THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, September 21, 1994 TAG: 9409210531
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Bob Molinaro
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines
In the end, I suppose ``Baseball,'' Ken Burns' PBS documentary, will be forgiven its pretentiousness. The very fact that Burns needs 18 1/2 hours, divided into nine ``innings,'' to tell his story is a tip-off that somebody is taking the game, and himself, a little too seriously.
If you're like me, you'll try to overlook the self-conscious commentary offered by the armchair philosophers who wax dreamily about the ``enduring institution'' that is baseball.
This series does not need Tom Boswell, Roger Angell, Doris Kearns Goodwin or George Will explaining the mythology of the game. These interwoven poetry sessions only slow down a work that already is as leisurely as a Sunday afternoon doubleheader.
George Will should be sent to the showers along with anyone else who babbles on about baseball being a metaphor for America's triumphs and struggles, how it reflects our democracy and all the rest.
It is much too much. The length and the tone.
Still, it is worth sitting through, if only to get a glimpse of the jumpy, black-and-white film clips of Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson and Babe Ruth.
I'm a sucker for archival footage and vintage photos showing players in their natural habitat. There is a lot of wonderful, memorable material here.
The problem with ``Baseball'' is that it leans too heavily on the sentimental. Grown-ups appear on camera and solemnly tell how they were introduced to the sport by their fathers with a game of catch in the back yard. These moments are related as if they had been a shared religious experience.
But there's a good reason why baseball is the first sport to which a child is exposed, and it has nothing to do with mythology. A baseball is the right size for a little boy's or little girl's hand. A football is too big. So is a basketball.
These childhood memories intertwine neatly with the ludicrous theory that baseball is unchanged after all these years. As if artificial turf, depressing domes, free agency, the designated hitter and divisional playoffs have never existed.
Some things remain unchanged, though. In the first episode of ``Baseball,'' we learned that, as early as 1876, owners expressed alarm over the size of players' salaries. And then set out to cut them.
Those who can wade through the philosophical mumbo-jumbo are rewarded with a colorful story full of pictures that take us back, back, back through the years.
Some of the best pictures are painted by the words.
Cobb is a man ``pursued by demons'' who ``would climb a mountain to punch an echo.''
American League president Ban Johnson ``looks like he was weaned on an icicle.''
Rube Waddell, a lefthanded pitcher known for drinking, was dubbed ``Souse-paw'' by a sports writer.
The line between fact and myth sometimes blurs, to our enjoyment.
Joe Tinker and Johnny Evers, part of the Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance double-play combination, supposedly didn't speak to each other for two years because of a ``quarrel over cab fare.''
It was said that Giants pitching great Christy Mathewson, who was an antidote to the sociopaths who populated baseball in those days, would not be interviewed by sports writers who had cheated on their wives.
``Baseball'' is fun history. Tune in. But don't hesitate to tune out the poetry. by CNB