The Southpaw

"The Bronx is Burning" -- Dig Deeper than the ESPN Version

I dig the ESPN miniseries "The Bronx is Burning." John Turturro and Oliver Platt are among my favorite actors (RIP, "Huff"). The series seems fairly well-grounded in reality, at least as it's depicted in Jonathan Mahler's terrific book. As Mahler concedes, and as would be expected, ESPN emphasizes baseball over the other issues and events covered in much more detail in the book. While The Son of Sam angle is played up in the miniseries about in proportion to the way it's covered by Mahler, the blackout is given very short shrift, as is the mayoral race between Abe Beame, Bella Abzug, Ed Koch, and Mario Cuomo.

The blackout and subsequent looting signaled a kind of cultural and social bottoming out in modern NYC history, and the rippling aftereffects continued long after the lights came back on. The mayoral race, it could be argued, was a turning point not just for New York, but also for national politics; both Cuomo and Koch, virtual unknowns outside the city and state, would soon become influential national figures.

In other words, if you haven't read the book, do. And if you've read the book but not seen the miniseries, put the series in your Netflix queue or watch out for what will probably be endless reruns on ESPN Classic.

Some goodies from elsewhere:

If you know how to do a few tricks with the Amazon Online Reader, you can read Robert Ward's entire June 1977 Sport magazine article, "Reggie Jackson in No-Man's Land," via the "Search inside this book" feature. The article is in Top of the Heap: A Yankees Collection, pages 259-271. You can start here but once you click on the page 259 link you'll have to log on to Amazon to read the entire article.

The Lower Hudson Online Web site reports that 1977 Yankee batboys John Caldararo and Joe D'Ambrosio think that ESPN has gotten just about everything wrong, except for what it's gotten right. "I haven't seen one thing where I said, 'Wow, that's exactly right,'" D'Ambrosio tells LHO. "All in all, the show is entertaining, and it's close to reality, but, you know. It's television."

Reggie Jackson can't imagine his story can be told fairly without his input; he apparently has forgotten that he originally had plenty of input and plenty of questions asked by reporters during the 1977 season (and after).

The New York Daily News has an awesome retrospective of the summer of '77. Imaginatively entitled "The Bronx is Burning" it includes fresh stories, video and audio takes on that summer, and scads of archival material material about the Yankees, the Son of Sam, the blackout, the mayoral race, and even the music of 1977 (think disco and CBGB). A real treat.

Finally, Google did its part not only by enabling me to find much of this material, but also by inviting Jonathan Mahler to speak in its "Authors@Google" series on July 7. That video, which includes some explanation by Mahler of the differences between the ESPN series and his book, what motivated him to write the book in the first place, readings from some passages, and an Q&A session.

It's a little disappointing (and intriguing) to see that Google has disallowed comments on the video of Mahler's talk. So you're not missing a thing by watching it here.

The Lou Gehrig Story

This is not "The Pride of the Yankees," the 1942 silver screen Gehrig biopic for which Gary Cooper (Gehrig) and Teresa Wright (Eleanor Gehrig) picked up Oscar nominations. But it is a very good treatment of the end of Gehrig's career and life. This live teleplay, part of the Climax! series that ran on CBS from 1954 to 1958, stars Harry Carry Jr., the great Western actor, as Bill Dickey; Wendell Corey as Gehrig; and Russell ("The Professor") Johnson as the young fireballer "Rusty."

An hour of drama. A lifetime of memories.

Leo Durocher's Sitcom Career: The Beverly Hillbillies and The Munsters

In the first half of the 1960s, Leo Durocher must have been very bored. Returning to baseball after five years as an announcer, he was no longer a manager -- instead, The Lip was a coach who had to answer to Dodgers' manager Walter Alston.

So Durocher, who always dug show biz, put in some guest appearances. In April 1963, he played himself on "The Beverly Hillbillies," then the top-rated show on TV. He thinks he's found a pitching prospect in Jethroe (Max Baer Jr., son of the former heavyweight champ). Los Angeles Times columnist Sid Ziff was impressed with Durocher's abilities.

"During the shooting, which I watched for over an hour, Durocher didn't blow a line," wrote Ziff in the Feb. 15, 1963 edition, almost two months before the episode ("The Clampetts and the Dodgers") aired. "He was perfectly at home. And he has a big part. It's not one of those walk-in things to take advantage of a sports name. There are lots of typical Hillbilly lines."

You can watch the complete episode below.

Durocher enjoyed acting so much that he later agreed to make an appearance in "The Munsters." Check it out after the jump.