HBO’s Ted Williams documentary shouldn’t be missed for two entirely related reasons: It’s superb, and it doesn’t mess around with wishful notions drawn from a wishing well.
HBO Sports has produced or presented two kinds of documentaries the last 20 years.
There is the superb, straight story-telling kind — pull from them your own socio-political conclusions, if you’re so inclined.
And then there are the kind that suffer from attaching the sports story to dubious or exaggerated political and social angles, the kind that tell us that all left-leaning Americans embraced Muhammad Ali while all conservative America supported Joe Frazier, and that the 1968 World Series-bound Tigers helped defuse Detroit’s race riots. Hmmm. Well, at most, perhaps.
This documentary doesn’t blame America for Williams’ flaws nor does it credit the country for his greatness. That he lost five seasons to World War II and the Korean War, a Marine fighter pilot in the latter, is treated as fact and not with an insert essay about Communism, Capitalism and the Cold War.
“Ted Williams” is true to the production’s title. It tells the convoluted, complicated, heroic, bizarre and often simple story of Ted Williams — and nothing else and no one else. And that’s plenty good enough. Williams was, to some, an easy man to get along with, to others, including several wives, impossible. And here is his story, cradle to, well, wherever his body wound up. Perfect.
It’s a small but perhaps appropriate shame, that the two latter-day players seated for interviews — Nomar Garciaparra and Tony Gwynn — appear wearing commercial logos, exploiting their presence. In Williams’ last public appearance, the 1999 All-Star Game in Boston, he did the same. He wore a baseball cap that gave the address of a Web site, run by his son, through which to purchase his autograph.
But we’re reminded — shown and told at every turn — that Williams was a very special player.
“Trying to sneak a fastball past Ted Williams,” Bob Feller is seen saying, “was like trying to sneak a sunbeam past a rooster in the morning.”
“Ted Williams,” HBO, Wednesday night, 9:30-10:45. Very good stuff.
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In what became a bogus, transparent, desperate, designed-for-suckers publicity ploy — sadly in the WWE mold — Chris Russo flipped out on the air on Thursday, blamed his staff for poor ratings and fired his longtime pal and Sirius XM program director/sidekick Steve Torre. Friday, Russo’s behavior and Torre’s “firing” was the forced theme of the shows that preceded his. When Russo entered, sans Torre, he childishly sustained that con.
Regardless, Sirius XM’s FCC-unregulated, satellite-delivered sports talk and call-in shows have become go-to places for naughty boys of all ages — Russo now included — who like to shout and hear cuss words on the radio. Russo, once a clean act, has gone radio formula low. Pathetic.
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ESPN’s Chris Berman defends his word-play nicknaming as adhering to a long tradition of attaching nicknames to athletes. But instead of the “Splendid Splinter” — a wonderful, accurate nickname for Ted Williams — Berman would have come up with something like Ted “Sherwin” Williams, thus his sense of tradition would finish a distant second to his sense of shtick and self-promotion. Berman has only damaged the great tradition he claims to perpetuate.
SportsCenter’s “Coors Cold Hard Facts” segment, Friday morning, was loaded with baseball rumors. . . . The Ann Liguori Foundation holds its dinner dance to benefit the American Cancer Society and Healthy Children, Healthy Futures, this Saturday at Southampton’s Duckwalk Vineyards. For info: Annliguori.com.
The State of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia on July 23, will honor NFL Films with an official historical marker noting that the company was founded near Philly, by Ed Sabol, Steve’s father, in 1962. . . . Lookalikes: actor Ramon Rodriguez (the new “Transformers” movie) and new Jets QB Mark Sanchez.
Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez has ordered new rules for the country’s cable TV networks, mandating they carry his speeches and better promote his government’s ideologies. Kinda like what Jimmy Dolan did to MSG Network.
Boomer Esiason — not the CBS or MSG version, but the WFAN version, the pandering, co-opted and compromised morning drive co-host — is starting to smell at least as bad as Craig Carton. And nearly everyone who has listened for 10 minutes now recognizes it. As Howard Cosell said upon the passing of George Halas, “It was inevitable.”
Nike’s self-styled and promoted image as a bold, anything goes, Just Do It (for money) company has sure taken a hit since it foolishly confiscated that video of LeBron James being dunked on by college sophomore Jordan Crawford. But Nike has consistently traded on climate control for over
25 years. In crafting/leveraging its sneaker and clothing deals with major universities, it has attempted to eliminate any criticism of the company — Third World sweatshop labor issues, for example — in the schools’ newspapers and among their academicians.
Why couldn’t he have been memorialized, last week, simply as great at what he did for a living as opposed to an even greater human being, in addition? Steve McNair, not Michael Jackson.