Ken Burns, acclaimed documentarian, once made a defining series of documentaries about baseball, entitled “Baseball.” The main thesis behind this work was that baseball stood as a mirror for the United States of America. The documentary shows how the sport tracked the nation, from its founding on American soil, through two World Wars, and all the way up through the economic battles of the late 20th century. There were 9 innings to Burns’s documentary, the last of which brought baseball and America up to the early 1990’s.
Burns apparently has plans to extend his documentary past the to today, and I think the thesis fits the last 15 years; the era in baseball that most consider to span this time – the Steriod Era – also has important parallels to and lessons for present-day America as both the country and its pasttime recover from a period of short-sightedness at both the individual and societal level. Read More »
