Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated) Binding: VHS Tape EAN: 9780780605480 Format: Box set, Black & White, Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC ISBN: 0780605489 Label: Pbs Home Video Manufacturer: Pbs Home Video Number Of Items: 9 Publisher: Pbs Home Video Release Date: April 16, 1995 Studio: Pbs Home Video Theatrical Release Date: September 18, 1994 Sales Rank: 2534
Product Description: 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.
Amazon.com essential video: After the national success of his 11-hour epic, The Civil War--the highest-rated miniseries in public-television history--many wondered if Ken Burns could capture the same energy and passion with smaller subjects. His reply, the 18-hour history of America's greatest sport, Baseball, not only quieted these worries, it also perhaps surpassed his prior achievement. Massive in scope (it covers more than 100 years), exhausting in detail, and filled with celebrities, journalists, politicians, historians, and the men who played the game, Burns's romantic love letter to the game achieves the impossible: even those who hate baseball can't help but become immersed in it. This is because Burns doesn't just detail the great players and the memorable plays and games; he also presents baseball as a cultural and social mirror, reflecting the beauty and hypocrisy of the nation that created it. Divided into nine innings, two hours each in length, the video examines complex social issues such as segregation, racial inequality (its section on Jackie Robinson, baseball's first African American player, should be required school viewing), labor battles between owners and players, politics, technology and gender conflicts, among others. Then, of course, there's fascinating footage and biographies on the players--troubled icons such as Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb, heroes such as Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle, and tragic figures such as Pete Rose and Lou Gehrig--the men who, despite a rocky and often hypocritical history, constructed baseball's tradition and preserved its invincibility. --Dave McCoy
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - The best
This series was so interesting and so well done that I bought sets for two friend and three of my children.
Not only did it cover baseball it covered Americana.
Rating: - Baseball: An Illustrated History
I liked the book so well that I would like to purchase two more. One for my brother and son.
Rating: - The Old Ball Game
Only the sport of baseball could lend itself (via its long, rich heritage) to a Ken Burns-style documentary. Of course, Burns nails it once again.
Though not as emotionally touching as his ... Read More
Rating: - 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 ... Read More
Rating: - 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".
- The best
- Baseball is too broad a title for this narrow look