HBO presents
Legends in Pinstripes (2006)
"I want to thank God for making me a
Yankee." - Joe Di Maggio
Review By: Jon Danziger Published: June
19, 2006
Stars: Babe Ruth, Joe Di Maggio, Mickey Mantle
Run Time: 3 hours Release Date: June 13, 2006
DVD Review
Everything was great then, and everything is lousy
now. That's more or less the refrain of baseball old-timers, and though they're
probably not right, it must have been far easier to maintain feverish hero
worship of baseball players in the days before the Internet and sports talk
radio, when sportswriters were content to write the myth, when the cream was
what you put in your coffee and the clear was what you were in after passing a
couple of box seats to the arresting officer. This boxed set brings together
three documentaries about great baseball heroes from another era from the most
successful and most frequently reviled franchise in sports, and they're fan
letters, really, more than probing looks.
Despite its title, Babe Ruth: The Life Behind the
Legend is a lot more interested in the legend than the life. Certainly the
necessary biographical overview is here. George Herman Ruth grew up in Baltimore, and seemingly ! single-handedly saved
baseball from the dark cloud hovering over the game after the Black Sox
scandal. The film, narrated by Liev Schreiber, is
really a celebration of Ruth's outsized public persona.The
titanic home runs, the epic nights of carousing, the
thousands who came out just to see him pass by on a train. It's hard to argue
with the premise that Ruth is the most important baseball player of all time,
obviously that comes with the caveat that he played in an age when the color
line was still rigorously enforced, but still, his home run hitting alone would
ensure his legendary status. (He was a thorn in the side of John McGraw, the
longtime manager whose trademark smallball style was
undone by teams like the Yankees sitting back and waiting for the next Babe moonshot.) The film features lots of great archival footage
of the Babe, including his cheesy forays into the motion picture business, and
documents his decline as well, once he wasn't well enough to play the game, h! is life seemed like a largely empty one.
Picking up the baton of Yankee greatness shortly thereafter, however, was Joltin' Joe, and Where Have You Gone, Joe Di Maggio? is almost as much about
the death of heroism in America
as it is about the Yankees centerfielder. The son of Sicilian immigrants, Joe
Di Maggio became a great icon, not just for legions
of Italian-Americans, but for all of those whose forebears passed through Ellis
Island, for anyone whose family came to America looking for a better life.
Di Maggio is the link to the first great Yankee
dynasty, of the 1920s, for he played with Lou Gehrig. With interviews and
clips, the documentary takes us through all the basics?the 56-game hitting streak in 1941, the easy loping
around the bases and in center field, the carefully composed public persona.
(Unlike Ruth, Di Maggio was an introvert, and didn't
work the media in nearly the same way.) His body was punished by his playing
days; journalist David Halberst! am,
whose sections on Di Maggio in his terrific book
Summer of '49, provides a good amount of context and information, as do a wide
range of interview subjects, including journalist Gay Talese,
biographer Joseph Durso, teammates Phil Rizzuto and Yogi Berra, Yale first baseman George H.W.
Bush, and minor league prospect Mario Cuomo. Of course there's time devoted to
his torturous marriage to Marilyn Monroe, in 1954, and his grieving over her
suicide, in 1962; and later, as the game's elder statesman,....and if you've
read Richard Ben Cramer's biography, Joe Di Maggio:
The Hero's Life, this film seems only to scratch the surface. Still, the image
of him playing the game hard, and with stoicism and grace, justifies his
presence not only in the American pantheon, but in the lyrics of the Simon and Garfunkel song from which this movie draws its title.
Finally, the tersely titled Mantle is largely a chance for prominent baby
boomers to express their undy! ing love for their childhood hero, interview subjects
here include Billy Crystal, Richard Lewis, Bob Costas,
and Mike Francesa, all of whom seem to get back in
touch with their inner children talking about Mickey Mantle, Di Maggio's heir in centerfield. This one, also narrated by
Schreiber, follows the same game plan, intercutting
new interviews with archival footage, and following Mickey from small-town Oklahoma to the Bronx.
The formative influence in his life was his father, who named his son for
Tigers catcher Mickey Cochran, and gave his boy a good talking-to after he got
down in the dumps when sent down to the minors midway through his rookie year,
1951. (Di Maggio was his teammate that year) The twin
themes here are about Mantle's extraordinary physical gifts,
and how he almost went out of his way to destroy them, his career got him to Cooperstown, but how great might he have been if he weren't
out carousing and punishing his body with such frequency. Life after the gam! e was unkind to him, too,he was a frequent and surly drunk, and only in his last
years, with his body breaking down, did he seem to appreciate what it was he
had, and how much of it he squandered. Still, our heroes are with us forever,
and the film closes with Costas' eulogy for Mantle,
because our legendary figures can never disappoint us in our dreams.
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