Baseball (TV series)
Baseball is a 1994 American television documentary miniseries created by documentary filmmaker Ken Burns about the history of the sport of baseball.
Baseball
Geoffrey C. Ward
Ken Burns
see text
United States
English
9
Ken Burns
Lynn Novick
approx. 18.5 hours total
September 18 –
September 28, 1994
First broadcast on PBS, this was Burns' ninth documentary and won the 1995 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Informational Series.[1] It was funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Format[edit]
Baseball, like Burns' previous documentaries such as The Civil War, used archived pictures and film footage mixed with interviews for visual presentation. Actors provide voice over reciting written work (letters, speeches, etc.) over pictures and video. Episodes are interspersed with the music of the times taken from previous Burns series, original played music, or recordings ranging from Louis Armstrong to Elvis Presley. John Chancellor, anchor of the NBC Nightly News from 1970 to 1982, narrated the series.
The documentary is divided into nine parts, each referred to as an "inning", following the division of a baseball game. Each "inning" reviews an era, mentioning notable moments in the world and in America itself, and begins with a brief prologue acting as an insight to the game during that era. The prologue ends with the playing of "The Star-Spangled Banner" just as a real baseball game would begin, being performed usually by a brass band, with a couple of exceptions: The 1920s, where the rendition is played by a piano of the era, and the 1960s, where the rendition is the version played by Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock. In some "inning" episodes, a period version of the baseball anthem "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" is used. Roughly halfway through each "inning", a title card appears, reading "Bottom of" the inning, dividing the episode into two parts in a manner also recalling the game; in the seventh "inning", the "Bottom" is immediately preceded by the "seventh-inning stretch". Within these halves of the episode, there are smaller segments also highlighted with a simple title card that often highlights various important parts of baseball's history. These often include player highlights, important or eventful games, or the creation of various brands that are now well known throughout baseball such as Louisville Slugger.
Reception[edit]
Critics and audiences praised the series but criticized its length and detail. At 18.5 hours, the runtime of the series is one of Burns' longest.[3]
The first episode more than doubled PBS's average primetime ratings with a Nielsen rating of 5.1 and an audience share of 7% but did not do as well as Civil War's 9 rating and 13% share.[4]
2020 Re-airing[edit]
The complete series (including the Tenth Inning segments) was streamed online for free by PBS during the shortened 2020 Major League Baseball season, starting on what would have been the regular opening day for the season, hoping to "fill the void" left by the lack of baseball.[8][9] In a video message posted the Sunday prior, Ken Burns confirmed the following: "As we hunker down in the days ahead, it’s important that we find things that bring us together and show us our common humanity. That’s why, in the absence of many of our favorite sports, I’ve asked PBS — that’s the Public Broadcasting Service — to stream my film about America’s pastime, ‘Baseball.’ Stay healthy and let’s look after each other. Play ball."[10]