Baseball: The Tenth Inning 'Bottom of the Tenth' (2010)
**** (out of 4)
The second episode in Ken Burns revisit to his Baseball series from 1994 features a big needle as the majority of its 2-hour running time is devoted to the steroid issue in baseball. The topics in this episode include: Pedro Martinez, Mariano Rivera, Roger Clemens and steroids, Ichiro, September 11, the World Series between the Yankees and Arizona, Moneyball in Oakland, the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry, the Red Sox comeback and World Series win, Steve Bartman and the Cubs and of course baseball going in front of Congress as Bonds was breaking Hank Aaron's home run record. As with the previous ten episodes, Burns does a pretty remarkable job at taking an entire period and so perfectly putting it together and really capturing a moment in time. As I said for the previous episode, I think there's some magic missing from THE TENTH INNING because the situations are so fresh, current and still on people's minds from the 24/7 of today's world. There's no question that the original series from 1994 managed to show us things that were quite rare and tell us stories that not many would know about and put it together in a very educational way. With that said, this is still an exceptionally well-made documentary that I'm sure will educate and entertain people generations from now. Burns does a very good job at going over the highlights from the 2000-2009 period in the sport and I think it's obvious that you had to spend so much time with steroids since it was a very big part of the decade. The film also throws in some of the more memorable moments including the Yankees run for a World Series after 9/11 and the Red Sox finally getting over the hump.