Product Description
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The Tenth Inning a film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. Top of the
Tenth (1992 - 1999)-In an age of globalization and deregulation a
cataclysmic strike over money and power brings baseball to the
brink; dazzlingly talented Latin players transform the sport; Cal
Ripken becomes baseball's new Iron Man; and Ken Griffey Jr.. and
Barry Bonds are simply dazzling. The Braves dominate the National
League while the Yankees build a new dynasty. As home run totals
soar sluggers Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa smash one of the game's
most hallowed records. Meanwhile behind the scenes players on
every team must make life altering decisions about how far they
are willing to go to succeed. Bottom of the Tenth (1999 -
2009)-As the new millennium dawns baseball on the field is better
than ever before. In an era of offense Pedro Martinez and a
handful of other pitchers still manage to dominate. Ichiro Suzuki
proves that Asian players can be superstars while Barry Bonds
becomes one of the most dominant hitters of all time. In the fall
of 2001 when a badly frightened country yearns for normalcy
baseball helps provide it. in an epic battle with the Yankees the
benighted Boston Red Sox stage the greatest comeback in history.
Baseball is more popular and profitable than ever but suspicions
and revelations about performance enhancing drugs keep surfacing
calling the integrity of the game itself into question. Special
Features: Bonus Features include 2.5 hours of deleted scenes and
additional interviews.
.com
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Unlike his usual long forays into our nation's distant past, Ken
Burns turns his eye to recent history with this engrossing
four-hour addition to his popular 1990s documentary series
Baseball. Spanning the last 20 years, Baseball: The Tenth Inning
chronicles the memorable and infamous personalities, teams,
games, and scandals that make the national pastime such a topic
of significance beyond sport.
Disc 1 examines the labor stoppage of the '90s, the rise of
Latino players from countries like the Dominican Republic, the
resurgence of the New York Yankees, and Mark McGwire's and Sammy
Sosa's pursuit of the single-season home-run record in 1998. The
coverage of the home-run chase is particularly effective in
showing how baseball simultaneously serves as an escape from and
a reflection of the era in which it is played. A country weary of
the scandal of President Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky
eagerly turned its attention to the two men hitting towering home
runs. And yet there was scandal, too, at the heart of their
exploits, the truth of which would be avoided by owners, players,
the press, and fans for many more years.
Disc 2 spends a significant a of time on the way the
steroid scandal fully came to light in the 2000s. The sour
reception to Barry Bonds's pursuit of Hank Aaron's all-time
home-run record was not just a reaction to how fans felt about
Bonds but also how they perceived what they saw on the field with
either greater knowledge or less willful ignorance of how it was
achieved. Another compelling chapter on a serious topic focuses
on the resumption of baseball after 9/11, one of the few times in
history that more than New Yorkers were rooting for the Yankees
in the World Series. Burns still gives plenty of time in the
second disc to lighter subjects, including the rise of the Boston
Red Sox to World Series champions twice in three years after so
many seasons of futility or how globalization of the game brought
us outstanding talent from beyond the Western Hemisphere in the
form of Japan's Ichiro Suzuki.
For all its depth, if there is a weakness to this documentary,
it's how much goes unexamined. Because of its focus on players
embroiled in the steroids controversy, the feats of the dominant
position players of the era who weren't implicated as
performance-enhancing drug users--like Ken Griffey Jr., or Albert
Pujols--receive little or no attention. Griffey, once considered
the best player in the game, gets nothing beyond a brief
highlight reel and a reference as an also-ran in the McGwire-Sosa
home-run chase. World Series games not involving the New York
Yankees, Boston Red Sox, San Francisco Giants, or Atlanta Braves
get about 30 seconds of footage. But to give the game its due
might have required a second documentary as long as the original
Baseball series.
Regardless of what else could have been covered, fans will be
delighted by this Keith David-narrated documentary with its
snappy production values and thoughtful contributors--none,
however, with the presence or significance of the late Buck
O'Neil, the heart and soul of the original series. Sometimes
Baseball: The Tenth Inning works its best magic by letting the
game do the talking, allowing viewers the rtunity to
reminisce as they watch footage (unfortunately grainy on today's
huge high-def screens) of great contests gone by. And with the
San Francisco Giants defying the odds by winning the 2010 World
Series title, Burns is off to a good start this decade with
material for future extra innings in this amazing series. --Aaron
Knopf