Right about now, you might be missing watching live sports. It’s understandable — both the reasons why leagues have postponed games and the craving for the same excitement you can get from watching sporting events play out. While it’s not the same thing as a wholesale resumption of the Major League Baseball season, PBS does have some news that might fill the baseball-shaped void in your life right now.
PBS has announced that Ken Burns’s documentary Baseball will be available to stream for free on its website, as well as on PBS’s various streaming platforms.
“As many of us hunker down in the days ahead, it’s important that we find things that bring us together,” Burns said in a video posted on social media.
With events canceled & so much closed, I asked @PBS to stream BASEBALL for free so we can participate in the national pastime together. Watch at the link below or on any streaming device. And please look out for those with greater needs. Play ball. @MLB https://t.co/WaQLSpeYkF pic.twitter.com/QYp1XE0SLC
— Ken Burns (@KenBurns) March 15, 2020
If you haven’t seen Burns’s documentary — which looks at the history of baseball and the ways it dovetails with broader themes of American history — you’re in for a treat. One review of the documentary when it first aired hailed the depth with which Burns explored his chosen subject:
The sections on Ty Cobb, Jackie Robinson, Sandy Koufax, and Joe DiMaggio are small masterpieces of television biography. The testimony of 82-year-old Negro Leagues star Buck O’Neil is tremendously moving. Many little throwaway lines and anecdotes repay our attention (it was said of pitcher Lefty Grove, for instance, that he was so fast, he could ”throw a lamb chop past a wolf”).
Whether you’re returning to watch an old favorite or experiencing Burns’s in-depth filmmaking for the first time, it’s not a bad way to spend several evenings — or several days, depending on what your viewing habits are like right now.
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