We've heard about this before, but yesterday documentary maker Ken Burns gave a hint about what his addendum to "Baseball" -- called "The 10th Inning" -- is going to look like:
Burns described "The Tenth Inning's" opening scene - the bottom of the ninth inning of the seventh game of the 1992 NLCS between Pittsburgh and the Braves, when Atlanta's Sid Bream slides home to score the winning run on Francisco Cabrera's hit to left field.
"The Pirates had a certain left fielder whose throw was (just) short on his last play as a Pirate," Burns said, his eyes twinkling with enthusiasm, "and we'll just take it from there: 'Oh, by the way his name is Barry Bonds, who happens to have just a little importance over the arc of the next 18 years of baseball."'
I appreciate that many people simply don't want to hear about performance enhancing drugs anymore, but I think one of the biggest reasons for the fatigue is the hysterical, breathless and over-the-top coverage the subject gets on TV and in the daily papers. I've long felt that the only way we'll ever get some reasonable perspective on all of this is to take this story away from the reporters and turn it over to the historians, who will be able to put this era in its proper context. Burns isn't an historian as such, but he's pretty damn close. Hopefully he'll be able to compare Barry Bonds with, say, Hal Chase and Gaylord Perry -- two guys who cheated to greater (Chase) or lesser (Perry) extent -- as opposed to some idealized ballplayer that seems to roam the memories of every newspaper columnist.
No, one documentary won't change all that much by itself, but it can certainly get the conversational ball rolling, and maybe that will be enough to bring some sanity and -- dare I say it -- closure to a subject that has held the sport hostage for the past five or six years.
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I love Ken Burns' documentaries, but I've got two words:
HAIR FAIL
Here's hoping people stop stigmatizing Bonds as an isolated case.
I hadn't heard about Burns doing a tenth inning, but man, that's awesome. Ken Burns' Baseball was so amazingly well done (along with the rest of his documentaries) that you know it's going to be great. If there's anyone that can show the "steroids era" and how the game has changed and been affected, it's Ken Burns. I can't wait to see this.
I'm not sure that Bonds can really be compared with Hal Chase as it seems a stretch to me to equate game-fixing with taking steroids -- unless you are a hysterical reporter than of course it makes sense.
Of course they can be compared, but any sane person would conclude that Hal's offense was worse.
Great! It's about time someone with media clout gives this issue some perspective for public consumption. The fact that some athletes used steroids to recover earlier from exhausting workouts is important, but should not be allowed to further fester specially when all the reporters seem to come up with are unproven allegations.
And the fact that the targets of these most recent allegations seem to be all the Latino icons, renders them most suspicious, compared with the kids gloves treatment given relatively well documented allegations against Roger Clemens, and Mark McGwire.
Yes, maybe - just maybe - Burns can come up with a "last word" on the Steroid Hysteria Era.
Of course, there were those who nitpicked the original series to death - paging Bob Costas - and I don't see a Rick Reilly slowing down on his drum-beating, even after being handed a steaming-hot grande cup of shut-up.
I don't think we need a last word, as such, just an authoritative, reasonable word. People will complain forever, but if there's a serious piece of scholarship/filmmaking out there that puts lie to the hysteria, it will be that much easier for people to dismiss the hysteria.