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Brooklyn Dodgers - The Ghosts Of Flatbush.

metirish Jul 12 2007 07:16 AM Edited 2 time(s), most recently on Mar 05 2008 12:31 PM

Premiered last night on HBO. [URL=http://www.hbo.com/events/brooklyndodgers/?ntrack_para1=feat_main_title]The Ghosts Of Flatbush[/url] I absolutely loved this documentary,don't know that it presented anything new on the story but with no game last night this was a perfect tonic. Had wonderful interviews with Duke Snider, Carl Erskine, Clem Labine and Johnny Podres; former Dodgers general manager Emil J. "Buzzie" Bavasi; former Dodgers owner Peter O'Malley and Rachel Robinson among others. I thought the documentary held O'Malley and Moses in equal fault for the team leaving,or the the least presented both sides of what happened. I got chills when it came to telling the story of game seven of the 1955 WS,listening to Podres talk about the game was so amazing,and to hear what that WS meant to those players and their fans then and today is special. HBO2 will show it tonight at 10:30PM. Liev Schreiber is an excellent narrator.

HahnSolo Jul 12 2007 08:11 AM

I saw bits and pieces of it as it aired and have it on DVR. Two things that stood out: - Joan Hodges, 50+ years after the fact, nearly coming to tears talking about Bobby Thomson's HR. Apparently Gil and Bobby met in the parking lot before the game and gave each other "have a nice offseason" wishes because as Bobby said, "only one of us will be going home happy." - While discussing Rickey being the first GM to integrate baseball, one of the guests brought up a factor I'd not heard before. Before integration, the Dodgers were known to have 800+ players under contract in their system. Rickey, ever the businessman, figured that spending money on an established black player was a much better use of the Dodgers money than paying hundreds of kids who'd never sniff the major leagues. Can't wait to watch it in full.

Benjamin Grimm Mar 05 2008 12:22 PM

This thing sat on my TiVo for almost eight months, but I finally watched it this past weekend. I really enjoyed it. It was great seeing some classic action clips, although I've probably seen most of them before: Mickey Owens' passed ball, Sandy Amoros' catch (and DiMaggio kicking the dirt in frustration afterwards) and Thomson's homer. But there was also some stuff that I know I haven't seen before. We've all heard all about Branch Rickey's criteria for what he'd expect from the first black player, but for the first time I was able to hear the words directly from Rickey's mouth as he outlined it for the camera. There was even footage (with audio) of a meeting between Walter O'Malley and Robert Moses and others. We see Moses shifting in his seat and lolling his head. His body language alone tells us there was no way that O'Malley was going to get his Brooklyn stadium. (And that stadium would have been a real eyesore, by the way. The documentary showed a few photos of the different models; it looks like something right out of The Jetsons, or Disney's Tomorrowland. In addition to talking to players, like Snider, Erskine, etc. they also talked to fans, many, if not all, of whom have since become some kind of celebrity. (Pat Cooper, Larry King...) There was one woman, who I wasn't familiar with, but was an author, who was commenting throughout the documentary. But after Bobby Thomson's homer, she says, she was so heartbroken that she never again watched another baseball game. (56 years!) And that was the last we saw of her in the documentary. I was curious to see if she felt any regrets in 1955 at having tuned out after 1951, but no. We didn't see her again. A very entertaining and engrossing two hours.

AG/DC Mar 05 2008 12:30 PM

It's not like Branch Rickey ever paid his minor leaguers much (or at all, in some cases). The greater expense was likely the teams' opreating costs.