The Griddle: TV Series Review: Baseball’s Golden Age

Bob T. tears into “Baseball’s Golden Age”. Of course it’s the blow...the footage of Philo Kvetch running through the bowels of The Yankee Stadium hasn’t been found yet!

And after watching the first installment, I can say that I never found baseball’s history so completely, and utterly boring. The footage is somewhat interesting, but it’s cut up so FSN can duck in commercials. And the narration by Alec Baldwin is incredibly overwrought.

The first episode starts off with a paean to the game and sets out what the show is going to be about. And there are extreme closeups of the men who are going to be giving us their thoughts about the game. It’s the usual suspects: Bob Costas, Maury Allen, Ernie Banks, Bob Feller, Leigh Montville, Alan Dershowitz, Larry King, Rudy Giuiliani, and a lot of other guys from the New York City area. All the men are shown in extreme closeup and someone needs to work on the makeup. Costas’ visage on my TV made me think he was the Joker.

...I never thought I would miss Ken Burns’ group of talking heads discussing baseball.

I’m sure that some people who saw this loved it, but I am not compelled to spend 30 minutes watching Maury Allen tell me for the 300th time why Joe DiMaggio was a great player.

Baseball’s Golden Age is not a time set in stone. It’s the time when each person learned to fall in love with the game. So give me a bunch of talking heads discussing who was better The Mustache Gang or the Big Red Machine and I’ll be sure to tune in. But for now, I’ll pass on FSN’s Golden Age.