Boo-urns

A few years ago, after brainstorming with a friend about a board game set in Prohibition-era Chicago, I watched the first two episodes of Ken Burns' Prohibition for research. For some reason, I never watched the third. But yesterday I realized that all of Burns' PBS documentaries are on Netflix, so I finally finished what I started.

I had never seen a Burns documentary before Prohibition, but I quite liked this one. The only complaint I have is the overwhelmingly romantic tone and the emphasis on American exceptionalism.  Both were expected, but I could have done with fewer tinkling piano tunes and assertions that Prohibition was foolish because no American will stand being told what they can't do. Aside from that, it was a fascinating story, filled with tons of interesting characters. I still think there's a fantastic board game waiting to be made about the topic. Whether it would broadly deal with the fight for the 18th Amendment or the fight for its repeal or focus on bootlegging or gang wars, I'm not sure. Someday, I'll sit down and come up with something.

Continuing my recent insatiable appetite for baseball, I started watching Burns' Baseball today. Clearly, the man likes his titles straightforward. This one is older that Prohibition - 1994 versus 2011 - and is even more romantic and indulgently American. Speakers insist that baseball is the most perfect, most beautiful game ever devised. I can't exactly argue against that position, but praise inflation - when "best" comes to mean "good", while "good" is barely passable -  annoys me. Worse though, is the constant insistence that baseball is quintessentially American and the perfect metaphor for everything about America. As a Canadian baseball fan, who knows that the game as been played here as long as it has been in the States, this irks me. I've only seen one episode so far, but there's not yet been a mention of baseball being played outside the US. Hopefully later episodes at least address Cuba, Mexico, the Domican Republic and Japan.

That said, Burns' should get credit for purposefully and pointedly refuting the Abner Doubleday myth. And I was surprised that even in the first episode, which deals with the 19th century, black baseball players are featured heavily. It would have been easy to talk about Jackie Robinson and leave it at that. Instead, a good chunk of time is spent on the black players who made it to the 19th century big leagues only to be forced out by owners who caved to pressure from racist white players.

Those stories, and all the others about the evolution of rules, the creation of leagues and struggles around professionalization, make the program worth watching. I'm interested to get to the later episodes, since this was made in 1994 - right in the middle of the steroid era, before many knew it was the steroid era. I imagine the discussion of those years will be much different - and less cynical - than it would be if the documentary were made today.