800 Words: Baseball - Bottom of the Tenth Inning, By Ken Burns

(another rerun. this one from roughly a year and a half ago)

Baseball: Bottom of the Tenth Inning. By Ken Burns

(Video Clips of Ted Williams hitting fifteen home runs in a row to the tune of When the Saints Go Marchin' In)

Narrator: It is more than America's sport. It is America's art. The Siren Song through which father passes to son the pursuit of happiness. The prism through which we view our history, our epoch, our birthright. But America's birthright was extended into the farthest reaches of the globe with the coming of the first great Japanese player.

(clips of Ichiro Suzuki hitting fifteen singles in a row to the tune of La Vie En Rose)

Daniel Okrent: What's amazing about Ichiro is how easy and joyful he makes baseball look. He takes a childlike glee from being in America that radiates outward. He loves this country, and this country loves him back.

Ichiro Suzuki (translated from Japanese): I always wanted to play in America. But I quickly realized that Americans are fat and lazy, and succeeding in American baseball was no harder than putting a chainsaw on a hemophiliac to make him bleed.

Narrator: It was at the height of baseball's first Age of Globalization that America's greatest rivalry was ended once and for all in October of 2004 the night David Ortiz's Red Sox beat Ichiro's Yankees in the American League Championship.

(Video Clips of David Ortiz hitting fifteen home runs in a row to the tune of A Fine Romance)

Mike Barnicle: OH MY GOD I LOVE THE RED SOX! JESUS CHRIST I LOVE THEM SO MUCH! ONE DAY MY SON IS GOING TO PLAY CENTER FIELD AND MY OTHER SON IS GOING TO PLAY SHORTSTOP!

(Video Clips of Pedro Martinez striking out ten different batters, to the tune of Blueberry Hill)

Doris Kearns Goodwin: I would totally do the 2004 Red Sox, and I wish my father were still around so he could too.

Narrator: But suddenly a corpuscular pall cast itself over the game like the weight of the world upon Atlas's shoulders.

Bob Costas: STEROIDS PISSES ME OFF! YOU NEVER THOUGHT YOU'D SEE BOB COSTAS PISSED OFF DID YOU?!? WELL YOU'RE ALL A BUNCH OF NAZIS! FUCKA YOUUUU BUD SELIG! AND FUCKA YOUUUU BARRY BONDS!

(Mark McGwire hits fifteen home runs in a row to the tune of What a Wonderful World)

George Will: John Keats would have exonerated the steroid-era, but Keats was a weak mind full of moral laxity. Steroids is a blight upon our moral fibre, guaranteed to turn America into a nation of pederasty.

Narrator: But hope springs eternal in this sport of eternal return. In our era of economic decay, America needs baseball, a sport too perfect for this most imperfect nation. And shall return to it like the prodigal son it has always been.

Wynton Marsalis: It is a contractual obligation that I appear in this movie.

(fin)