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http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/7011396
Dodger documentary recalls simpler time
Mark Kriegel / FOXSports.com
Posted: 15 hours ago It should be easier than ever to be a fan. The talk on sports radio never ceases. The Internet offers instantaneous satisfactions: simulcasts, video streams, reams of statistical information. On television, the proliferation of sports channels — local, regional and national, disseminated by both cable and satellite — makes it possible for anyone to root for any team at any hour, regardless of geography.You can see the postgame press conference in real time — on your phone. You get the same clichés the beat writers are getting. Hell, if you have high definition, you can probably venture an educated guess as to when the coach last shaved. And if by chance you missed the game, don't worry, you can catch the replay later that night.
Finally, if the game itself failed to satisfy, if your favorite player had a bad night, there's always the officially licensed video game version. Maybe he'll fare better with you at the joystick.
But none of this technology affords any intimacy. It may bring you closer to the action, but not to the players themselves. The clubhouse pass everyone seems to be selling these days offers only the illusion of access. By and large, players and fans live in parallel worlds. Rarely, if ever, do they meet. In fact, as the technology improves, the distance between players and fans — that metaphorical space between us and them — only increases.
Quick, when was the last time you saw a real, live ballplayer? I'm not talking about shouting over a barrier with 50 others for an autograph, a scenario that offers all the intimacy of a perp walk. In real life, I mean.
(As most kids are not welcome in strip joints, their best shot may be an autograph show. Unfortunately, memorabilia tends to be even more expensive than unsheathed mammaries. Besides, there is something about paying for an autograph that can undermine even the most dedicated fan's affection.)
Seriously, though, most kids have never seen a real live ballplayer doing real life things, and probably never will. All of which brings me to an excellent documentary, Brooklyn Dodgers: The Ghosts of Flatbush, which airs tonight on HBO.
Be wary of nostalgists in general, baseball nostalgists in particular and Brooklyn Dodgers nostalgists most of all. I've been hearing of the Dodgers' great glories and their glorious failures for as long as I can remember. But this two-part piece, so skillfully produced by Bryan Hyland, Amani Martin and Ezra Edelman, has a big heart without sacrificing any smarts.
Brooklyn was the great polyglot city: noisy and inclusive. Both the borough and its team were natural underdogs as compared to Manhattan and the Yankees. What's more, as Jackie Robinson broke the color line wearing a Dodger uniform, there has never been a team so obviously on the side of right.
But all that is pretty much known. Rather, what most struck me about this film was the idea that the ballplayers and the fans had a stake in each other. In the recollection of Brooklynites, there is no us and them, there was only us.
"You felt you knew these guys," recalls author and historian Robert Caro. "They were part of the fabric of your life. They were part of what you could call community."
Comedian Pat Cooper remembers seeing Pee Wee Reese outside Ebbets Field. "You could talk to him like he was your brother," he says.
Same for Duke Snider. And Carl Erskine. And Gil Hodges.
"You had a team where the ballplayers actually lived in the community," says Dodger fan Herb Ross. "...You could see them get off the train. You would walk with them to the ball park."
It wasn't just the Dodgers. The Giants' Willie Mays famously played stickball in Harlem. Nor was this kind of connection limited to baseball. You get a similar sense when you speak to old fans about growing up with the Green Bay Packers or the Oakland Raiders or the Baltimore Colts. As Tom Callahan writes in Johnny U, the definitive biography of Johnny Unitas: "That's the thing that sports will never get back. Once, the players were one of us. They lived right next door. They don't anymore."
Gil Hodges went 0-for-21 in the 1952 World Series, which the Dodgers lost to the Yankees in seven games. Today, he'd be vilified by fans. People like me would be lining up to write that he was a loser and a choker.
As it happened, Hodges' slump lasted on into the next season. But instead of finding himself belittled, he was blessed, as a Father Grogan called upon his parishioners to pray for Hodges.
That wouldn't happen today. Part of it is the crazy money. There's an obvious gap between fabulously wealthy athletes and fans who cannot afford a ticket. But there's another reason. Hodges lived on Bedford Avenue, in the heart of Brooklyn. He married a girl from Flatbush. He didn't live in a gated community. He lived right next door.
Today's ballplayers are accessible all the time on the Internet, the television, even on your phone. And though their images are high def, they remain abstractions and objects.
They are spoken of with reverence or contempt, as dogs or heroes, but never one of us. They don't live in the neighborhood.
Dodger documentary recalls simpler time
Mark Kriegel / FOXSports.com
Posted: 15 hours ago It should be easier than ever to be a fan. The talk on sports radio never ceases. The Internet offers instantaneous satisfactions: simulcasts, video streams, reams of statistical information. On television, the proliferation of sports channels — local, regional and national, disseminated by both cable and satellite — makes it possible for anyone to root for any team at any hour, regardless of geography.You can see the postgame press conference in real time — on your phone. You get the same clichés the beat writers are getting. Hell, if you have high definition, you can probably venture an educated guess as to when the coach last shaved. And if by chance you missed the game, don't worry, you can catch the replay later that night.
Finally, if the game itself failed to satisfy, if your favorite player had a bad night, there's always the officially licensed video game version. Maybe he'll fare better with you at the joystick.
But none of this technology affords any intimacy. It may bring you closer to the action, but not to the players themselves. The clubhouse pass everyone seems to be selling these days offers only the illusion of access. By and large, players and fans live in parallel worlds. Rarely, if ever, do they meet. In fact, as the technology improves, the distance between players and fans — that metaphorical space between us and them — only increases.
Quick, when was the last time you saw a real, live ballplayer? I'm not talking about shouting over a barrier with 50 others for an autograph, a scenario that offers all the intimacy of a perp walk. In real life, I mean.
(As most kids are not welcome in strip joints, their best shot may be an autograph show. Unfortunately, memorabilia tends to be even more expensive than unsheathed mammaries. Besides, there is something about paying for an autograph that can undermine even the most dedicated fan's affection.)
Seriously, though, most kids have never seen a real live ballplayer doing real life things, and probably never will. All of which brings me to an excellent documentary, Brooklyn Dodgers: The Ghosts of Flatbush, which airs tonight on HBO.
Be wary of nostalgists in general, baseball nostalgists in particular and Brooklyn Dodgers nostalgists most of all. I've been hearing of the Dodgers' great glories and their glorious failures for as long as I can remember. But this two-part piece, so skillfully produced by Bryan Hyland, Amani Martin and Ezra Edelman, has a big heart without sacrificing any smarts.
Brooklyn was the great polyglot city: noisy and inclusive. Both the borough and its team were natural underdogs as compared to Manhattan and the Yankees. What's more, as Jackie Robinson broke the color line wearing a Dodger uniform, there has never been a team so obviously on the side of right.
But all that is pretty much known. Rather, what most struck me about this film was the idea that the ballplayers and the fans had a stake in each other. In the recollection of Brooklynites, there is no us and them, there was only us.
"You felt you knew these guys," recalls author and historian Robert Caro. "They were part of the fabric of your life. They were part of what you could call community."
Comedian Pat Cooper remembers seeing Pee Wee Reese outside Ebbets Field. "You could talk to him like he was your brother," he says.
Same for Duke Snider. And Carl Erskine. And Gil Hodges.
"You had a team where the ballplayers actually lived in the community," says Dodger fan Herb Ross. "...You could see them get off the train. You would walk with them to the ball park."
It wasn't just the Dodgers. The Giants' Willie Mays famously played stickball in Harlem. Nor was this kind of connection limited to baseball. You get a similar sense when you speak to old fans about growing up with the Green Bay Packers or the Oakland Raiders or the Baltimore Colts. As Tom Callahan writes in Johnny U, the definitive biography of Johnny Unitas: "That's the thing that sports will never get back. Once, the players were one of us. They lived right next door. They don't anymore."
Gil Hodges went 0-for-21 in the 1952 World Series, which the Dodgers lost to the Yankees in seven games. Today, he'd be vilified by fans. People like me would be lining up to write that he was a loser and a choker.
As it happened, Hodges' slump lasted on into the next season. But instead of finding himself belittled, he was blessed, as a Father Grogan called upon his parishioners to pray for Hodges.
That wouldn't happen today. Part of it is the crazy money. There's an obvious gap between fabulously wealthy athletes and fans who cannot afford a ticket. But there's another reason. Hodges lived on Bedford Avenue, in the heart of Brooklyn. He married a girl from Flatbush. He didn't live in a gated community. He lived right next door.
Today's ballplayers are accessible all the time on the Internet, the television, even on your phone. And though their images are high def, they remain abstractions and objects.
They are spoken of with reverence or contempt, as dogs or heroes, but never one of us. They don't live in the neighborhood.