OT - Baseball Documentaries

[Anthony S.]

I watched "The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg" on Netflix last year and enjoyed it.

[FrankWakefield]

There's a video of "The Glory of Their Times"... it's a great thing to see. It doesn't displace Mr. Ritter's book, nor the 4 CD set, but I find it a pleasure to watch.

[scmavl]

I enjoyed "Cobb", although it is not a doc. I also watched "A Player to Be Named Later" which is a doc about the modern day minor leagues.

Originally Posted by FrankWakefield

There's a video of "The Glory of Their Times"... it's a great thing to see. It doesn't displace Mr. Ritter's book, nor the 4 CD set, but I find it a pleasure to watch.

[novakjr]

The HBO "When It Was A Game" trilogy is pretty solid. And the Baseball's Golden age episodes are pretty good as well.

[FrankWakefield]

I agree, I really enjoyed When It Was A Game, all 3. I'd like to edit it down one day, cut out the Clown Prince of Baseball stuff, maybe a couple of the song montages... I like the film clips but the songs are too 'cute'. Totally worth watching, though.

There's some series that's about a Golden Era of baseball, when the Yankees, Giants, and Dodgers were all in New York, it's about baseball in the last half of the 40's up to when the wrecking ball bashes Ebbett's Field, as I recall.

[novakjr]

Frank, I think you're referring to the "Baseball's Golden Age" Series. There's something like 13 episodes, I believe they usually air on Fox Sports Net...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball%27s_Golden_Age

[FrankWakefield]

That could be it. I have 2 VHS tapes of it. Not recorded from broadcast, but original programs. What I have wasn't broken into 13 programs, it was close to 2 hours on each tape. Mel Allen might have narrated it. Never looked for it on dvd.

[MacDice]

Originally Posted by novakjr

The HBO "When It Was A Game" trilogy is pretty solid. And the Baseball's Golden age episodes are pretty good as well.

Good call. I loved that series. The first two were the best.

[bh3443]

Hi Friends,
Those are all great ones to watch.
The last few weeks I had a ton of time on my hands in the hospital, so I watched a bunch of sports movies including:
Black & White are my favorites:
Fear Strikes Out (Jim Piersall)
Knute Rockne Story
Pride of the Yankees (Gehrig story with a bunch of real BB players in it!)
The Jimmy Stewart movie about the one-legged pitcher
Rocky Marciano Story

Color:
The Natural~~~ which I love
8 Men Out and Babe Ruth (John Goodman)~~~ for some reason these don't "feel right" when I watch them. lol, 8 Men Out is simply aggravating!
Cobb

As for documentaries, the Ken Burns is the best ( I love part 1 the best!)
and When it was a game is tremendous.

If you want to see other sports documentaries, my all-time favorites are:

History of the AFL (multiple parts and accurate!)~~~~ starts with Lamar Hunt getting denied a franchise and goes right thru the merger and beyond!
This covers EVERYTHING, and is my favorite work on any sport!

Bowling: There's a recent documentary style film called League of or Ordinary Gentlemen, and it follows Wayne Webb, Pete Webber etc.., around and shows what the PBA has become which to me is a ruination of my personal favorite sport which I bowled from age 4 to 40!

And there are several movies and documentaries of Howard Cosell, Jim McKay and Ali that are simply great!

Have a great day everyone and it's good to back here on net54: home of the greatest group of people I've had the pleasure of knowing!

Bill Hedin

[Kawika]

Hi Bill-
Hope you are doing OK.
Here's one more sports movie that has flown under the radar that you might enjoy. It's a very engaging documentary made in 2008 about the Harvard-Yale football game in 1968 called Harvard Beats Yale, 29-29. The film intersperses footage of an old broadcast of the game, amazing how quaint TV football was just 40 years ago, with interviews of the former players. There is a great intersection of well known people who were in some way connected to the story like the actor Tommie Lee Jones, Meryl Streep and even Yale QB Boyd Dowling who was the model for the character BD in Doonesbury.