Ken Burns Baseball

George's short-lived R&B band.

 

Duplicated strictly to make White Sox fans feel better than 29th.

 

Doug Mientkiewicz had one interesting streak at FSU: he reached base in something like 150 games in a row.

 

I forgot I still had the bottom of the 6th inning to finish last night: the complete story of Jackie Robinson's emergence into the history books. Man, ain't a rock Burns left uncovered. Unbelievable. Mesmerizing. The chapter ends with Babe Ruth's death.

Interspersed with the Robinson story is the story of women's baseball. More great stuff.

I recommend to anyone before they die to watch this series. Maybe we can work something out where I send my complete set to someone, then they pass it forward, and we make it an SportsJournalists.com thing.

 

Billy Crystal opens up the 7th inning with a funny anecdote of growing up in New Yawk, talking about how kids talked about who's the greatest, Mays, Williams or The Mick. Funny stuff.

Buck O'Neil, whose chats throughout this series have been nothing short of marvelous (what a great character), had a fantastic insight on Mantle, and just what kind of god he would've have been had he played even ONE year healthy; woulda stolen 100 bases or more in a season, mmmm, hmmm.

Got to the 7th-inning Stretch and fell asleep.

 

Heaven knows, there's a lot to like about it (alone, all the Buck stuff is worth the price of admission) . . . though it's awfully New York-centric . . .

Burns does the work, and he's damn good. But he's not God. Remember, in his Jazz series, he gave short lip service to the greatest jazz pianist ever (Art Tatum) and didn't even MENTION Erroll Garner . . . while putting us to sleep with ALL Wynton Marsalis, ALL the time.

 

I always bring this up on unbeatable baseball records threads, but I sincerely doubt Johnny Vander Meer's back-to-back no-hitters will ever be *broken*. It's hard to imagine it being tied, but to throw three consecutive seems impossible to me.

Oh, and Tom Emanski's back-to-back-to-back AAU championships.

 

I watched the History of Jazz in my, get this, Jazz History class. It was the greatest "waste" of 39 classes -- I think that's how the math turned out. I thought it was very good, though not as interesting as the baseball series.

And about it being "New York-centric," I think that's pretty tough to avoid considering all the talent and history that circulated around that area with the Dodgers, Giants and Yankees.

 

Del_B_Vista is the SportsJournalists.com member who gets results!

 

Absolutely not. Neither record will be broken, especially Tom's. I don't usually think of Vander Meer's record when topics like this arise. I'm not sure why, exactly. It seems like more of a specialty record -- maybe not the standard type. Considering how few pitchers have thrown three no-hitters in their careers, I doubt someone will toss three in consecutive starts.

 

Got through a chunk of the top of the 8th last night ...

The part where Ty Cobb dies was sad. Of all the players he played with, only 3 showed up to his funeral. Granted many were dead, but it also spoke volumes the the loneliness he endured throughout his life. He said if he had to do it over again, "I would've had friends." Poignant.

The vignette on Koufax's rise from Wild Thing to the Best Pitcher of All Time during a 5-year stretch was cool to see again. So was the part on Mario Cuomo, whose career ended for all intents and purposes when he got beaned in the back of the head during a minor league game. He got a bigger signing bonus ($2,000) than did Mantle ($1,100).

 

Understood . . . but the absolute triple-convergence was truly brief (late 40s through mid-50s) . . . after which the Giants (despite the presence of Mays, and then McCovey) ultimately failed to keep pace, in large part "thanks" to their less-than-optimum upper management.

But, hell, you knew all along that the creator of both "New York" and "Baseball" would
ride hard on the Yanks/Dodger thing, which left large chunks of the country somewhat
less than enchanted.

And I believe Stengel stands behind very few as an all-time baseball icon . . . but the Yankee supporting cast behind Mantle, Ford and Berra were largely interchangable parts.
I'll get arguments, but stand on the statement.