Baseball: Ninth Inning 'Home' (1994)
**** (out of 4)
The ninth and final entry in Ken Burns' original series takes a look at the sport during the 1970s and 80s. Topics covered include the Curt Flood lawsuit, honoring Jackie Robinson who would die ten days later, promotions to get fans back into stadiums, the designated hitter, the Big Red Machine, the 1975 World Series, the curse of the Red Sox, free agency, drug use in the sport, Al Campanis' Nightline interview, Gibson's miracle home run and the World Series earthquake. Players looked at include Bo Jackson, Reggie Jackson, Johnny Bench, Roberto Clemente and the recorded breaking Pete Rose as well as his ban from the sport. This final episode clocks in just under two and a half hours but you can tell that it's somewhat jammed with information since they try to pack two complete decades. It really doesn't hurt anything as this remains a wonderful episode with some terrific video of the events as well as interviews with the likes of Bob Costas and Buck O'Neil. As you'd expect, Burns does a marvelous job at educating the viewer on the history of baseball from one years to the next and it really does seem like you get to see or know about all the major events from the two decades. Some are given a bit more detail like the 1975 World Series and the Red Sox collapse in 1986 but these two events really deserve it. This here contains more video footage than any of the previous episodes, which is to be expected but perhaps the best comes from Jackie Robinson's final speech as well as the footage from his funeral. History and baseball fans will certainly enjoy this.