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 enlarge | Author: Kenneth Burns
Publisher: Random House Audio
Category: Book
List Price: $22.50
Buy Used: $0.95
You Save: $21.55 (96%)
New (7) Used (22) from $0.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  113 reviews
Sales Rank: 1322969
Format: Abridged, Audiobook
Media: Audio Cassette
Edition: Abridged
Number Of Items: 4
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 4.2 x 1.2
ISBN: 067943514X
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.3570973
EAN: 9780679435143
ASIN: 067943514X
Publication Date: September 6, 1994
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: READY TO BE LISTENED TO
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| Customer Reviews:
 The consummate set of videos about Baseball. May 17, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Contained in these ten DVD's are just about every historical moment in baseball.
Inning 1 Baseball from its inception in the 1840's to the 1900's This explores baseballs roots from Abner Doubleday to the beginnings of what we know as modern day baseball.
Inning 2 1900 to 1910. The beginning of the World Series. Great footage and photos of old parks and players.
Inning 3 1910 TO 1920. Covers Babe Ruth, the Black sox, Grover Cleveland Alexander and more. Footage of Fenway being built
Inning 4 1920 to 1930 Really the beginnings of the Yankee dynasty but the Cardinals rule the Natonal league with the famed gass house gang.
Inning 5 1930 to 1940. More footage of all the great stars of the day, Ruth, Di Maggio, Williams and more.
Inning 6 1940 to 1950. The effects of war on the American pastime. The splendid splinter goes to war, he comes back and picks up where he left off.
Inning 7 1950 to 1960. The Yankee dynasty continues. Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, The shot heard around the world, Don Larsons perfect game. The Giants and Dodgers pick and leave.
Inning 8 1960 to 1970. The Los Angeles Angels are born, The Kansas City A's become the Oakland A's, The Royals and Mets are born. The Padres are born and move into a small stadium outside of San Diego. And then there was the Seattle Pilots. Those amazin Mets win the World series. Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax get agents but are unsuccessful in changing baseballs anti trust act and re sign with the Dodgers. Maris passes the Babe with an asterisk.
Inning 9 1970 to 1994. Curt Flood loses his war against baseball but the players eventually win. The players union gets stronger. The Reds come to power. The A's win a couple world series. Roberto Clemente's life cut short. Washington loses another team called the Senators.
The film also has some great commentary interspersed through out all of the DVD's. At the end of each DVD is a trivia game based on the decade that the DVD covered.
While the movie is based for the most part on New York teams this is truly a must for all baseball fans. There is no other collection of materials that covers baseball like this one does in terms of breadth and depth.
Good, but not absolutely great April 24, 2007
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
I hate to say it, mainly because I don't want to come off as racist, but this documentary spends a little too much time on the Negro Leagues. For a league no longer in existence, I think Burns could have spent as much time as he did on the other forgotten leagues. By the middle innings you are left wondering if this is a documentary about the Negro Leagues or about Baseball. He spends less time on the All American Girls Baseball League then it actually existed. This was America's first attempt at creating a women's professional sports league and it is treated in passing. In the end you find that seven of the innings are about professional baseball, specifically the Majors. One of the innings, not all together but in pieces across other innings, is devoted entirely to the Negro Leagues. And one inning, again not together but in pieces, is devoted to all the other leagues that came about (including the Federal League, the American Association, and the All American Girls Baseball League).
The best time capsule covering any sport history on video March 14, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This series takes you from the beginning of Baseball to the 1990s. Most of it is covered by decade with the 9th inning covering the 1970s up to 1995 (about the time when the series aired on PBS).
Has rare photos and film covering every event of the sport. Has extensive footage of the Negro League, Babe Ruth, and covers every star in the sport at their times. Has some mention of times about the minor league teams as well.
I'm surprised being from Seattle and recalling what Baseball politics turned into this town around the 70s that the Pilots moving from Seattle to Milwaukee (to become the Brewers) wasn't covered as well as the legal battle to get the Mariners into the Kingdome. Was this dropped on purpose? That was an unusual move to do since a lot of the other legal wrangling with the owners, players, courts, the government, and the players union wasn't missed. Perhaps maybe it was dropped due to space on the last DVD.
It's definately a piece of video history to have.
One of Ken Burns' Best February 11, 2007
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I truly enjoyed this series and I like to watch it every year before the season starts.
I think a lot of people miss the point about Ken Burns. This man realizes that race is the issue that stands at the heart of America's soul... it is the issue the shapes so much of our lives in ways we may not even realize. I understand if many may not want to hear this perspective, but if you shake Ken Burns, race is what comes out. In my studies of American history, it is the issue that comes up again and again.
I do wish there are some things he could have done differently with "Baseball." Some of his pictures did not match with their respective narratives. Civil War historian Shelby Foote seemed really out of place in this series but he had great stories and besides... why can't he be a baseball fan? And as a native of DC, I wish he could have included more on the Washington Senators' story- a film clip of "Damn Yankees," and the story of how the Senators were bought by Bob Short in 1968 and the story of their final game on September 30, 1971, which ended as a forfeit because fans stormed the field in protest. I would have loved to have seen something on the '83 World Series with the Orioles. But I think Burns did a pretty decent job with the material he had. Every story could not be told and he did a great job covering the important ones. Perhaps my favorite moment of this series is where writer Gerald Early talks about when he played the game as a kid and he and his friends did everything they saw done in the professional game, and on their own, they would sing the National Anthem. What a heartwarming story!
I'm really glad for the work of Ken Burns and his understanding of the issues that get to the heart of our society.
PS- Ken Burns sometimes uses the wrong pic or video clip with a given subject. But even with that, I still do mot umderstand why, during Episode 8, "A Whole New Ballgame: 1960-69," during the Roger Maris segment, he showed Maris hitting a home run and the next thing you see is a homer going into THE WRIGLEY FIELD BLEACHERS! And the video looks obviously modern, just toned to black and white to look like old footage from the summer of '61. Is that all he could come up with?
???
 aggressively stupid December 16, 2006
4 out of 34 found this review helpful
I started watching this after Fever Pitch, which made me love baseball. This "documentary" made me hate baseball. Basically the show plays out like a monologue by Garrison Keillor, set to still photographs. The history of baseball is not presented factually and dispassionately; instead the viewer gets it crammed down his brain that baseball is a great and noble game played by great and noble men. This would be like watching a history of World War I and finding that it is narrated by a syrupy-voiced, American-as-the-apple-pie-you're-just-about-to-vomit narrator who starts, in Prairie-Home-Companion-esque manner, drumming it into you that the American soldiers, they were real fine fellers, but Johnny Boche... he was a bad sort. Maybe Jimmy Stewart could be resuscitated just long enough to provide the American-till-you-puke aw shucks voice-overs and tell us that The American soldiers in the field were as right and true as the weather vane on top of the old barn back home in the yellow corn fields. The yellow corn fields near the old swimmin' holler, where MaryJane McKlusky took off her red dress with the small white polkadots and danced around naked awhile to the soft sound of the whistle from the faraway train out of Coop's Junction.
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