Baseball

Ben has been watching the Baseball tapes. I couldn't be happier.

Many baseball fans site one person as the reason they love the game. "I'm a fan because of Mickey Mantle," or "I'm a fan because of Ted Williams," or even "I'm a fan because of my grandpa." Well, I'm a fan because of Ken Burns.

My friend and boss-at-the-time Jennifer K first recommended this documentary. My mom was looking for something to buy Mark for Christmas in 1996, and Jen and her husband had recently watched Baseball on PBS. I passed that advice on to my mom, and Mark got the nine-tape set for Christmas.

We randomly picked one tape from the set to preview on Christmas morning. It featured the story of Roberto Clemente. I was spellbound.

See, I wasn't a fan of the game. I found it rather boring. But earlier that year - in the spring in fact - we discovered that our back-woods-locally-owned cable company, for some reason unknown to anyone, piped in WPIX out of New York. Mark had been able to watch his Yankees play all season.

1996 was a good year for the Yanks. They had a rookie shortstop - you might remember him, Derek Jeter - and they beat the Braves in a six-game series that had me on the edge of my seat every night. Me, who didn't really like baseball. Found it boring. But I liked this Jeter guy, and I liked the way the Yankees played.

And then there was Ken Burns. Mark and I started watching the documentary, and watched about half a tape each night. For those not familiar, this long history of baseball was laid out into nine-innings - each inning looking at a period in the game, usually about a decade, and each inning lasting about two and a half hours. John Chancellor narrated, and tons of people provided commentary. It was the most well-presented documentary I had every seen, and it made me love the game. The history, the magic, the curses, the underdogs, the House that Ruth built - all of it. I was hooked.

And Ben is getting hooked to. In a time when steroids are killing the game, and the Yankees are miles away from the team they were in 96, it's good to remember the positives. It's good to cook dinner and hear Buck O'Neil's voice talking about Jackie Robinson and what it was like to play with him. And to hear Billy Crystal talking about going to Yankee Stadium for the first time when he was a kid and thinking Casey Stengal was going to call him in to play.

My kids are going to Yankee stadium for the first (and only) time next week. I doubt they'll be called in to play, but who knows, maybe one day they'll be on TV talking about their visit. Great things can still happen in baseball.