Baseball - A Film by Ken Burns

4 cassettes / 4 hours
Read by Ken Burns

The companion AudioBook to Ken Burns's magnificent PBS Television Series

The authors of the acclaimed and history-making bestseller The Civil War now turn to another defining American phenomenon.  Their subject is Baseball.

During eight months of the year, it is played professionally every day; all year round, amateurs play it, watch it, and dream about it.  Baseball produces remarkable Americans: it seizes hold of ordinary people and shapes them into something we must regard with awe.

Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, Joe DiMaggio . . . truly gifted human beings acting out universal fantasies that, for whatever reason, are most perfectly expressed on a baseball field.

All this and more rings through Ward and Burns's moving, crowded, fascinating history of the game - a history that goes beyond stolen bases, triple plays, and home runs to demonstrate how baseball has been influenced by, and has in turn influenced our national life: politics, race, labor, big business, advertising, and social custom.

The audio covers every milestone of the game: from the rules drawn up in 1845 by Alexander Cartwright to the founding of the Brotherhood of Professional Base Ball Players in 1885, from the 1924 Negro World Series through Jack Roosevelt Robinson's major-league debut in 1947, and Nolan Ryan's seventh and last no-hitter in 1991.

Monumental, affecting, informative, and entertaining - Baseball is an audio that speaks to all Americans.
Customer Review: A tribute to baseball by Ken Burns and his team
This volume contains a lot that is very good. Its structure is a bit forced (nine innings, or periods, of baseball history). The 9th inning, as others have noted, covers a large time frame compared with earlier "innings." I'm not sure that the decade is the best way of organizing baseball history, either. Still and all, that's more a matter of taste than anything else. The book's authors candidly observe that they will focus on eastern teams, e.g., Boston Red Sox and Brooklyn Dodgers, "because we felt their stories especially rich in the human drama that accompanies the history of every team." However, I agree with a reviewer (who bears the name of one of Detroit's best first basemen ever) who laments that this really does slight the deep baseball history that covers much more territory than New York to Boston. Again, though, certainly not a fatal flaw by any stretch in this book. This book is seen as complementary to the documentary series on PBS, designed to elaborate certain issues in ways not possible in the TV medium. Some of the special features in both the documentary and book are the recollections of Buck O'Neil; interviews with historians, writers, managers, and players. Finally, essays by a number of "guests" represent an interesting twist. Roger Angell has a wonderful Introduction, "Hard Lines," in which he juxtaposes the apparent ease of playing baseball with the harsh realities of players often fighting just to stay in the big leagues or losing the joy for the game (note the brief discussion on Carl Yastrzemski). He observes that: "Once we understand how really hard it is, we become citizens of baseball, admiring its laws and just paths, even when the luck of the day hasn't gone our way." Other guest commentators include George Will, Bill James, and Doris Kearns Goodwin. But the book is about baseball, so the nine innings are themselves the heart of this book. The early years, up until 1900, feature a strange game to us today, with very different rules--as well as the origins of racial segregation in the game (the issue of race is one of the main themes of the book). The second inning discusses the game as "Something like a war," when players played and fought hard. And so on. No need to provide a full chronology. Some special segments: the role of Babe Ruth, in the Fourth Inning, helping baseball dig out from under the disaster of the Chicago Black Sox, who threw a World Series. The Sixth Inning features the end of segregation in baseball, with Jackie Robinson's big league debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers. A final quotation from Buck O'Neil illustrates how the game can be addictive--to players (and even to fans), when he says: "There is nothing in life like getting your body to do all the things it has to do on the baseball field." All in all, an ambitious work, trying to capture the spirit of baseball, its sins, and its contributions. While I do have some questions about this volume, as already noted, it ends up not quite being a home run, but it surely is extra bases.
Customer Review: Baseball is too broad a title for this narrow look
Call the film something other than "Baseball". That word is far too broad for what we get to see. Let's look at one installment: "Inning 8: 1960-1970". Point One: There must be very little baseball history in the midwest U.S. because "Baseball" tells very little from it. This must be mentioned as a disclaimer. However, there are stories from the midwest that should never be overlooked. For example, the 1968 season in Detroit seemed to fit so well into the flow of the documentary. A city in Detroit that was ravaged by race riots with a team that lived, breathed and tasted the experience, but also drank the cup of victory. That story is as much about the city of Detroit as it is baseball. It is etched in the city's history and it is unreasonable not to tell such a story in the context of the decade. I wonder what went into why it was not told or how it ended up on the cutting room floor? Was this at the request of Curt Flood, who was featured in this decade's segment? It was Flood's stumble and defensive miscue in center field that handed Detroit a game seven and series victory. In general, I found the lack of midwestern baseball stories to be as aggravating as baseball coverage is in general from the national media. The St. Louis Cardinals are the only midwest representative in this segment. Regretfully, this is the case with the one documentarian who can get a grant package big enough to produce such a large series on national public television. Where is the public service? Secondly, the tone of the film is terrible. It's rather depressing to watch. It relies too heavily on a few commentators and subjects. Those historians who talk about their experience with events as fans are dispassionate about the game. The film should have found fans instead of historians. Since it clearly was not concerned with any sort of comprehensive history, but instead storytelling, go to the people who can tell stories best. Those would be baseball fans, not historians. Trust me, the history of the game is easily told without historians speaking to their personal connection and childhood experiences. The film could have been a great deal of fun to watch, even without being comprehensive. I would love to have seen some of the passion and excitement of the New York Mets fans in 1969, even though the Mets received too much attention at that point of the eighth segment. Overall, the set is not fun to watch. I've been a passionate baseball fan since as early as I can remember but "Baseball" by Ken Burns is not something that I am attracted to, but rather felt the need to endure to be able to claim I hadn't missed it. That stinks.

Rankings can be set by looking at stats from last season and also you can look at projected stats for the 2008 season and go by those to. Remember, fantasy baseball is all about stats. Batting average, Runs, Home runs, RBIs and etc. so you certainly want to make sure your getting the best player at there particular position. So that is where doing some homework can really come in handy during a draft. Many experts out there have rankings of players that you can simply use during your draft but remember these experts know too much and sometimes put a little too much into what they project. So the best thing you can do during a draft is to draft with common sense.

Fantasy Baseball Preparations!

Once draft day comes around your anticipation will hit an all time high but remain calm and make sure your ready to dive right in. See where you will be drafting, once you know what pick you have you will pretty much know who you should draft if you go by your rankings that you set. Obviously, if you have the first pick you would most likely draft Alex Rodriguez but if do not have the first pick you will have to decide who is best to draft when your pick comes up. This is where the rankings are very valuable and sometimes it is worth to do a little homework. Which I will go into shorty.

I am an twenty-nine year old freelance writer from Chicago. I consider myself to be somewhat of a renaissance man I love to do so many things and love everything life has to offer.

What do I mean drafting with common sense well I mean taking a variety of players. For instants you want to draft players that can hit for power so you can get home runs and RBIs but you also want players who can hit for average likely .275 or better is good. Then another important stat is stolen bases you want to have at least 1 or 2 players that will steal at least 20 or more stolen bases for your team. When it comes to pitching you want pitchers that not only win but also get a lot of strikeouts, have a low era as well as low whip which stands for walks plus hits/ innings pitched. Plus, when you draft a closer you want one that not only picks up saves but has a reasonable era as well as a low whip. All of this advice will come in handy I can assure you of that. If you make sure you draft players that help in all the statistical categories that help dominate your league you should have no problem winning your league when the season is over.

Once you know what type of draft your league is going to have, you then will rank your players. The player rankings are already set to a default setting but you have the opportunity to set the rankings to your liking on where you think the player ranks according to statistics. Most stats and rankings go by the previous season and also can go by two year trends and three year trends. The most important thing to remember is that rankings reflect how valuable you think a particular player is going to be to your team in that given season. So you should rank your players by how valuable of an asset they will be to your team.

Fantasy Baseball is just a round the corner, I can not think of a better time than now to get prepared for the upcoming season. First and foremost you want to get prepared first by joining a league either by setting one up or by joining a public league that fits your level. Once you join a league that is when the fun begins. You start preparing for your draft you may have an automatic draft or a live draft. The choice is entirely up to you. I prefer live drafts because you get to choose the players you want and you get to pick from the best of the best.