Baseball - Episode Guide

1st Inning – Our Game

This inning serves as an introduction to the game and the series, and covers baseball's origins and the game as it evolved prior to the 20th century.

2nd Inning – Something Like A War

This inning covers approximately 1900 to 1910, and includes the formation of the American League and its integration with the National League, culminating in the establishment of the World Series, as well as the emergence of the game's first great star, Christy Mathewson, which helps to clean up baseball's image as a rowdy, brawling game. Ty Cobb is discussed in depth (the title of this inning comes from one of his many quotes). Many of the quotes used in this inning and of the other early innings are taken from Lawrence S. Ritter's The Glory of Their Times.

3rd Inning – The Faith of Fifty Million People

This inning covers approximately 1910 to 1920, and follows baseball as it goes through its greatest era of popularity yet. It heavily focuses on the Black Sox Scandal, taking its title from a line in the novel The Great Gatsby. The line refers to how easy it was for gamblers to tamper with the faith that people put in the game's fairness.

4th Inning – A National Heirloom

This inning covers approximately 1920 to 1930, and focuses on baseball's recovery from the Black Sox Scandal, giving much of the credit to the increase in power hitting throughout the game, led by its savior Babe Ruth. The title comes from what sports writers called Ruth. During an interview given to MLB Network during the series' re-airing in 2009, Burns stated that he originally wanted to title the 4th Inning "That Big Son-of-a-Bitch", a name given to Ruth by many in the game during that era, however, the companion book uses this title.

5th Inning – Shadow Ball

This inning covers approximately 1930 to 1940. While Burns has not shied away from discussing the plight of African-Americans up to this point, a great deal of this inning covers the Negro Leagues, and the great players and organizers who were excluded from the Major Leagues. Also the episode deals with organized Baseball's response to the Great Depression, as well as the sad decline of its most iconic star, Babe Ruth, and the emergence of new heroes, like Bob Feller, Hank Greenberg, and Joe DiMaggio.

6th Inning – The National Pastime

This inning covers approximately 1940 to 1950. The emphasis here is on baseball finally becoming what it had always purported to be: a national game. As African-Americans are finally permitted for good into Major League Baseball, led by Jackie Robinson. This inning also looks at how the game responded to World War II and how the game became, more than ever, a symbol of America itself.

7th Inning – The Capital of Baseball

This inning covers approximately 1950 to 1960. Burns emphasizes the greatness of the three teams based in New York (the New York Yankees, the New York Giants, and Brooklyn Dodgers). This inning also covers one of baseball's golden eras and how America's own changes, such as leaving urban areas and heading west to more open suburbs, causes baseball, in some cases, to painfully follow.

8th Inning – A Whole New Ballgame

This inning covers approximately 1960 to 1970. As the nation underwent turbulent changes, baseball was not immune, as Babe Ruth's beloved record of 60 home runs in a season is threatened by a sullen and complicated player, Roger Maris, and for the first time in decades, pitchers, led by stars Sandy Koufax and Bob Gibson, dominate the game. The loss of home run power and betrayal to the game's past, combined with the meteoric rise of football, cause many to turn their back on baseball. Expansion and labor are major topics in this inning.

9th Inning – Home

The final inning covers approximately 1970 to 1990. While baseball survived the 1960s, the changes were not over, and in some ways, its most bitter conflicts were just beginning. Major topics include the formation of the players' union, the owners' collusion, free agency, and drug, as well as gambling scandals. However, the game manages to win back the hearts of many with such moments as the excitement of the 1975 World Series and the return of the New York Yankees to dominance. The documentary ends with an ironic boast that baseball (and indirectly the World Series) had survived wars, depressions, pandemics, and numbers of scandals and thus could never be stopped. The 1994 World Series, the series to be played the year the film first aired on PBS, was cancelled due to a players' strike. This marked the first time since 1904 that the World Series was not played.

The Tenth Inning

At a preview screening of his 2007 documentary The War, Ken Burns spoke of the possibility of coming up to date in the history of baseball with a "Tenth Inning" episode of his Baseball documentary.[3] This was officially confirmed by Burns in an MLB Network interview, and later to the NBC LA web site during the winter Television Critics Association media tour January 8. It aired in Fall 2010 and covered the period from the 1994 strike through the 2009 season.

During in-game coverage of a Texas Rangers game during July 2009, Burns was interviewed, and said The Tenth Inning would air "about a year from now" on PBS. He also stated that it would be two two-hour programs. One would be the "top of the 10th", and the other would be the "bottom of the 10th". He also said that "the good Lord willing", there would be an 11th Inning and a 12th Inning in the future. His aim is to air the 11th Inning in 2020 opening with Armando Galarraga.[4] Burns also said that Baseball is the only one of his documentaries to which he was ever interested in doing a "sequel" (of sorts).

The Tenth Inning premiered on PBS on September 28, 2010, narrated by Keith David. The Inning was broken into two halves airing on September 28 and 29, 2010 and October 5, 2010. The documentary discussed the major stories of the last fifteen years in baseball. It focuses heavily on examining the Steroid era and the many players that got caught up in it, but also discusses other major issues in baseball, such as how baseball rebounded from the 1994 strike largely thanks to the selflessness of Cal Ripken Jr. and other players, the return to prominence of the Yankees, the influence of international players (specifically Dominican and Japanese players) on the game, and the drama of the 2003 and 2004 American League Championship Series, which helps baseball, even in the midst of America's greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, become as popular as it has ever been.

As a postscript, Marcos Breton, the Sacramento Bee writer who was interviewed extensively during the film, finally realized his boyhood dream of watching the Giants win their first World Championship in San Francisco shortly after the film premiered on PBS.

Ken Burns has talked in interviews about the possibility of making an 11th inning.[5]