MLB's The Baseball Network

[Kevin Finnerty]

Originally Posted by JRutledge

Well if you feel the documentary was not a good source of history, then someone should create a better depiction of the history of baseball. There are a million books of the Kennedy Assassination or the Vietnam War; all do not have the same point of view. You make it sound like there is only one point of view about the history of baseball. It has been said that the real truth of history comes from the person that writes it.

Peace

I'm one of the people who felt that the grand old game should have its history written and recorded by baseball people. Burns is a fraud.

I'm not hard to please. An honest filmmaker making an honest effort would have yielded an acceptable work. And it would have probably been profitable--a Burns priority (before accuracy). I will never be among those who want to see it recorded by a guy who has author George Plimpton describe Bobby Thomson's Shot Heard 'Round The World rather than Bobby Thomson and Ralph Branca themselves. (They each told me shortly after that time that they weren't even contacted.) And there are dozens of events that we have to endure a bunch of other accomplished intellectuals who happen to know a baseball when they see it. Make a film about evolution and hear them wax about that---this is baseball! I don't care what Doris Kearns Goodwin has to say about baseball, I care what she has to say about American history. I care what baseball people have to say about baseball. And you make an 18-hour film about anything, and it should be complete. I'm still waiting for the history after the Dodgers and Giants moved West. There was some interesting stuff then, also.

Some enjoyable old films, though ... even if some of the films shown are of different events than they are claiming to be.