Baseball is summer camp for adults, especially those who play, manage, and own. I'm referring, however, to the summer of 1977, which I spent at camp in Connecticut, with a camp population equally split between children from New York, Boston, and Baltimore, baseball's answer to the 1944 Carter Handicap at Aqueduct, which ended in a triple dead-heat for win. One was threatened in the AL East this summer, where a fire in the south Bronx during a Yankee game led Howard Cosell to inform the world: "Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning." The fire, though contained to an empty warehouse, was symbolic of the plight of New York City and the south Bronx in 1977, as well as the turmoil of the Yankees first captured in "The Bronx Zoo" by Sparky Lyle, a far better treatment of this team from the point of view of its star relief pitcher.
At camp, we were glued to the radio most of the time, and to the television in the dining hall, whenever any of the three contenders were playing. We'd get Sports Illustrated each week to tell us what had happened, and This Week In Baseball was actually a current events show. With no wildcard to spoil the mix, the divisional race was hotly contested, and only one team would escape with the title. At camp, we would leave at the end of August, taunting the kids from the other cities that our team was going to win. That the Yankees won for me was little consolation, as they slipped 14.5 games behind the Red Sox in 1978, although by the time camp ended the lead was down to 7 and the kids from Boston were getting nervous.
The Bronx Is Burning deals primarily with how Reggie Jackson changed and strengthened the Yankees, despite the turmoil, and how George Steinbrenner turned the club owner into a utility position. Steinbrenner has proved many times over that pennants cannot be bought, so the 1977-78 Yankees were indeed special. They won because of Reggie, with an all-time dramatic climax that lived up to and then exceeded the hype, and gave Yankee fans a taste of days gone by, something that would not be repeated for a lot longer than people ever dreamed possible. By 1980, Reggie had aged, though he hit 41 home runs, including his 400th after a seven-day drought (which I waited for many times before missing the night he hit it), but George Brett and the Royals had knocked the Yankees into the history books as a memory of what you saw on this show.
The cast was lousy, especially Oliver Platt as Steinbrenner. "Reggie" (Daniel Sunjata) looked like an inflatable Reggie doll that had been deflated, and John Tuturro put a little too much Herbie Stempel into his Billy Martin, playing him almost as if he had Tourette's. Surprsingly good were Joe Grifasi as Yogi Berra, and Loren Dean as the ultra-forgettable backup catcher Fran Healy (who would later take over for Thurman Munson when Munson died suddenly in a plane crash in 1979), who plays a pivotal role as Reggie Jackson's consigliore. Healy is the only player with so little at stake on the field that he can tell Reggie to "suck it up" when benched in the last playoff game, and the only one Jackson would listen to. Reggie respected Healy but knew he couldn't be like him, just as Healy knew the opposite. This friendship could and should have been explored in much greater detail.
Since ESPN produced the series, it was historically accurate, down to the postgame quote by Steinbrenner that he was "not gonna touch" the Yankees the following year (he fired Martin in the middle of 1978 only to rehire him for 1980). The 1978 story was almost as fascinating and would make a decent sequel, but it is unclear if ESPN will be revisiting this story. Those Yankees had to deal with a runaway Red Sox juggernaut that began to falter late in the year, and visited New York for one of the greatest slaughters in the history of sports.
This series will bring history to life in an entertaining way, and had it been fiction, the ending would have been called predictable, boring, and unrealistic.
If you're young, you'll definitely know why your dad speaks so highly of Reggie Jackson.
At camp, we were glued to the radio most of the time, and to the television in the dining hall, whenever any of the three contenders were playing. We'd get Sports Illustrated each week to tell us what had happened, and This Week In Baseball was actually a current events show. With no wildcard to spoil the mix, the divisional race was hotly contested, and only one team would escape with the title. At camp, we would leave at the end of August, taunting the kids from the other cities that our team was going to win. That the Yankees won for me was little consolation, as they slipped 14.5 games behind the Red Sox in 1978, although by the time camp ended the lead was down to 7 and the kids from Boston were getting nervous.
The Bronx Is Burning deals primarily with how Reggie Jackson changed and strengthened the Yankees, despite the turmoil, and how George Steinbrenner turned the club owner into a utility position. Steinbrenner has proved many times over that pennants cannot be bought, so the 1977-78 Yankees were indeed special. They won because of Reggie, with an all-time dramatic climax that lived up to and then exceeded the hype, and gave Yankee fans a taste of days gone by, something that would not be repeated for a lot longer than people ever dreamed possible. By 1980, Reggie had aged, though he hit 41 home runs, including his 400th after a seven-day drought (which I waited for many times before missing the night he hit it), but George Brett and the Royals had knocked the Yankees into the history books as a memory of what you saw on this show.
The cast was lousy, especially Oliver Platt as Steinbrenner. "Reggie" (Daniel Sunjata) looked like an inflatable Reggie doll that had been deflated, and John Tuturro put a little too much Herbie Stempel into his Billy Martin, playing him almost as if he had Tourette's. Surprsingly good were Joe Grifasi as Yogi Berra, and Loren Dean as the ultra-forgettable backup catcher Fran Healy (who would later take over for Thurman Munson when Munson died suddenly in a plane crash in 1979), who plays a pivotal role as Reggie Jackson's consigliore. Healy is the only player with so little at stake on the field that he can tell Reggie to "suck it up" when benched in the last playoff game, and the only one Jackson would listen to. Reggie respected Healy but knew he couldn't be like him, just as Healy knew the opposite. This friendship could and should have been explored in much greater detail.
Since ESPN produced the series, it was historically accurate, down to the postgame quote by Steinbrenner that he was "not gonna touch" the Yankees the following year (he fired Martin in the middle of 1978 only to rehire him for 1980). The 1978 story was almost as fascinating and would make a decent sequel, but it is unclear if ESPN will be revisiting this story. Those Yankees had to deal with a runaway Red Sox juggernaut that began to falter late in the year, and visited New York for one of the greatest slaughters in the history of sports.
This series will bring history to life in an entertaining way, and had it been fiction, the ending would have been called predictable, boring, and unrealistic.
If you're young, you'll definitely know why your dad speaks so highly of Reggie Jackson.