaking only statistically.


I grew up in NYC and recognize my obvious Yankees bias. You might have to examine your (slight ) bias towards the Twins. HOF voters obviously recognized Killebrew's importance when they elected him, and I would not dispute that, but you have to admit that, statistically, he was a one dimensional player.

[tbob]

One dimensional but along with Tony Oliva and Jim Thome, perhaps the nicest gentleman who ever played MLB. (And yes I am an unabashed biased Twins fan ).

[tbob]

There was a long thread a while back about the Dodgers-Giants playoff game (the "Giants Win the Pennant!" game) and several posters doubted that the Giants actually stole the Dodgers signs and knew every pitch that was coming. Glad to see Burns backed me up on that one and definitively said it was true and that the Giants indeed did know what every pitch was, including Thomson's HR pitch.

[tbob]

Sorry for the multi-posts, I forgot to mention this from the show:

How many 'Mr. Milkshakes' already in Hall?
September, 29, 2010 Sep 2912:50PM ETEmail Print Comments21 By Rob NeyerI still haven't watched Part 1 of "The Tenth Inning" -- last night I was watching actual baseball games, and this morning I've been writing this (see below). But it's loaded on the DVR, and today's the day. Obviously, though, a lot of people have watched it already. I mentioned this in Wangdoodles this morning, but Thomas Boswell claims he saw a player -- later elected to the Hall of Fame -- mixing a "Jose Canseco milkshake."

Over at Wezen-ball, Larry Granillo ran through the list of candidates (and came up with a good one).

To some of us, though, the true identity of Mr. Milkshake is somewhat less interesting than the fact that Boswell's kept this information to himself for 22 years, even as the issue exploded across front pages and involved many of the sport's biggest stars. Here's Craig Calcaterra:

I recently spouted off about making evidence-free accusations of PED-use, and I stand by such spouting. But in this case, Boswell has apparently been sitting on evidence of a Hall of Famer using what Boswell believed to be PEDs for over 20 years.

I know that Boswell reported as early as 1988 that Jose Canseco used steroids -- and his reports were basically ignored by all but a handful of booing fans that fall -- but why haven't we heard anything about this Hall of Fame player before now? Given all that has transpired in the past decade, wouldn't information about a Hall of Famer's PED use have been extremely relevant to the national discussion? I'm not saying Boswell just tell the mikshake story and leave it at that, but why not interview the player about it? Why not do some more reporting on it? Why wasn't this out there before last night?

--snip--

What has happened, if what Boswell says is true, is that a PED user was elected to the Hall of Fame by baseball writers who currently believe that the world will end if a PED user is elected to the Hall of Fame. Mr. Milkshake has a plaque in Cooperstown, but because of the perceived need to keep the Hall of Fame pure, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Mark McGwire won't get one anytime soon.

There are two reasons I believe this de facto no-steroids Hall of Fame policy can survive for more than a few years.

The first reason is that it's generational. The younger the Hall of Fame voter, the less likely that you'll find a hard-line policy about PEDs. It'll take a long, long time for the older voters to fall from the voting rolls ... but new, younger writers become BBWAA members every year. Granted, with the business changing so quickly, a lot of those younger members won't be members long enough to actually participate in Hall of Fame voting. But in 10 or 15 years the electorate will look quite a bit different than it does now, and it will be more favorably disposed toward the superstars of the 1990s.

The second reason is that the contradictions will become enormous. Even before Boswell's revelation, any rational observer has to have surmised that somebody in the Hall of Fame used steroids at some point during their careers. Maybe Boswell will reveal the identity of Mr. Milkshake or maybe he won't, but we'll learn more things about players from the late '80s and 1990s and 2000s, and we'll learn that some of them used steroids and were subsequently elected to the Hall of Fame. Maybe voters can hold the line if it's just Mr. Milkshake ... but what happens when we discover more Mr. Milkshakes? Can the voters continue to exclude four or five superstars from the '00s when they've already (unwittingly) elected four or five (eventually) acknowledged users?

Maybe. But I doubt it. So here's my advice to voters who ostensibly refuse to vote for anyone under serious PED suspicion ... Get out in front of this thing, guys. Try to look ahead five or 10 years. See where this thing's going to be. And don't wait for that to happen. Instead of getting dragged, kicking and shouting and screaming all the while, to the inevitable conclusion, take the lead. Do some reporting. Put things into context. Celebrate the players -- assuming you can find any -- who spoke out against drug use within the Players Association. Write about the impacts of cheating without resorting to ill-devised moral crusades.

More than anything, though? Think through this thing. Lead the way. Do what journalists are supposed to do. There's no one right answer. But some are better than others.

MVP awards: Killebrew 1, Kingman 0, Thome 0
In Top Three in MVP voting: Killebrew 4 times, Kingman never, Thome never
All-Star: Killebrew 13 times, Kingman 3, Thome 5

Top 5 in Slugging: Killebrew 10 times, Kingman twice, Thome 5 times
Top 5 in OPS: Killebrew 10 times, Kingman once, Thome 7 times
RBI Crowns: Killebrew 3, Kingman 0, Thome 0

HR Titles: Killebrew 6, Kingman 2, Thome 1
Seasons with 45+ HRs: Killebrew 5, Kingman 1, Thome 3
Batting Avg Relative to League: Killebrew .256 vs .259, -3; Kingman .236 vs .262, -26; Thome .278 vs .272, +6

Most HRs in the Major Leagues for a Decade (with 2nd-highest decade total in history): Killebrew 1960s (or 1961-1970); Kingman 0, Thome 0

[triwak]

Thought the coverage of the Steroid era was deserved. Ditto the strike, and the home run record chase of 1998. But GAWD, could we have had just a wee bit more material on Boston?! And... not one word mentioned about Pujols. Hmmm..... Best 10-year performance to ever begin a career in the history of the game? And we're currently right in the middle of it? Guess, not in Burn's mind.

[tbob]

Ken, the absence of Pujols was unbelievable. At least the Cardinals were shown a little bit. If an alien landed and watched Ken Burns' baseball series he would never know a team even existed called the Minnesota Twins, much less that they had won 2 world titles in 87 and 91 (ESPN called it (1991) one of the top 3 series ever), or won division championships 6 of the last 9 years. I'm glad the Minnesotan told Burns he sucked Great job on the documentaries but he missed the boat on the Twins, a great, great story about a team which was about to be contracted by Selig fighting back with little payroll to be successful, doing it the right way.
And boatloads of footage of the Braves in the 90's but not one mention of that series in 91. Sigh. Oh well, go Twins!