Baseball: The Tenth Inning (review)

The original Emmy Award-winning, nine-part documentary Baseball, which was broadcast on PBS in 1994 during the players' strike, was seen by more than 43 million viewers, making it the most watched film in PBS history.¹ The series covered 1839 to 1992, and it was intended in some measure to provide an antidote to the disenchantment with baseball following the termination of the 1994 season. Baseball may have broken down as the result of the mutual greed and power games of the players and the owners, but Burns unfolded the glorious history of America's game to compensate for the stoppage on the field. After completing his magnum opus, Burns was determined not to deal with the subject again, but when he saw the resurgent popularity of the game during the ensuing sixteen years, he decided to chronicle what he calls baseball's new "golden age."²

But this golden age has an ignominious shadow over it, and The Tenth Inning both extols the beauty of the game on the field and laments the problems raised by some players' use of steroids and related performance-enhancing drugs. Burns prefaces the two-part program with the mantra that "no matter what happens off the field, it's still a great game." Even the opening ad for Bank of America celebrates the healing pastoral powers of baseball throughout the years. However, Burns's consolatory motto contains a false dichotomy: the drug use may have occurred off the field, but its effect is felt on the field. It's impossible to separate the game into two distinct categories because they are inextricably connected. Barry Bonds looks great hitting home runs throughout the documentary, and, on the one hand, we are asked to celebrate his prowess, but, on the other hand, our suspicion that his Ruthian blasts are fueled by drugs undercuts our admiration. To support the positive theme, players are shown making a succession of superlative plays, and various ball fields are presented in all their green glory. Star players like Ichiro Suzuki, Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Omar Vizquel, and Pedro Martinez provide heroic images to thrill fans. Mixed inextricably with these memories, however, is the specter of drug use by the home run titans, Sosa, McGwire, and Bonds. In particular, Burns uses Bonds as Frankenstein's monster, with whom the game will have to deal when he stakes his claim in "the bottom of the tenth" as the greatest player ever. Burns establishes a dramatic pattern to his presentation by invariably following a positive aspect of the game, exemplified, for example, by Cal Ripken's consecutive games record. Ripken's record is cited as the means of restoring fan support after the hateful 1994 strike, with a return to the Bonds mythos of supreme talent and Faustian ambition. The effect on baseball of the rise and fall of Barry Bonds constitutes the principal focus of the four-hour program.

The nature and structure of the Tenth Inning is based on a dual temporal perspective: the past events being chronicled and the present from which our act of retrospection takes place. Because subsequent revelations have influenced our perception of the past events, we obviously enjoy a superior perspective, but at the same time through Burns's expert direction we can see even more meanings in these events than the mere passage of time would provide. He assembles a visual and vocal mixture of film highlights; photos; voiceover narration; music; and commentary by broadcasters, writers, players, managers, and fans to create a multi-leveled and connected look at the events he considers the most important. Burns's characteristic pattern consists of a remark by narrator Keith David about the upcoming scene, followed by footage of the event unfolding or a photo that illustrates the point being made, which is succeeded by a comment from Bob Costas, Mike Barnicle, Howard Bryant, George Will, or Tom Boswell, among others, all of whom establish consistent personas in the unfolding events. Costas is the articulate voice of...