Baseball (documentary)
| Baseball | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Genre | Documentary film |
| Created by | Ken Burns |
| Written by |
Geoffrey C. Ward Ken Burns |
| Starring | see text |
| Narrated by | John Chancellor |
| Country of origin | USA |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of episodes | 9 |
| Production | |
| Producer(s) | Ken Burns Lynn Novick |
| Running time | approx. 18.5 hours total |
| Distributor | PBS |
| Release | |
| Original network | PBS |
| Original release | September 18 – September 28, 1994 |
| Chronology | |
| Followed by | The Tenth Inning |
Baseball is a 1994 American television documentary miniseries created by Ken Burns about the game of baseball. First broadcast on PBS, this was Burns' ninth documentary and won the 1995 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Informational Series.
Baseball is similar to Burns' previous documentaries such as The Civil War, in the use of 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. The 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. The series was narrated by John Chancellor, the former anchor of the NBC Nightly News from 1970 to 1982.
The documentary is divided into nine parts, each referred to as an "inning", following the division of a baseball game. Each "inning" reviews a particular era in time, mentioning notable moments in the world and in America itself, and begins with a brief prologue that acts 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 . 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 in two parts in a manner also recalling the game; in the seventh "inning", the "Bottom" is immediately preceded by the "seventh-inning stretch", in which several of the guests sing renditions of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game."
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