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[ Crowd clapping hands, chanting in Spanish ] [ Clapping, chanting continue ] -Whoo!

Who's in the house?!

[ Chanting in Spanish ] [ Crowd cheering ] -That's the only sport, really, where Dominicans can play.

You can't play football.

It's too expensive.

[ Cheers and applause ] Baseball is an inexpensive game, you know?

You could play baseball with just tree branches, rocks -- anything, you know?

[ Crowd cheering ] When you're a little kid, the first thing they buy you -- When you're a little kid, they buy you, like, a little car or anything.

Not when you're born Dominican.

You get a glove and a bat as soon as you're born.

You have to play or your parents think you're crazy or something.

It's like a religion over there.

You know, you have to play.

I have a book at home.

And it says in the book that there's never been a revolution or war during the baseball season, like that baseball unites the people.

-Manny!

Let's go, Manny!

[ Crowd cheering ] -Well, if I don't make it in baseball, I want to get into electronics.

But my first choice is baseball 'cause that's my -- like, my boyhood dream.

That's it right there.

[ Crowd cheering ] -I have two passions in my life.

One is baseball, and the other is opera.

Fortunately enough, they fall in different seasons.

Opera is in the winter, and baseball is in the summer.

And people are asking me, "How can you like both?

They are different."

And I say, "Oh, no.

They are exactly the same thing."

Opera is an epiphanic art, you know?

People go to the opera and put up with the recitatives and the tedium waiting for the aria.

Now, you go to a baseball game and observe what happens in a baseball game many times.

There is no action whatsoever.

There is continued tedium.

The pitcher has a ball and rubs it.

He's ready to pitch.

And then the batter steps out and has to wait till he comes back.

And then, suddenly, he hits the ball.

And that is the epiphany.

It's a show-forth.

Everything comes at that time.

It's a moment of great action.

And I find the similarity right there, besides the prima donnas that you have in the game.

But it's very similar.

So for me, I say this -- When I retire, I would get a part-time job in a baseball stadium in the summer and then in an opera house in the winter.

And that'd be heaven for me.

[ "The Star-Spangled Banner" playing ] ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -During the 1970s and 1980s, the war in Vietnam came to an end, and an American president was driven from office in disgrace.

The Berlin Wall came down, and the Cold War ended.

Democratic ideals flourished, but a new wave of fundamentalism ignited ancient animosities around the world.

Mao Tse-tung and Casey Stengel and Satchel Paige died.

And great ballplayers whose names no one yet knows were born.

By 1970, the national pastime was in trouble.

Attendance had not increased for more than two decades, and desperate owners tried everything to pump new life into the old game.

Nothing worked.

Now the owners' grip on the destinies of the players was finally broken, and as their prospects improved, fans returned to the game.

But old loyalties were sometimes forgotten.

Now what happened off the field -- greed, scandal, strikes -- seemed to overshadow the action on it.

And now, as television demanded that most games be played at night, a whole generation of young fans would come of age without ever seeing a World Series game.

[ Children shouting ] Still, the family of baseball continued to grow.

Larry MacPhail's grandson Andy ran a team.

Yogi Berra's son Dale played for a while.

And one evening in California, back-to-back home runs were hit by Ken Griffey and Ken Griffey Jr.

In Hoboken, New Jersey, the factory Maxwell House had built on the Elysian Fields where baseball began, closed down.

And that same year, the Baltimore Orioles opened a brand-new, old-style ballpark on the site of the saloon once owned by the father of Babe Ruth.

[ Children shouting ] Everything had changed, and nothing much had changed.

-It's one of those forms of gentle poetry that runs through our lives and makes the more important issues of living bearable.

[ Laughter, cheering ] You have to have moments that give you pleasure with your children or your hobbies or your games.

Life can't all be big issues and heart surgery.

You need something to give -- Something has to bring joy into the day.

I've always thought that the six months during baseball season, there was something in the day that wasn't there the other six months in winter.

It wasn't that you had to listen to the game but that you could if you needed it.

-...his last time up.

Swing and a miss, and he took a mighty cut.

Quite a touching sight.

Everyone standing at Fenway Park as Ted Williams hits, probably for the last time in a Boston uniform in this ballpark.

Pilarcik back to the wall.

There's a drive to deep right center!

This may be gone!

Crowd's back there watching.

Home run!

Ted Williams!

-Right-hander winds and fires.

Yastrzemski lines a base hit into center field.

One run is in.

Adair's around second.

He will score.

It's tied, 2-2.

[ Crowd cheering ] -The 1-0 delivery to Fisk He swings.

Long drive, left field.

If it stays fair, it's gone.

Home run!

The Red Sox win, and the Series is tied, three games apiece!

[ Crowd cheering ] -I think what baseball is is a game that allows people who watch it to think about nothing else.

-This is one of the greatest World Series games of all time.

-It allows us to feel connected to a place.

So part of what American history is is texture.

It's fabric.

It's Brooklyn.

It's Boston.

But sadly, part of what American history is and part of what baseball is is moving away from those places.

So Brooklyn leaves and goes to California, and free agents take away our favorite players.

And America's always mobile, always moving on.

♪♪♪ -On April 20, 1912, two months before the cornerstone was laid for Ebbets Field, Fenway Park opened its doors for the first time.

The Red Sox beat the New York Highlanders that afternoon, 7-6, in 11 innings, beginning one of the most intense rivalries in baseball.

And then they went on to win the pennant and the Series, setting a precedent that did not last for long.

[ Crowd cheering ] Tris Speaker once owned its center field.

Smoky Joe Wood and Babe Ruth and Roger Clemens have all bewildered batters there.

Ted Williams, who sharpened his eye by shooting the pigeons that flew over the outfield, hit so many home runs into the right-field bullpen that players came to call it Williamsburg.

[ Crowd groans ] Over the years, the struggles of the Boston Red Sox would provide some of the most dramatic and heartbreaking action the game would ever see.

And on October 21, 1975, Fenway Park would witness the greatest game in World Series history, a game that rekindled the whole country's love of baseball.

♪♪♪ -What's your best pitch?

-My best pitch is a strike, a sinking fastball, which you grip like this so you get only two seams into it.

And then if you turn your hand a little bit like this, it comes out, the wind pushes here, and forces it down and away from a right-handed hitter.

He thinks it's a good pitch.

At the last minute, it sinks.

He hits the top half of the ball, and he hits a ground ball to Burleson.

Burleson picks it up, throws it to Yastrzemski.

One away.

And you do that three times, or 27 times in a ballgame, make perfect sinkers, you'll get 27 outs.

Unless the hitters are smart.

And then what they do is, they know it's a sinker.

They get up and they drive the ball to right center field between Lynn and Evans, and that's called a double.

And then the pitcher has to run behind third base and back it up.

And hopefully, they get the guy out at third, or it's a triple.

And then you got a runner at third and less than two outs.

So they bring the infield in, and you don't want them to hit a sinker now.

You got to strike 'em out.

So then you go to a cross-seam fastball, which I don't have.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ [ Crowd cheering ] -In 1970, the Cincinnati Reds faced the Baltimore Orioles in the World Series.

♪♪♪ The Reds were young, aggressive, and powerful, led by Pete Rose, Tony Perez, and Johnny Bench.

-The 3-1 pitch to Bench.

Drilled.

[ Crowd cheering ] A line shot that Brooks Robinson dived and grabbed!

My, what a play!

-But the Orioles had the best third baseman in baseball.

Brooks Robinson was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, was discovered playing ball in the church league, and was beloved by Baltimore fans.

He was 33 years old in 1970, a veteran of 15 major league seasons, winner of 10 Gold Glove awards.

[ Crowd cheering ] He was called the Human Vacuum Cleaner.

One by one, he destroyed the hopes of Cincinnati's vaunted hitters.

Lee May... -...power-hitting right-hander.

Jim Palmer's pitch.

There's a drive down the third-base line.

Robinson dives into foul territory.

Up with it.

Off-balance throw to first.

And...he's got him!

-...Tony Perez... -Hits the one-hopper to third.

Brooks is going for the double play.

Steps on the bag for the force.

Here's the throw to first.

And it's a double play.

[ Crowd cheering ] -...Johnny Bench... -Smashes it right to Brooks Robinson.

-...Johnny Bench again... -Pull hitter.

Robinson dives to his left and one-hands it.

What a play by Brooks Robinson.

-And the Golden Glove artistry of Brooks Robinson was never more apparent than on that last play.

-The Orioles took the Series in five, further helped by six runs batted in by Brooks Robinson.

-The pitch, and a long drive to left field.

That ball's going, it's going, and it is gone.

A home run.

Robinson is doing it all.

By far the outstanding player in this 1970 World Series.

[ Crowd cheering ] -"Brooks Robinson," Cincinnati's Pete Rose said, "belongs in a higher league."

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -What was incredible about Clemente was not only how skilled he was at each part of the game, but this kind of ferocity that he played on each play of the game.

Even years when they were pitiful and had no chance to get into the pennant or anything like that, he would throw it in, he would pick guys off who got a single who took too much of a turn going around first.

There was something intense about this guy that was not necessarily what was going on in baseball at that moment.

♪♪♪ -Roberto Clemente learned his baseball in the cane fields of Puerto Rico, and for all of his major league career, he played spectacularly for a little-publicized team, the Pittsburgh Pirates.

He was a savage line-drive hitter with a phenomenal throwing arm, proud of his Latin heritage, often plagued by injuries.

-Roberto Clemente epitomized a certain kind of cool.

He had a certain motion with his neck because he had a bad back.

He said his back always hurt.

And he had this certain motion with his neck, and all of us imitated this motion that he had with his neck.

So you'd see all these kids at school who were doing this, all these Black boys in school doing this 'cause they picked this up from Clemente.

You'd go to bat, and you did this head motion.

You swung the bat like Clemente.

-And then, for the Puerto Rican community, he was, you know, their guy and was very proud of it.

Really did a lot for his community.

A guy who really gave a lot back and got terrible press in Pittsburgh.

He was always considered this guy who was a hypochondriac and this and that and the other thing, and I think mostly 'cause the white press, it really took a long time for them to get with the fact that their best player was Black.

[ Crowd cheering ] -The Pirates' management and the local press insisted on calling him Bobby.

Clemente insisted on Roberto.

And he was furious that although he had hit better than .300 for 13 seasons, won four batting titles and 12 straight Gold Gloves, he was not given the praise he deserved.

In the 1971 Series, against Brooks Robinson and the Baltimore Orioles, he took the opportunity to show the world all that he could do.

-♪ Oye cómo va ♪ ♪ Mi ritmo ♪ ♪ Bueno pa' gozar ♪ ♪ Mulata ♪ -♪ Oye cómo va ♪ ♪ Mi ritmo ♪ -Enormously proud man.

Enormously proud.

He always felt that he'd been overlooked because he wasn't playing in New York or California.

And I think that's true.

We did slight him.

And in '71, he played in a way as if to prove us all wrong.

Everything he did was, "Take this.

Take this," or, "Look at this.

Watch this."

[ Crowd cheering ] And it was eagle-like.

-...falling pretty fast out there.

However it is caught by Clemente with a tremendous running, sliding catch.

♪♪♪ -That is hit well.

A Clemente home run, and the Pirates lead, 1-0.

[ Crowd cheering ] -Clemente batted .414 in the Series, hit two doubles, a triple, and two home runs, and led the Pirates to the championship in seven games.

A year later, on September 30, 1972, he passed yet another milestone in his long career.

-Everybody's standing.

They want Bobby to get that big number 3,000.

[ Crowd cheering ] Matlack on the 0-1.

Bobby hits a drive into the gap in left center field.

There she is!

[ Crowd cheering ] ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -That winter, an earthquake hit Nicaragua, and Clemente volunteered to carry relief supplies to the victims.

On New Year's Eve, his plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean.

His body was never found.

-The legality of Major League Baseball's controversial reserve clause is now in the hands of the Supreme Court.

The case involves the trade of Curt Flood from St. Louis to Philadelphia.

That case for Flood is being argued... -It was difficult for the fans to understand my problems with baseball.

I was telling my story to deaf ears because I was telling my story to a person who would give their first-born child to be doing what I was doing.

And he just could not understand how there could be anything possibly wrong with baseball.

-For nearly three years, Curt Flood had been in the courts fighting a one-man battle with Major League Baseball over the reserve clause.

Despite the advice of the players union, he had left the game in 1969 rather than be traded against his will.

-What I told him was that I agreed with him in principle but that the courts had treated players as property and would likely do so again and that his attempt, while a principled one, was, I thought, doomed to failure.

And I worried about his knowing the kinds of chances he was taking, that he was going to end his career in a case that probably was a loser.

-The lawyers for the major leagues would not talk for the cameras.

But in the courtroom, they argued that the reserve clause is essential to the future to organized baseball, that without the reserve clause, the rich teams would get all the star players.

But Arthur Goldberg maintains that the reserve clause, tying a player to one team for the rest of his life, is in violation of the 13th Amendment.

That's the amendment against slavery and indentured servitude.

-Flood's first trial had been in federal district court in Manhattan in 1970.

-I think Curt Flood on the stand was treated miserably by the federal judge.

He almost taunted him, a judge who showed great respect for almost all witnesses who were white.

Um, from the bench, the judge asked Curt Flood, "This is not as easy as playing center field, is it?"

You know, with a sarcastic tone in the middle of a difficult cross-examination.

[ Indistinct conversations ] -No active player dared testify on his behalf.

Only owner Bill Veeck and a handful of retired stars came to Flood's defense.

-Jackie Robinson walked into the courtroom, and there was a hush.

He had such a presence that you could hear a pin drop.

His hair was white, and he was walking with a cane, but he still had that swagger that Jackie Robinson was so noted for.

But he testified on my behalf and with a soliloquy that would send chills up and down my spine.

-Flood lost in district court and then lost again in the court of appeals.

And on June 18, 1972, by a vote of 5-3, the United States Supreme Court ruled against him.

Baseball was still exempt from anti-trust laws, and the reserve clause still stood.

-I am particularly pleased that the court has recognized the need for a reserve system and has further recognized that baseball has not disregarded the extremely important position the player occupies.

Over the long history of baseball, the reserve system has constantly evolved to improve the position of the player.

I am confident that this process will continue.

-We lost because my guys, my colleagues, didn't stand up with me.

And I can't make any excuse for them.

Had we shown any amount of solidarity, if the superstars had stood up and said, "We're with Curt Flood," if the superstars had walked into the courtroom in New York and made their presence known, I think that the owners would have gotten the message very clearly and given me a chance to win that.

♪♪♪ -Curt Flood never played Major League Baseball again.

♪♪♪ -It is especially fitting that today, in the midst of baseball's most exciting event, the World Series, we pause to honor Jackie Robinson.

[ Cheers and applause ] -Thank you very much, Commissioner.

I would just like to say that I was really just a spoke in the wheel of the success that we had some 25 years ago.

I would like to also say that it would be a real, real pleasure if Mr. Rickey could have been here with us today.

But to the members of the family, my entire love and gratitude for the things that he's done over the years.

And I also want to say how pleased I am that my family can be here this afternoon.

I'm extremely proud and pleased to be here this afternoon but must admit I'm gonna be tremendously more pleased and more proud when I look at that third-base coaching line one day and see a Black face managing in baseball.

Thank you very much.

[ Cheers and applause ] -Twenty-five years after his historic debut, Jackie Robinson agreed to throw out the first ball of the 1972 World Series.

-...ceremonial first pitch.

-He was just 53, but diabetes had dimmed his sight, heart disease had slowed his step, and he was disillusioned by the lack of progress in race relations.

♪♪♪ Jackie Robinson died 10 days later.

In his autobiography, published after his death, Robinson recalled playing in his first World Series game.

"There I was, the Black grandson of a slave, the son of a Black sharecropper, part of a historic occasion, a symbolic hero to my people.

But I must tell you that it was Mr. Rickey's drama and that I was only a principal actor.

As I write this 20 years later and sing the anthem, I cannot salute the flag.

I know that I am a Black man in a white world.

In 1972, in 1947, at my birth in 1919, I know that I never had it made."

♪♪♪ -I don't know of anybody besides Robinson who could have done what he did.

Many of the Black players -- Reggie Jackson, for example -- said later, "He's the only one of us who could have done it."

Robinson -- Mr. Rickey told him he'd have to turn the other cheek.

And, as Mr. Rickey said, it wasn't long before he didn't have any other cheek to turn.

They'd just simply been beat off.

They said that Robinson died from diabetes and other things.

I think he died from the load he carried.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -Today we must balance the tears of sorrow with the tears of joy, mix the bitter with the sweet, death and life.

♪♪♪ Jackie, as a figure in history, was a rock in the water, creating concentric circles and ripples of new possibility.

He was medicine.

He was immunized by God from catching the diseases that he fought.

The Lord's arms of protection enabled him to go through dangers seen and unseen, and he had the capacity to wear glory with grace.

Jackie's body was a temple of God, an instrument of peace.

♪♪♪ We would watch him disappear into nothingness and stand back as spectators and watch the suffering from afar.

The mercy of God intercepted this process Tuesday and permitted him to steal away home, where referees are out of place, and only the supreme judge of the universe speaks.

♪♪♪ -At the funeral, Jesse Jackson did the eulogy, and he said, "Jackie Robinson stole home, and he's safe."

And that, even now... ...is very important to me.

Roger Kahn and his family came to visit me a week after Jack died, and they had a blow-up of Jack sliding into home base.

And when you're looking for simple ways to deal with the grief, the deep, deep grief and mourning that you're feeling, you can catch on to a thing like that.

And somehow it is part of baseball, too, that you make the -- Giamatti said it best.

"You make the trip around the bases, and somehow you land at home."

And home has so many meanings and so many meanings for people like us, for whom family and home were the central basis of our operation.

I mean, we were family people and people who always had a home, and we always could come home, and it was a retreat from a world that can lay a lot of heavy things on you.

So I carried that blow-up from room to room for weeks, just because looking at it, I knew he was safe.

♪♪♪ Nobody could hurt him again.

He wouldn't hear the name-calling.

He would only hear the cheers.

And somehow I could fantasize my own little story about where he was and how he was doing and let him rest in peace.

♪♪♪ -He was buried a few miles from Ebbets Field.

[ Birds chirping ] -In 1973, a period of Watergate turmoil in Washington, in October, the Reds were playing the Mets in the National League Championship Series, and Potter Stewart was hearing -- I won't quite say "listening to" -- oral arguments in the Supreme Court.

And he had a law clerk feeding him information on what was going on elsewhere.

And at one point, the clerk handed him a slip of paper.

And on it, it said, "Kranepool flies to right.

Agnew resigns."

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -In the early 1970s, major league owners would do anything to pull fans into the ballpark -- mascots, exploding scoreboards, disco demolitions, players in shorts, and endless promotions -- baseballs, T-shirts, caps, bats, hot pants, and live bullfrogs.

♪♪♪ One of the most flamboyant owners was Charles O. Finley of the Oakland Athletics.

He was an old-fashioned, autocratic entrepreneur with revolutionary ideas.

To boost the sagging fortunes of his team, he hired an astrologer, devised garish double-knit uniforms, even experimented with a bright orange ball.

[ Crowd cheering ] To attract younger fans, Finley paid his players bonuses to grow out their hair and beards and mustaches.

They were certainly the most distinctive-looking team in the early 1970s, and for three years in a row -- 1972, '73, and '74 -- they were the best team in baseball.

They had three key players -- Joe Rudi, Bert Campaneris, and Reggie Jackson... [ Crowd cheering ] ...and three superb pitchers -- Vida Blue, Rollie Fingers, and Jim Hunter, a North Carolina farmer whom Finley dubbed Catfish because he thought a countrified nickname would add to his box-office appeal.

[ Crowd cheering ] Jim Hunter didn't need it.

-I loved the way he pitched.

Nobody worked the corners the way Catfish Hunter did.

-And down he goes, as Hunter... -He would start inside and outside and up and down.

If the umpire's giving him the call, then he would widen the plate and widen the plate.

The plate is 17 inches wide, and batters used to say that by the end of the game, he was throwing through a 22-inch-wide plate.

[ Crowd cheering ] But I remember Catfish Hunter losing a World Series game after he'd won a lot.

-There's a long drive to right.

Claudell Washington can't get that one.

It is gone!

[ Crowd cheering ] That's gonna be all for Catfish Hunter.

-And reporters rushed over, thinking they'd find him crestfallen or gloomy or silent.

And he was just the same as he'd been before, and he finally said, "Well, the sun don't shine on the same dog's ass every afternoon."

-But even Finley's championship A's couldn't draw a million fans a year.

All across the American League, attendance figures lagged behind the harder-hitting National League.

In 1973, to remedy that imbalance, Finley and other owners pressured the American League to try an experiment, the designated hitter, which allowed a better-hitting player to bat for the pitcher without removing that pitcher from the game.

Everybody adopted the designated hitter -- everybody but the oldest organization in professional baseball, the National League.

From them on, the national pastime would be played under two sets of rules.

-I remember in 1972, before Bowie Kuhn and Charles Finley took the bat out of my hand for good and didn't allow me to hit, Lolich had me 0-2, and I moved up on the box -- you know, to take away his curveball.

And I knew Freehan saw me do it.

So Lolich tried to bust me inside with a fastball, or so I was guessing, and he did.

And I hit a line shot to right field, and Al Kaline, who was the ancient mariner of their ball club -- he had pigeon ---- on his shoulders 'cause he was already a statue -- he came in, the ball went under his glove, and I rounded first, rounded second, I came around third, and it would've been an inside-the-park home run for sure, but I had never been there before.

And I'm looking for Popowski.

And if people know the Red Sox, Popowski's only 3'6", and I couldn't pick him up in the crowd.

But he was way down the line, waving me home, and I came around third, and I couldn't pick him up, and I slowed up, and finally he held me up, or I would've had an inside-the-park home run.

That was my last at bat in a Red Sox uniform.

♪♪♪ -There was a time, according to Jim Lefebvre when he was playing with the Dodgers and they had the great pitching staff, particularly Koufax and Drysdale -- and they were sitting around early in the season going down the whole National League, trying to figure out how to pitch to these guys.

And they'd say, "We'll pitch to Banks this way, And Mays, pitch to him that way.

Eddie Mathews, low and away.

They finally came to -- Someone said, "Henry Aaron."

Dead silence in the Dodgers clubhouse.

And finally a voice piped up and said, "Make sure there's no one on when he hits it out."

-Two on in the 11th.

Logan on base.

Hank Aaron steps in against the third Cardinal pitcher of the game, Billy Muffett.

Here it comes.

And there it goes.

Hammerin' Hank hits a home run, and this one is special.

The Braves did it -- clinched the pennant.

They came close before, but this is it.

♪♪♪ -For 20 years, Henry Louis Aaron had been the quietest of superstars -- self-assured, utterly reliable, intensely private.

Born in Mobile, Alabama, seasoned in the Negro leagues, he played brilliantly for the Braves, first in Milwaukee and then in Atlanta.

[ Indistinct conversations ] But as the 1973 season drew to a close, he was suddenly the focus of even more attention than Roger Maris had endured 12 years earlier.

He was just 15 home runs short of Babe Ruth's lifetime record of 714.

[ Crowd cheering ] -High, towering drive!

This may be it!

There it goes!

Home run!

Number 700 for Henry Aaron!

[ Crowd cheering ] -Three hundred writers, who had largely ignored him till now, began traveling with the team, determined to be on hand when he broke the record.

-...steps out of the dugout.

He's getting a standing ovation.

[ Crowd cheering ] -But at season's end, his total was still one short of tying Ruth's mark.

The pressure from the media and the fans continued all winter long.

"I was a prisoner in my own apartment," he said.

"I lived like an outcast in my own country."

♪♪♪ At one point, he was receiving 3,000 letters a day, most of them unsigned.

♪♪♪ -"Dear Hank Aaron, with all that fortune and all that fame, you're a stinking nigger just the same."

-"Dear nigger, you black animal.

I hope you never live long enough to hit more home runs than the great Babe Ruth."

-Things happened to me all through the three years that I kind of erased out of my mind, you know?

I got threatening letters about kidnapping and things like this, viciously racist letters.

I went to play in baseball parks like Chicago, Cincinnati -- all these ballparks I played in -- I had to slip out of the back of the ballpark with escorts and things like this.

It was terrible, terrible.

It was bad times for me.

♪♪♪ -"I don't want them to forget Ruth," Hank Aaron said.

"I just want them to remember me."

[ Crowd cheering ] On Opening Day, 1974, the Braves played the Reds.

-3-1 pitch.

There's a drive into left field.

That ball is going, going, and out of here!

[ Crowd cheering ] Henry Aaron has just tied Babe Ruth in the all-time home-run parade.

The crowd is up.

A standing ovation.

His teammates are there to greet him.

A three-run blast by Henry Aaron has tied the great Babe Ruth.

[ Crowd cheering ] -Four days later, on Monday night, April 8th, at home in Atlanta, Aaron faced Al Downing of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

His mother and father were watching from the stands.

[ Crowd cheering ] -Henry Aaron, in the second inning, walked and scored.

He's sitting on 714.

Here's the pitch by Downing.

Swinging.

There's a drive into left center field!

That ball is gonna be... out of here!

It's gone!

It's 715!

[ Crowd cheering ] There's a new home-run champion of all time, and it's Henry Aaron!

Monday night, April 8, 1974!

[ Fireworks exploding ] Yes, Henry Aaron has done it.

The fireworks are going!

His teammates are at home plate!

And listen to this crowd!

-I felt great.

I felt like the world was lifted off of my shoulders.

It was done, over with, and I felt like no matter what people thought about it, it was my record.

[ Crowd cheering ] ♪♪♪ -"In the decades to come, the memory of the scene might blur.

But the memory of the sound will remain with everyone who was there.

Not the sound of the cheers or the sound of Henry Aaron saying, 'I'm thankful to God it's all over,' but the sound of Henry Aaron's bat when it hit the baseball tonight.

At home plate, surrounded by an ovation that came down around him as if it were a waterfall of appreciation, he was met by his teammates, who attempted to lift him onto their shoulders.

But he slipped off into the arms of his father, Herbert Sr., and his mother, Estella.

'I never knew,' Aaron would say later, 'that my mother could hug so tight.'"

The New York Times.

♪♪♪ -Henry Aaron was the last Negro leaguer still playing in the majors.

♪♪♪ When he finally left the game, he had hit 755 home runs.

-It had a terrible sag in popularity for a while.

No one was particularly interested in it.

But it is, I think, at the deepest part of the American psyche.

And that's why it's always been, you know, our great game.

"Pastime" is a funny word for it.

It's not a pastime.

It has to do with the spirit of the people.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -Sportswriters called manager Sparky Anderson's Cincinnati Reds the Big Red Machine.

And in 1975, they more than lived up to their billing, rolling past their nearest Western Division competitors by 20 games, then beating Pittsburgh in three playoff games to win the pennant.

[ Crowd cheering ] It was an extraordinary team, and its spirit was best captured by their third baseman, Pete Rose, who said, "I'd walk through hell in a gasoline suit just to play baseball."

♪♪♪ Like Ty Cobb of an earlier time, Rose played with a ferocity unmatched by anyone in the game.

He stretched doubles into triples, singles into doubles, ground-outs into singles.

"Baseball is a hard game," he said.

"Love it hard, and it will love you back hard.

Try to play it easy, and the first thing you know, there you are, on the outside looking in, wondering what went wrong."

[ Crowd shouting ] -It was that kind of obsession that made him great.

He wasn't a man of great physical gifts and talents.

He did it by concentrated -- by will.

He willed himself to be a great man.

But it was this concentration and focus that made him vulnerable to temptations and, in the end, disgrace.

♪♪♪ -Cincinnati would face Boston in the World Series that year.

The Red Sox, led by manager Darrell Johnson, had been almost as formidable as the Reds, seizing first place in the Eastern Division in early June and never relinquishing it thereafter.

-And Fisk is in with a double.

-Then taking just three games to crush the Oakland A's in the playoffs.

-♪ You feelin' all right?

♪ -♪ Oh, oh ♪ -♪ I'm not feelin' too good myself ♪ -They were led by the veteran Carl Yastrzemski, a remarkable outfield of Fred Lynn, Jim Rice, and Dwight Evans, and two pitching stars unlike any other in baseball -- Bill Lee, a junk-ball pitcher called the Spaceman because of unusual views on baseball and the cosmos, and Luis Tiant, the Cuban-born son of a former Negro league star who had the most distinctive windup in baseball.

♪♪♪ At the heart of their team was a dignified, battle-scarred catcher from Charlestown, New Hampshire -- Carlton Fisk.

-There's a high foul.

That's hoisted toward the box seats.

Fisk is gonna try and lean in.

He's got it!

[ Crowd cheering ] -♪ You feelin' all right?

♪ -♪ Oh, oh ♪ -I think of him as a Roman.

I think of him wearing a toga.

He walks in a classical manner.

He is always upright.

There's something Doric about him.

We've learned his wonderful mannerisms.

[ Organ playing, crowd cheering ] And when he stands in to bat, there's that last moment when he looks at the bat.

He looks at the wood in the bat as if examining it for termites or something like that.

And these mannerisms have gone on year after year, and he has been -- He really has been noble.

He's lasted so well and played so well for so long.

[ Indistinct conversations ] -Cincinnati had not won a World Series for 35 years.

Boston had not won one for more than half a century.

♪♪♪ -The first time I went to Fenway Park, I had the feeling that I was inside a pinball machine, and the ball that was hit acted like it was bouncing off the cushions And it reminded me a great deal of Ebbets Field.

[ Crowd cheering ] Fenway's difficult to get to.

There's no lavish parking.

They've run out of real estate.

It is what it is and where it is and no more and no less.

And the fans are close enough to relate, and the team means everything to them.

The team represents everything that those people want to have represented.

And so when the Red Sox win, all of New England feels better.

[ Crowd cheering ] -In the first game at Fenway, Luis Tiant surprised everyone by shutting down the Big Red Machine, pitching the first complete game in a World Series in four years.

-And he fools him on a slow outside curve.

-And in the seventh inning, not having been at bat once all year, he started the rally that would propel his team to victory.

-A standing ovation for Luis.

-Gullett sent him a slow curve, and Luis gets a base hit.

-They love him here, don't they?

[ Crowd cheering ] -Crowd on its feet here at Fenway on an overcast, raw day.

And Petrocelli gloves it.

The throw -- in time!

And the Red Sox have drawn first blood in the 1975 World Series.

[ Crowd cheering ] -Look at that pitch!

That pitch changed time zones coming up, it was so slow.

-Despite the masterful pitching of Luis Tiant and Bill Lee, the Reds won three of the next four games.

♪♪♪ -He hits one a ton.

Back into left center field.

Looking up is Yastrzemski.

It's gone.

Home run.

♪♪♪ Strikes out Fisk for the second time.

There he goes!

Left center field!

That's gonna cross the gap.

Rose will score easily.

There goes Griffey to third.

They're gonna have a shot at him.

In time!

They got him!

Here comes the pitch.

It's a drive deep to left.

Going, going... gone!

[ Crowd cheering ] -Cincinnati now led the Series three games to two.

[ Thunder rumbling ] The sixth game, to be played in Fenway Park, was delayed three days by a cold autumn rain.

[ Organ playing ] Boston had to win it to stay alive.

[ Thunder crashes ] -Game 6 still is the greatest baseball game ever played in the World Series.

There's no doubt about it.

All the way through, it kept astounding you.

You said, "It can't happen.

It can't -- There can't be any more like this."

[ "The Star-Spangled Banner" playing ] [ Crowd cheering ] -It was October 21, 1975.

♪♪♪ Again Luis Tiant pitched for Boston.

-2-2 pitch to Perez.

-Oh!

-There it was.

That's how he got him two times in game number one.

-Gary Nolan was on the mound for Cincinnati.

-Again the 1-2 pitch.

Curveball.

He's out of there.

First strikeout for Gary Nolan as Evans is called out.

-In the bottom of the first, with two men on for Boston, Nolan faced center fielder Fred Lynn.

-And there's a high fly ball, deep to right field.

Going back, Griffey.

Forget it!

It's gone!

[ Crowd cheering ] And this place is rocking.

-It was 3-0, Boston.

-Here's where I like to see him work -- when he's way ahead.

-And he strikes out... -Tiant was superb through four innings.

But in the top of the fifth, Cincinnati fought back.

-And there's a line drive, left field.

Yastrzemski going back.

Will play it off the wall.

Griffey scores the tying run, and Bench is held to a single.

-The Reds tied it up.

In the top of the seventh, the Big Red Machine surged ahead.

-Straight-away center field.

Lynn is going back, back, back.

That ball is off the wall!

One run is in.

Here comes Morgan.

He'll score.

And the Cincinnati Reds lead, 5-3.

[ Crowd booing ] Well hit, right field.

That ball -- If it's fair, she's gone.

It is a fair ball.

Home run for Geronimo.

And it's a 6-3 ballgame.

That's his second home run in this Series.

-In the eighth, César Geronimo seemed to put the game out of reach.

-And Cincinnati getting a little bit closer.

Their last world championship was in 1940.

Bottom of the eighth.

-Cincinnati was only six outs away from winning the World Series.

-Borbón against Lynn.

Off his leg!

Borbón challenging it, but he can't make a play.

Lynn, a single.

Tremendous effort by Borbón.

[ Crowd cheering ] High!

Borbón walks him.

-Tying run at the plate.

And right now, here comes Sparky.

-And the Red Sox refuse to give up, as the Reds did not give up in Game 2.

They staged some dramatic rallies, and I'm not surprised at what they're doing here.

-With two outs and two men on, a Boston pinch hitter named Bernie Carbo, who had once played for the Reds, came to bat.

-Bernie Carbo, a pinch hitter.

[ Crowd cheering ] -And Carbo had never looked so overmatched.

As he was up at the plate the first two pitches, he looked just terrible.

-Carbo a little bit late on the swing.

-2-2 pitch.

-Just did get a piece of it to stay alive.

You talk about fighting off a good pitch.

-Looked like he hit that out of the catcher's glove.

-He did.

The pitch.

Carbo hits a high drive.

Deep center!

Way back!

Home run!

[ Crowd cheering ] -I remember the darkness of the stands and the movement in the darkness of the stands as this enormous noise came out, and the game was tied.

[ Crowd cheering ] -That was a blast up in the center-field bleachers.

It came with two out and the count 2-2.

And the Red Sox have tied it, 6-6.

[ Crowd cheering ] -The game was tied, and it stayed that way through the ninth, the 10th, the 11th.

-Griffey and Geronimo are shallow.

High fly ball, left field.

Boston's got a shot.

They're tagging up at third.

Here comes the throw!

It is... in time!

Here is the throw.

Foster made the catch in foul territory.

He needed a perfect throw to keep the Reds from losing this game.

And it was.

No question about it.

Denny Doyle out at home.

Well hit!

Right field, deep!

Evans is going back, back near the wall and -- Oh, what a catch he made!

[ Crowd cheering ] What a catch by Dwight Evans!

And it's a double play!

Griffey didn't know what happened, as Evans made a spectacular catch!

And look at this!

-Dwight Evans went way back.

He had no room to go any more.

Watch it.

One-handed catch.

Big play of the game.

And now we go to the bottom of the 11th inning, still tied.

-Pete Rose came up to bat in the 10th or 11th inning.

And players never do this, too, understand.

Players never think about games like this.

And he turned to Carlton Fisk, and he said, "This is some kind of game, ain't it?"

[ Organ playing, crowd cheering ] -Carlton Fisk was the leadoff batter in the bottom of the 12th inning.

-Here's Fisk.

Game tied, 6-6.

Darcy pitching.

Fisk takes high and inside.

Ball one.

Freddie Lynn on deck.

There have been numerous heroics tonight, both sides.

The 1-0 delivery to Fisk.

He swings.

Long drive, left field!

If it stays fair, it's gone!

Home run!

The Red Sox win!

[ Crowd cheering ] And the Series is tied, three games apiece!

Carlton Fisk hit a 1-0 pitch.

They're jamming out on the field.

His teammates are waiting for him.

The ball hit the foul pole.

And the Red Sox have sent the World Series into Game 7 with a dramatic 7-6 victory.

What a game.

This is one of the greatest World Series games of all time.

♪♪♪ -When Carlton Fisk stood up, I just had this feeling inside, just as I had felt once before with the Brooklyn Dodgers, that something good was gonna happen.

Usually I feel terrible things are gonna happen, but never could I have imagined that sight of his not only hitting the ball but willing it fair.

♪♪♪ I think what it represented was just all of us wish we could control our destinies in a way that we can't usually.

And the way the whole ballpark was moving with Fisk to will that ball, instead of being foul, fair, was as if you really could make spiritual, magical things happen.

And it happened, and it was great.

♪♪♪ -We will have a seventh game in this 1975 World Series.

-The organist at Fenway Park broke into the "Hallelujah" chorus, and at 12:34 a.m., church bells rang out all across New England.

[ Organ playing "Hallelujah" chorus ] ♪♪♪ -That game was like a Russian novel.

It had character development.

It had history behind it.

It had plot moving forward.

It had twists near the end.

And then the spectacular, spectacular conclusion.

And the seventh game, which people underrate, which was decided in the ninth inning, was the exquisite literary denouement for it.

[ Crowd cheering ] -Game 7 -- 75 million people were watching on television, more than had seen any other sporting event in American history.

-They interviewed Sparky Anderson, and he says, "No matter what the outcome of this game is, my starting pitcher is going to the Hall of Fame."

I said, "No matter what the outcome of this game is, I'm going to the Eliot Lounge."

-3-0 pitch.

Ball four.

[ Crowd cheering ] Another run across.

Red Sox lead 3-0 as Yastrzemski scores.

-Bill Lee held the Reds scoreless for five innings while his teammates ran up a 3-0 lead.

But then Cincinnati came alive.

-There's his blooper pitch.

-There it is.

He was waiting for that one.

-That one is gone, over everything.

Now the Boston fans are becoming uneasy.

There's a line shot to center.

Here's a man rounding third.

Here comes the throw.

It is not in time.

The other runners advance.

The Reds have tied it and have runners on second and third.

There's a looper.

It may drop.

It's in for a hit.

Here comes the throw to third.

Rose hits the dirt.

He's safe, and there goes Morgan down to second.

And the Reds have the lead, 4-3.

-With two outs in the bottom of the ninth and the Reds leading, 4-3, Carl Yastrzemski was the last Boston batter.

-There's a high fly ball.

It should be all over.

Geronimo's under it.

♪♪♪ And Cincinnati has won the world championship, beating the Boston Red Sox, 4-3.

Win it in Fenway Park and... -Boston would have to wait.

-They wanted this one badly after winning 108 times this year, setting all kinds of records.

It would've been a deep disappointment... -The 1975 season gave baseball a galvanic moment that I believe changed much of the nation's attitude toward baseball.

♪♪♪ It seemed that we all stayed up all night long to see the conclusion of that.

And it's from that moment that I date the resurgence of interest in baseball... ...that came to establish all sorts of new records in attendance and viewership and every other measure that one could have.

[ Crowd cheering ] -We are progressing in this country.

Baseball had a lot to do, really, with the change in the attitudes of people in the United States.

We've got some people that still are going the wrong way.

But one thing about it is we've got more good ones than bad ones.

And sports had a lot to do with that.

Sports had a lot to do with that.

It changed my life.

It changed a lot of people's life.

♪♪♪ -In 1975, three years after Jackie Robinson had died, Frank Robinson, the only man ever to win the Most Valuable Player award in both leagues, became manager of the Cleveland Indians.

Though there had been dozens of men, like Rube Foster and Buck O'Neil, running Negro league clubs who were more than qualified, Robinson was the first Black manager in the majors.

If I had one wish that could be answered right today, that is the one wish I would have -- that Jackie Robinson could be here to see this happening, this moment.

-It would be six more years before the National League finally signed its first Black manager.

In 1981, the San Francisco Giants hired Frank Robinson.

♪♪♪ -Black people feel as though everything they're going to try to have to do in baseball is replicating Jackie Robinson all over again.

Black people were aware when they had baseball teams that they ran the teams.

And this is important.

So Black people have a certain sense of management in baseball, a certain historical, a cultural memory of management in baseball that they do not have with other sports because at one time, Black people did run teams, and they feel as though they're capable of running teams.

[ Insects chirping ] -"Clearly, to the owners, the enemy is not the players, whom the owners regard merely as ingrates -- misled ingrates.

The enemy is Marvin Miller, general of the union.

The showdown is with him.

It's not over a few more thousand dollars, not the few thousand demanded for some obscure pension inflation.

It is over the principle of who will run their baseball business -- they, the lords, or this man Miller."

Dick Young.

♪♪♪ -Back in 1973, Marvin Miller and the players association had maneuvered the owners into agreeing to impartial binding arbitration of salary disputes.

Now, in 1975, after 10 years of battling with the owners, Miller was ready to take on the reserve clause.

-From the beginning, I had felt that the contract, which the owners had drawn up with the players, simply gave the owners the right to extend a contract for one additional year when the player and owner could not agree on a new contract.

The owners had interpreted this to mean an extension right that went for the life of the player.

And I could not read that into that contract.

So what we needed, obviously, were two things.

First, we needed a grievance and arbitration procedure under which differences in interpretation would go before somebody impartial and not the owners' commissioner.

Secondly, we needed a test case.

Messersmith and McNally provided that.

-In 1975, two first-rate pitchers, Dave McNally of the Montreal Expos and Andy Messersmith of the Los Angeles Dodgers, agreed to play one year without contracts, declared themselves free agents, then filed for a hearing before a new, three-man arbitration panel.

Marvin Miller voted for the players.

John Gaherin, representing Major League Baseball, voted against them.

The third man was a professional arbitrator named Peter Seitz.

He was convinced the players were right and begged the owners to come up with a new and equitable contract.

They refused.

On December 23, 1975, Seitz voted with the players.

"The owners were too stubborn and stupid," he said.

"They were like the French barons of the 12th century.

They had accumulated so much power, they wouldn't share it with anybody."

The owners, claiming this would bankrupt baseball, fired Seitz the next day and went to court to have the decision overturned.

This time, they failed.

The arbitration was binding.

The reserve clause was dead.

♪♪♪ -When the arbitrator finally agreed with the union that an owner could only control a player for one year, the time had come to negotiate a whole new system, and the owners panicked.

They couldn't picture living under a system in which every player would be a free agent every year.

-Miller shrewdly offered the owners what seemed on the surface a compromise.

Players would not be eligible for free agency until they had played six years.

The owners gratefully agreed.

At least they could still control their most valuable assets for a time.

But baseball would never be the same again.

The law of supply and demand now favored the players.

-After the Seitz decision, after the reserve clause was dead, the ballplayers were thus free to do whatever they wished, to sign with any club they wanted.

But Marvin Miller, running the players union, was much smarter than that.

He knew that if you had all the players available that there was enough supply to meet demand, whereas if you controlled the supply, where there was a trickle of free agents every year, they would do much better.

And even though the arbitrator's decision gave the players the right to be free agents every year, we felt that it was in the interest of the game and the players that that supply of free agents not be so great every year and that there be an eligibility requirement.

-Fly ball, deep center field.

Pretty high.

It is up.

It is away.

It is gone.

-The explosion of baseball salaries is the result of two things coming to baseball rather late, two very American things -- freedom and prosperity.

Freedom.

Baseball players are virtually the last American worker group that got the right to negotiate with their employers for their salaries by breaking up the reserve clause and getting arbitration and free agency.

Wealth.

Baseball is enormously popular.

Fifty-five, fifth-six million people pay to get into ballparks every year.

Not one of them buys a ticket to see an owner.

I happen to be a semi-Marxist in this field.

I believe in the labor theory of value.

The players are the labor.

They create the economic value.

They ought to get the lion's share of the rewards.

Aren't you supposed to get as much as you can in our society?

If you earn big dough for management, you earn tremendous dough for management, isn't that what capitalism is all about?

Aren't you supposed to get that?

So why do we blame the guy for being a capitalist?

You want to be a commie?

It was the Emancipation Proclamation of baseball.

When the reserve clause was overturned, it disallowed the owners from signing perpetual one-year contracts to ballplayers, thereby keeping them in the organization for eternity.

So basically it allowed us to go from plantation to plantation based on the highest bid of the plantation owner.

And the owners got very upset about that because it inflated salaries, and then ticket prices went up, and television revenue went up, and they found out they were making more money, and they found out, "Wow.

We had a $1.5 million franchise.

Now we have a $150 million franchise."

So they made money.

The players made money.

The only people that got hurt were the American public, the fans, the integrity of baseball, and eventually the planet Earth.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -In 1973, a shipbuilder from Cleveland named George M. Steinbrenner III bought the once-mighty New York Yankees from CBS.

He vowed not to interfere with his team and then could not keep his hands off it.

He was the first owner to embrace free agency, stunning the baseball world by paying big money for big players like Catfish Hunter.

By 1976, he had bought himself a pennant winner.

-Chris Chambliss walks to the plate.

♪♪♪ There it is.

High drive to deep right center field.

-That's gone!

-It is...gone!

Chris Chambliss has won the American League pennant for the New York Yankees!

-His club was led by a former Yankee second baseman best remembered for his belligerence on and off the field, Casey Stengel's protégé, Billy Martin.

-Billy Martin proved what a powerful strategic tool paranoia is.

He believed that everyone was against him, and so he spent every waking moment figuring out how imaginary enemies could be defeated in their nefarious plots.

And sometimes he not only created strategies to defend against things that would never be done against him but realized that those attacks were in themselves novel, and he would then try those attacks that he had already dreamed up a defense for.

That's why he was so wonderful at suicide bunts and double steals and any way you could humiliate or psychologically defeat the other team.

He was sure that's how the world reacted to him.

He was sure the world hated him.

And so he turned that really raw, frightening paranoia into a wonderful strategic intelligence.

-The Yankees lost the 1976 Series to Cincinnati but won the championship from Los Angeles the next year, powered by a quartet of sluggers -- Chris Chambliss, Graig Nettles, Thurman Munson, and the flamboyant former Oakland star who cheerfully called himself "the straw that stirs the drink."

♪ Watch out ♪ ♪ You might get what you're after ♪ ♪ Cool babies ♪ ♪ Strange but not a stranger ♪ ♪ I'm an ordinary guy ♪ ♪ Burning down the house ♪ -Reggie Jackson's late-season performances, Mr. October -- That's really deserved.

-The pitch.

-No one brought a greater intensity to significant games than Reggie.

And I kept thinking he's not gonna be able to do it again, but he almost never failed.

[ Crowd cheering ] -Jackson with four runs batted in.

There's a fly ball to center field.

That's gonna be way back, and that's gonna be gone!

-♪ Burning down the house ♪ -In Game 6 of the 1977 World Series, he hit three home runs on three consecutive swings of his bat off three different pitchers, something no other player has ever done.

-♪ Burning down the house ♪ Baseball had not seen such a brash self-promoter since Dizzy Dean.

"I didn't come to New York to be a star," Jackson said.

"I brought my star with me."

-♪ Burning down the house ♪ [ Crowd cheering ] -You would walk past Reggie before a game, and there'd be a crowd of writers around him.

And he would be talking in religious terms.

His voice could be -- It sounded like a preacher.

Then you'd come back five minutes later, and he would be talking to a different crowd, and he's saying, "I get to have the same figures Lee May has, but I get all this money 'cause I put the asses in the seats."

The same man two minutes later.

-Do you pray the day before the playoffs?

-Well, I'll pray every day.

I try to talk to God through Jesus Christ every day.

And I will pray during the national anthem, which is my period of meditation for praying.

No, really.

You stick around the game.

You listen to an old veteran like me.

I'll show you how to talk on the air, boy.

-Talk on the air?

-Yeah.

You know.

The TV.

TV.

No, really.

TV cameras going on and ---- like that.

Huh?

I'm telling you, man.

I'll show you how to make a living with this stuff.

I'll show you how to have the people eating right out of here.

-Oh, yeah?

-[ Chuckles ] -Two outs and two on.

The Red Sox lead at 2-0 in the seventh inning here at Fenway.

Deep to left!

Yastrzemski will not get it!

It's a home run!

-In 1978, Steinbrenner's Yankees came from 14 games behind and then beat the Red Sox in a dramatic, and for Boston fans, excruciating one-game playoff to win the division title.

It was the greatest comeback in American League history.

-And a happy Bucky Dent.

-New York then took the World Series from the Dodgers.

But Steinbrenner was not satisfied.

♪♪♪ He continued to tinker with his team.

The following year, they dropped to fourth.

For the next 15 years, despite his frantic efforts to turn things around, the Yankees, the winningest team in baseball history, could not win the World Series.

-Steinbrenner did something no one thought possible, and that is wreck the Yankees franchise.

It's astonishing.

They have a wonderful tradition, terrific farm system, the largest market, a cash flow that would, you would think, finance excellence, even if you weren't real smart.

He took all those advantages and wrecked the franchise.

-He feuded with his best players, was quick to cast them off when they didn't perform to his expectations, and interfered constantly with his managers.

During his first 17 years as chief executive, he replaced his managers 17 times.

Billy Martin alone was hired and fired five different times.

George Steinbrenner became the most hated man in baseball since Walter O'Malley moved the Dodgers to Los Angeles.

-Like many people, he fooled himself that he could arrange for success, he could guarantee it.

And when that didn't happen, he really lost track of the whole thing.

He didn't really want to let his ballplayers play the games.

He didn't want to put them out on the field and wait and see what happens.

He wanted to impose his will, and in doing that, he got between us and the players.

I always had the feeling at Yankee Stadium that he was standing out in front of me and I was looking at George Steinbrenner, and I wanted to see the Yankees instead.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ [ Crowd cheering ] -Throughout the 1970s, the Pittsburgh Pirates were a perennial National League power.

They had been the first club in major league history to field an all-Black and Hispanic team, and they saw their team as a tight, close-knit family.

-♪ We are family ♪ ♪ I've got all my sisters with me ♪ ♪ We are family ♪ ♪ Get up, everybody, and sing ♪ -In 1979, to the disco beat of "We Are Family," they won the pennant and in the World Series again faced their old rivals from 1971, Earl Weaver's Baltimore Orioles.

♪ Get up, everybody, and sing ♪ -Let's go, Bucs!

Let's go, Bucs!

-I think that the personalities of the two teams were so clear, and there were so many enjoyable and wonderful people on both sides that I think we all got caught up in that.

And the two teams sort of got caught up in each other.

[ Crowd cheering ] -Blyleven into the windup.

And the 1-1 change is belted to right field!

High and deep and gone!

[ Crowd cheering ] -In the first four games, Baltimore ran up what seemed an insurmountable lead of three games to one.

-And listen to this crowd in Baltimore!

But the Pirates refused to surrender.

-Their leader was the 38-year-old veteran Willie Stargell, a devastating power hitter and the league's Most Valuable Player.

He had done all he could to fill the void left by the death of Roberto Clemente.

His teammates called him Pops.

-In the center of it all was Willie Stargell.

And they all said, "Pops keeps us together.

Pops makes it all work."

-Fastball is hit high and deep to center.

Back goes Bumbry.

On the track.

At the wall.

It's gone!

Wilver Stargell has ignited the charge.

-Willie Stargell really was a good man.

-Way to give us a start, Will.

Nice ball, big man.

Way to give us a start.

[ Crowd cheering ] -All the hopes that we erect toward other ballplayers came true in his case.

I remember the 1971 World Series, where those same two teams had played seven games.

And Stargell was a great player that year and had led the league in runs batted in and did almost nothing in the World Series.

He popped up, struck out.

Same in the playoffs.

And he never complained.

He never said anything.

He walked back.

He never threw his bat down.

And I went up to him after the Series or near the end.

I said, "How can you do this?

You must be dying."

And his little son, Wilver Stargell Jr., was playing in the locker.

And Willie made a gesture toward him, and he said, "The time comes when a man really has to be a man."

It just came out of him like that.

And that's the kind of man he was.

-McGregor comes to him.

And it's a high fly ball into deep right center field.

Back goes Singleton -- way back!

To the wall!

It's gone!

He's done it!

Pops has hit it out!

And the Pirates lead... -This time, in the 1979 Series, Stargell did not disappoint, hitting an even .400, setting a Series record with seven extra-base hits, including three home runs.

His last one, in the seventh game, put the Pirates up for good.

-♪ This is our family jewel ♪ ♪ We are family ♪ It was only the fourth time in Series history that a team had come from so far behind to win.

-♪ I can't hear you ♪ -♪ Get up, everybody, and sing ♪ -♪ Ooh ♪ -♪ We are family ♪ -♪ Hey, hey ♪ -There's so much about the game that is appealing.

But I think in the end the thing that appealed to me most was the fact that it rewarded merit, that there is a justice to the game, that if you score, it goes up on the board.

And if I score more than you, you lose and I win.

That and the idea that we do it together -- community.

If only life were that easy, that whenever we learned to cooperate with one another and did the right thing, we won.

That's what baseball is.

-What made baseball so special for me as a young child and what I wanted to give to my children was a sense of continuity, a sense that players that you cared about would be back the next year and they were part of your family and you knew their strengths and you knew their weaknesses.

You even knew how they stood at the plate.

I mean, I used to know how Carlton Fisk was going to go through all these crazy maneuvers before he hit the ball, and I used to know the spot on the left-field wall that he would always hit.

Or I knew the way Burleson would get a double.

And when the free agency came along -- and not only that, but the quest for money, the greed, the desire to go where the highest amount of money is rather than the place that loves you and teams not valuing loyalty either -- that continuity is gone.

♪♪♪ -In 1980, Carlton Fisk, unable to come to terms with the Boston Red Sox, left the team he had followed all his life... ♪♪♪ ...and signed with the Chicago White Sox.

Pete Rose, Cincinnati's hometown hero, became a million-dollar free agent, left the Reds... and then helped drive the Philadelphia Phillies to their first world championship.

That same year, Nolan Ryan, who had struck out more batters in a single season than anyone in baseball history, became a free agent, too... ...and returned home to the state of Texas, first with the Astros and then with the Rangers, where he continued to throw no-hitters and strike men out.

[ Crowd cheering ] ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -There was a period when ballplayers were heroes -- maybe for 100 years.

And then there was a period when there was a lot of knocking down of heroes, of diminishing them.

I hope we're reaching a period where we don't look up to the ballplayer or down at the ballplayer, but try to look at him levelly and see his gifts and his determination and his craftsmanship as heroic, but at the personal level, don't demand more of him than we do of people in our own family, ourselves, or our friends.

[ Crowd cheering ] -He levels the bat a couple of times.

Show kicks and fires.

Rose swings.

-There it is!

There it is!

Get down!

Get down!

All right!

-There it is!

Hit number 4,192!

[ Crowd cheering ] A line-drive single into left center field, a clean base hit.

-On September 11, 1985, 44-year-old Pete Rose, now back with Cincinnati and managing as well as playing, got still another single and overcame Ty Cobb's lifetime record of 4,191 hits.

-For Pete Rose, this certainly his crowning achievement.

Just breathe it in.

[ Crowd cheering ] -Boy, this is his game, it's his town, and it is his moment.

And for baseball, this is one of the all-time-great moments.

[ Cheering continues ] -For a public tired of reading about the business of baseball, Pete Rose's triumph came not a moment too soon.

But that very afternoon, Rose's teammate Dave Parker had testified in federal district court about rampant drug use in baseball.

♪♪♪ No team was immune.

Dwight Gooden.

Steve Howe.

Pascual Perez.

Ron LeFlore.

LaMarr Hoyt.

Vida Blue.

Keith Hernandez.

Dale Berra.

Tim Raines of the Montreal Expos used to slide headfirst because he didn't want to break the cocaine vials he kept in his pants pockets.

[ Indistinct conversations ] In an effort to help restore the image of the game, Major League Baseball hired the president of Yale University, A. Bartlett Giamatti, a respected Renaissance scholar and rabid Red Sox fan, to run the National League.

Giamatti liked to say that "baseball was designed to break your heart."

[ Horns honking, crowd cheering in distance ] -I, fortunately have the objective perspective of a Yankee fan.

And therefore, I have come to understand Boston pain in a way.

But it's different.

There are kinds of pain.

There's Chicago Cubs pain, which is never getting there at all.

Boston Red Sox pain is very special.

Boston Red Sox pain means getting to the very last inch again and again and again and then missing it by that little hair.

It's 1946, when Slaughter scores from first on a single.

It's 1948, when there should've been a subway series here in Boston but they lost a one-game playoff to Cleveland.

It's the year of the Impossible Dream, 1967, when they get into the seventh game of the World Series and nobody could beat Bob Gibson -- not Lonborg on two days' rest.

It's 1975, when, after winning the greatest game in the history of baseball on Carlton Fisk's home run in the 12th, they blow it in the seventh game of the World Series.

It's 1978, when Bucky Dent, of all people, hits a home run and wins the game for my guys in a single-game playoff.

And it's 1986, quintessentially, of course, when the ball goes through Mr. Buckner's legs, though one shouldn't blame him, because that was the end of a lot of disasters.

It just goes on and on and on -- the last inch and never consummation.

[ Pipe organ playing ] ♪♪♪ -The Red Sox are an opera.

The Red Sox are... How?

Why?

The Red Sox have you looking up toward the heavens for an explanation.

-And, of course, the Red Sox do this in New England, which is a hotbed of American literary culture, so they get written about to death.

And there's a constant tendency to make baseball into a metaphor for this and that -- "Why baseball reminds me of life, death, the Federal Reserve Board," whatever.

And all those writers up there have been -- They may have started neurotic, but they certainly were made more so by the Red Sox, particularly because the Red Sox locate their downfall in the original sin of selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees.

-First of all, they have to dig up the body of Babe Ruth, they have to transport it back to Fenway, and they have to publicly apologize for sending him to New York.

He was a happy pig farmer in Sudbury.

They send him to New York, and he becomes an alcoholic.

He dies at a very premature age.

And even though he was a great home-run hitter, he was the consummate pitcher and hitter for Boston.

And it just keeps going and going and going.

And it all goes back to Babe Ruth.

♪♪♪ [ Crowd cheering ] -In 1986, the Red Sox were in the World Series again, facing the New York Mets.

It was the first time a team from Boston had played a team from New York in the Series since 1912, when Fred Snodgrass' fielding error had given the championship to the Red Sox.

The Red Sox took the first two games in New York, lost the next two in Boston, then won the fifth.

They needed just one more win to clinch their first world championship since 1918.

In Game 6 at Shea Stadium, the two teams fought through the ninth with the score tied, 3-3.

-NBC had the World Series in 1986.

It was my job to be in the Red Sox clubhouse after the sixth game.

I went down at the end of the eighth inning.

The score was tied.

But I knew I had to be there quickly in case the game should suddenly end.

So I watched the last couple of innings from the corner of the Red Sox dugout.

-Aguilera brings it in to Henderson.

Swing and a long one into left field!

That ball might leave the park!

It's a home run, and Boston leads here in the 10th inning.

-I watched Dave Henderson hit his home run and the Red Sox tack on another run in the top of the 10th.

-And look at this bench.

-With the score 5-3, I went back into their clubhouse.

They had put the cellophane over each of the lockers in anticipation of the champagne spray.

They had built the little podium from which to do the postgame interviews.

The cameras and the cable and the microphones were all in place.

The world championship trophy was on a stand, covered by a piece of cloth.

Frail Mrs. Yawkey had been led in there, and she was standing next to the trophy along with Commissioner Ueberroth.

And they were watching with me on a little monitor as the Mets came to bat in the bottom of the 10th.

[ Crowd cheering ] -Boston reliever Calvin Schiraldi needed just three outs to win the game.

Veteran first baseman Bill Buckner, hobbled by leg injuries all year, was often replaced in late innings with a younger player.

This time, manager John McNamara kept him in the game.

-0-2 to Wally Backman.

Little poke job to left.

Rice coming over.

One away.

And that's hit to dead center, with Henderson gonna run it down.

And the Mets are down to their last out.

-I remember I was standing there thinking to myself, "This is going to be the first-ever interview in the wake of a Red Sox championship."

There was no radio in 1918.

There was no television, obviously.

This is the first recorded moment after the Red Sox have won a world championship.

So I'm thinking, "How should that be summed up?

"What do you say to Mrs. Yawkey?

What do you say to McNamara?

What do you say to Boggs and Rice and Seaver and whomever else?"

-And Roger Clemens hoping for that last out.

Lined into left field.

Base hit for Carter.

And the Mets are still alive.

[ Crowd cheering ] -Number 7, Kevin Mitchell.

[ Crowd cheering ] -Mitchell has had five at bats in the Series.

He's 1 for 5.

-John was just warning his ball club -- no trick plays, no nothing.

Keep Mitchell off second base.

-Carter at first.

Curveball, and that's gonna be hit to center.

Base hit.

And now, suddenly, with two out in the 10th inning, the tying runs are aboard.

And Ray Knight will be the batter.

[ Crowd cheering ] And that's gonna be hit into center field.

Base hit.

Here comes Carter to score.

And the tying run is at third in Kevin Mitchell!

[ Crowd cheering ] And the Mets refuse to go quietly.

With two out, they come scrambling back with consecutive hits.

And John McNamara goes to the mound.

5-4 Red Sox.

[ Crowd booing ] And he wants Bob Stanley to pitch to Mookie Wilson.

[ Bugle playing "Charge" ] -And I remember I said to the people in the truck, who I could hear through my earpiece, "What happens if they tie the game?"

And they said, "You get the hell out of there as fast as you possibly can."

-Tension mounts some more.

Two out in the 10th.

5-4 Red Sox.

Ray Knight at first.

Kevin Mitchell at third.

2-2 to Mookie Wilson.

And it's gonna go to the backstop!

Here comes Mitchell to score the tying run, and Ray Knight is at second base!

[ Crowd cheering ] Can you believe this ballgame at Shea?

-Oh, brother.

So the winning run is at second base with two out.

3-2 to Mookie Wilson.

A little roller up along first behind the bag!

It gets through Buckner!

Here comes Knight!

And the Mets win it!

[ Crowd cheering ] -It was surreal.

At this point, the cellophane comes off, they start backing the cameras out, I take the earpiece out of my ear, and I'm watching over my shoulder as Wilson hits the ground ball through Buckner's legs.

You have never seen so much equipment and so many people disappear from one place so fast.

Before the Red Sox could come out of the visitors' dugout and down the tunnel and into the room, all traces of the preparation for a championship had been removed.

[ Crowd cheering ] -If one picture is worth a thousand words, you have seen about a million words.

But more than that, you have seen an absolutely bizarre finish to Game 6 of the 1986 World Series.

The Mets are not only alive, they are well, and they will play the Red Sox in Game 7 tomorrow.

[ Crowd cheering ] ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -Two days later, the Mets won the championship, 8-5.

♪♪♪ -I wouldn't even watch the seventh game.

I knew it was over.

And it didn't even matter to me.

Even if they'd won, somehow they had lost in '86.

And my kids, however, who were then 7 and 8 years old, were big fans.

And they were incomprehensible that I wasn't watching the game.

They, of course, were watching it, and I let them call in to me only when the Red Sox were winning.

Then, of course, by the sixth inning, when the Mets caught up, they were tied and losing, and so I didn't hear any more of it until the end.

When they came in to tell me that the Red Sox had lost, I, surprisingly, started crying.

I didn't expect to, 'cause I thought I was preventing myself from caring about it.

And these little kids said to me, "Mom, it's all right.

They'll win next year."

And I remember thinking, "Oh, my God.

These kids don't know yet that they haven't won since 1918, and I can't tell them that."

And I had this terrible feeling of wisdom that I did not want to impart to the kids.

♪♪♪ -The moments of great personal failure or humiliation in baseball -- Merkle's boner, Snodgrass' muff, Branca's pitch to Bobby Thomson -- We all lose in our lives.

We are fortunate enough not to have to lose in front of national-television audiences.

And rather than -- There's a moment when the guy's a goat.

But inevitably, within a few years, there's a rehabilitation and you feel sorry for him.

Bill Buckner right now, people in Boston say, "Good old Bill.

He did his best."

You know, they would have killed him that day.

Well, it's nice that we're forgiving in that fashion.

-By 1987, only three Blacks had ever managed big league teams, and only one African-American had ever held a top-level front-office job.

[ "The Star-Spangled Banner" playing ] Of the 568 full-time scouts employed by the major leagues, only 15 were Black.

And four teams in California -- the Giants, Athletics, Angels, and Dodgers -- accounted for two-thirds of all minority hiring.

In April, the 40th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's major league debut, Al Campanis, Robinson's old teammate, appeared on ABC's "Nightline" to mark the occasion.

[ "Nightline" theme plays ] -This is ABC News' "Nightline."

Reporting from Washington, Ted Koppel.

-Just tell me -- Why do you think it is?

Is there still that much prejudice in baseball today?

-No, I don't believe it's prejudice.

I-I truly believe that they may not have some of the, uh, necessities to be, let's say, a field manager or perhaps a general manager.

-You really believe that?

-Well, I don't say all of them, but they certainly are short -- How many quarterbacks do you have?

How many pitchers do you have that are Black?

The same thing applies.

-Yeah, but, you know, I got to tell you, that sounds like the same kind of garbage we were hearing 40 years ago about players, when they were saying, "Ah, not really cut out..." You remember the days, you know, "Hit a Black football player in the knees, and no --" That really sounds like garbage.

I've never said that Blacks are not intelligent.

I think that many of them are highly intelligent.

But they may not have the desire to be in the front office.

I know that they have wanted to manage, and some of them have managed.

But they're outstanding athletes, very God-gifted, and they're very wonderful people.

And that's all I can tell you about them.

-Al Campanis, to me, said what we knew all along but nobody wanted to admit -- that there were people like himself -- and he was the director of player personnel for the Dodgers -- who acted on the assumption, on the premise, that Blacks didn't have, as he said, "the necessities" to manage or to work in the front office with any high degree of credibility.

And the pain for me, as a longtime baseball fan, was that it came from the Dodgers, my team, all my life, since I was 5, 6 years old.

I mean, certainly the Dodgers wouldn't say that or feel that way or act that way.

♪♪♪ -Campanis was fired within 24 hours.

Commissioner Peter Ueberroth hired Harry Edwards, a Black sociologist and former athlete, as his assistant for minority affairs, who promptly hired Campanis back.

"We are going to have to deal with the Campanises in baseball," Edwards explained, "and it's good that I have a person in house who knows how they think."

♪♪♪ A year later, when Bart Giamatti left his post as president of the National League to become commissioner of baseball, he was replaced by sportscaster and former first baseman Bill White.

Some teams did hire more African-Americans, but baseball, which had once been ahead of the nation on civil rights, had fallen behind again.

-During the period of collusion, there were people who disbelieved it, even though it was as obvious as the nose on anyone's face.

And I'd had people in that period say to me and write that "owners can't agree on anything.

How could they have collusion?"

And everybody forgot that prior to 1947, all of the owners colluded to make sure that not a single nonwhite player could play in the major leagues.

That was a collusion which had existed for decades.

And the only way they could keep players out, no matter whether they were Satchel Paige or what have you, superstars in their own right -- The only way they could keep them out was a collusive conspiracy.

♪♪♪ -In 1985, Carlton Fisk, still one of the premier catchers in the game, became a free agent.

He, strangely, received only one offer and eventually re-signed with Chicago.

In 1987, Andre Dawson, the Montreal Expos' star slugger, tried free agency, too.

No one wanted him.

Jack Morris, the winningest pitcher in baseball during the '80s, filed for free agency that same year.

He received no offers and was forced to re-sign with the Tigers.

♪♪♪ -The owners got together in 1985 and decided to form a conspiracy under which they would break the free-agent market by agreeing that no team would ever make an offer to a free agent.

It was in violation of their contractual commitment.

All 26 owners had signed a contract which said no club shall act in concert with any other club with respect to free agents.

And they formed a conspiracy, and it included all 26 owners, general managers, club officials, three league presidents, several commissioners.

All had to be involved and were involved in violating their contractual commitment.

And it worked.

Over a period of three years -- 1985, 1986, and 1987 and possibly into 1988 -- they managed to have an airtight conspiracy.

-The union took the case to arbitrators, and after thousands of hours of testimony, Major League Baseball was found guilty of collusion.

The conspiracy was broken, and the owners had to pay the players $280 million in lost wages.

-Most people have not fully understood what that collusive effort meant, that it was an agreement not to improve your team.

It was an agreement that no matter how important these free agents are -- superstars available to improve your team, to fill in holes on a team that could otherwise be a pennant contender -- it was an agreement you will not, under any circumstances, make an offer to a free agent, no matter how good he is.

And that is really a conspiracy to fix the pennant race.

And I think that in terms of scandalous proportions, that collusive conspiracy really was far worse than what is generally conceded to be the worst scandal, the Black Sox scandal, involving eight players.

This involved all 26 owners and all their officials, and not for one Series, but for three consecutive -- and possibly four -- years.

♪♪♪ -So the Dodgers are down to their last out.

[ Crowd cheering ] Bottom of the 9th.

A's 4, Dodgers 3.

-In the 1988 World Series, the Los Angeles Dodgers were the decided underdogs against the resurgent Oakland Athletics.

The Dodgers' best hitter, the man who had carried them all season, Kirk Gibson, was injured and not expected to play.

-It'll be up to Davis to extend the inning.

-In the first game, in the bottom of the ninth, with two outs and one man on and Oakland leading, 4-3, their ace reliever, Dennis Eckersley, on the mound, Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda called to the clubhouse to see if Gibson could possibly pinch-hit.

-He doesn't like to throw that many inside strikes.

-I'm in the corner of the Dodger dugout, anticipating that I'll be doing a losing interview.

I'm standing just in front of the runway, and I can see Ben Hines, the Dodger batting coach, being dispatched by Lasorda into the clubhouse to check on Gibson.

Then I can hear Gibson taking practice swings, with a ball being placed by a bat boy on the tee and Gibson hitting into a net.

I can hear grunts of pain coming from Gibson with every swing.

Fft, thwack.

"Ugh!"

Thwack.

"Ugh!"

And I'm thinking to myself, "Gee.

If this guy is gonna drag himself out here and hit, we've really got the stuff of legend."

And Hines comes waling back, and like in a B movie, he passes Lasorda and says, "He says he thinks he's got one good swing in him."

I'm thinking, "Who's writing this script?"

[ Crowd cheering ] -And look who's coming up.

[ Organ playing ] ♪♪♪ 4-3 A's.

Two out, ninth inning.

You talk about a roll of the dice.

This is it.

Fouled away.

[ Crowd murmuring ] -He was complaining about the fact that with the left knee bothering him, he can't push off.

Well, now he can't push off, and he can't land.

-So the Dodgers trying to catch lightning right now.

0-1.

[ Crowd cheering ] Fouled away again.

-He's staying on that outside corner.

He's not gonna give him a ball to pull.

With Davis, he just missed, but here's two quick strikes, both fastballs, that kind of tail away at the outside part.

Hassey has not even flirted with the inside part of that plate.

-Sax waiting on deck, but the game right now is at the plate.

High fly ball into right field!

She is gone!

[ Crowd cheering ] [ Organ playing ] -The feeling not just of exhilaration but of utter surprise that engulfed that dugout when he made contact, the looks players exchanged... -Watch Lasorda.

-...and then the spontaneous outpouring of emotion and this release of tension as he made his way around the bases was one of the greatest things I've ever seen in baseball.

-And now the only question was could he make it around the base paths unassisted.

[ Crowd cheering ] -It was Gibson's only at bat in the Series, but the inspired Dodgers went on to beat the stunned A's in five games.

-And the sky is the limit for baseball salaries.

The highest-paid player of the week is now Roger Clemens of Boston -- five years, $7.5 million.

-Dwight Gooden has something to celebrate as well after receiving plenty of money from the New York Mets.

In fact, the right-hander became the highest-paid player in the big leagues after he signed a three-year, $6.7 million contract.

-Ryne Sandberg is calling Chicago "the city with big pockets."

The Cubs great second baseman has signed the biggest contract ever in baseball.

He could make about $7 million a year.

♪♪♪ -In 1869, Harry Wright, manager and outfielder for the Cincinnati Red Stockings, made seven times the average workingman's wage.

In 1976, 107 years later, a ballplayer still made just eight times a workingman's salary.

[ Crowd cheering ] By 1994, the average major league salary would be nearly 50 times that of ordinary Americans.

-The big difference, now that players get so much, is that it has distanced them from us.

It was a blue-collar sport, and people in the stands could look at these people playing ball and think of them as workers, 'cause they were getting paid workers' salaries.

And this perpetuated the illusion that "with a little luck, that could be me out there."

The sense of "we" between fans and players was very strong in those days.

And players stayed on a lot longer with a team.

So they were familiars, like someone who worked in the same office with you, almost.

And all that is gone.

It's quite different now.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -♪ Money, money, money, money ♪ ♪ Money ♪ ♪ Money, money, money, money ♪ ♪ Money ♪ ♪ Money, money, money, money ♪ -1940 Shoeless Joe Jackson Play Ball -- $6,000.

1952 Mickey Mantle rookie -- $42,000.

Ty Cobb's rookie -- $9,000.

Ted Williams' rookie -- $6,000.

Lou Gehrig's rookie -- $3,000.

Honus Wagner proof -- the only one in the world -- $75,000.

♪♪♪ -I collected baseball cards so I could take all my Mickey Mantle and other Yankees -- Moose Skowron -- and I could put them on my bike, and I could ride down the hill and it made me sound like I was going faster.

There it goes -- "$5,200, $5,200," burning up down the highway.

Kids today, they go, "How much is your baseball card worth?"

And I'm going, "A plug nickel, son.

A plug nickel."

I'm saying, "Son, be your own person.

Do not collect baseball cards.

It'll be the ruination of you."

Maybe you'll learn economics a little bit or you'll learn what value is.

But you're being an entrepreneur.

An entrepreneur takes something of no value and makes money on it, and I do not believe in that in the kids.

I teach them right off the bat.

Learn the game.

Do not look at Youppi.

Do not look at the chicken.

Do not look at that.

Look at the ground ball.

Field it cleanly with both hands.

Be smooth as silk.

-Ground ball, sharply hit.

Brooks Robinson knocks it down at third.

-You know, make the nice throw to second.

Have the nice breaking curveball.

Subtract on the change-up.

See the ball and hit it.

-It's popped up.

-Don't associate with other things of the game.

They will eventually bring you down, eat you up, and spit you out.

-Rose was right there!

It popped out of his glove, and Rose made the play!

♪♪♪ -We have these unreasonable expectations of all baseball heroes.

We want them to be good at life as well as good at baseball.

If you think about it, it's unfair.

It's hard enough to expect them to play baseball well.

I'm convinced there's the same division in baseball that there is in life itself, of true heroes, of people of strong principle, of ordinary, everyday people, of rogues, weaklings.

Pete Rose turned out to be extremely fallible.

♪♪♪ -Pete Rose had played in 3,562 games, come to bat 14,035 times, and made 4,256 hits, more than any other man in all three categories.

He had been a hero to two generations of baseball fans, Cincinnati's favorite citizen, so popular that a member of the city council once tried to get him declared a civic landmark to prevent his ever playing anywhere else.

He seemed to be a throwback to some mythical, earlier age of hit-and-run, hardscrabble baseball when players played for the pure joy of it.

But Pete Rose had a secret addiction -- gambling.

Some years he lost as much as $500,000, and some witnesses testified that he bet on baseball games in which his own team played.

Rose denied it.

"I'd be willing to bet you," he said, "if I was a betting man, that I have not bet on baseball."

-I said yesterday on another network that I'm happy to look into the camera now and say I never bet on baseball and I never bet on Cincinnati Red baseball.

-His fans refused to believe the charges.

-Fooled me completely.

I saw everything that was good in him.

He was wonderful with common people.

He knew the first names of the people who rolled out the tarp.

He knew little things about little people that an arrogant man shouldn't know and couldn't know, in a way.

On the other hand, he had at least three major flaws.

He was an addictive gambler, he was an addictive womanizer, and he was absolutely a compulsive perfectionist about work.

And all those things got him in trouble.

And in that sense, he's a tragic character in that he's a man who has a lot of good parts to him, but one or two or three bad areas of his life just ruined him.

-In August of 1989, after a long investigation, the commissioner of baseball, Bart Giamatti, held a press conference.

-The banishment for life of Pete Rose from baseball is the sad end of a sorry episode.

One of the game's greatest players has engaged in a variety of acts which have stained the game.

And he must now live with the consequences of those acts.

It will come as no surprise that, like any institution composed of human beings, this institution will not always fulfill its highest aspirations.

I know of no Earthly institution that does, but this one, because it is so much a part of our history as a people and because it has such a purchase on our national soul, has an obligation to the people for whom it's played -- fans and the well-wishers in the millions -- to strive for excellence in all things and to promote the highest ideals.

-Less than two weeks after barring Rose from baseball, Giamatti died of a heart attack.

-I will continue to locate ideals I hold for myself and my country in the national game as well as in other of our national institutions.

The matter of Mr. Rose is now closed.

Let no one think that it did not hurt baseball.

That hurt will pass, however, as the great glory of the game asserts itself, and the resilient institution goes forward.

♪♪♪ -If we think about the '80s, we will always remember 1989, which was a terrible year because it was the Pete Rose business hung over the sport all through the summer and came to a sad conclusion, immediately after which Bart Giamatti died, who had, in a very short space of time, had really become a significant figure in baseball and was admired and loved by everybody in the game to an extraordinary degree.

And then we all went out to the World Series in San Francisco when the earthquake hit, which seemed to sum up the whole thing.

-We're down!

-It was the worst baseball year that I can remember.

-We would like you to leave in an orderly way.

I don't believe there's any great danger, but we have no idea when the power's gonna be on, and we have to get people out of here before it gets dark.

-6.9.

-6.9.

-The Bay Bridge collapsed.

[ Indistinct conversations ] ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -And while the game's nobler parts will always be enmeshed in the human frailties of those who, whatever their role, have stewardship of this game, let there be no doubt or dissent about our goals for baseball or our dedication to it nor about our vigilance and vigor and, indeed, our patience in protecting the game from blemish or stain or disgrace.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -"The old game waits under the white, deeper than frozen grass.

Down at the frost line it waits to return when the birds return.

It starts to wake in the South where it's never quite stopped, where winter is a doze of hibernation.

The game wakes gradually, fathering vigor to itself as the days lengthen late in February and grow warmer.

Old muscles grow limber, young arms throw strong and wild.

Clogged vein systems, in veteran oaks and left fielders both, unstop themselves, putting forth leaves and line drives in Florida's march.

Migrating North with the swallows, baseball and the grass' first green enter Cleveland, Kansas City, Boston."

Donald Hall.

[ Cheering ] -Toward the corner in left field.

It's gonna be up to Bo Jackson to stop Reynolds from scoring.

He can't do it.

Yes, he can!

I don't believe it!

He made an absolutely perfect throw.

It looked like there was no way he was gonna get him.

[ Cheering ] -We're in the bottom of the 12th.

Up the middle.

Can Smith get it?

Ozzie dives.

Does he have time?

Oh, my goodness.

What a play, Ozzie Smith.

[ Cheering ] -Bo Jackson on the run.

Makes a diving catch!

A tremendous play by Bo Jackson.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -Go!

Go!

Go!

-Bill Veeck once said that, "Baseball must be a great game because the owners haven't been able to kill it."

♪♪♪ Despite baseball's troubles, the spirit of the game asserted itself.

♪♪♪ Baseball became more competitive than ever.

In one 10-year period, 10 different teams won the World Series, something that had never happened before.

♪♪♪ Last-place teams one year made and won the World Series the next, and, as it turns out, even with free agency, players stay with their teams just as long as they always did.

♪♪♪ In the 1991 Series between Minnesota and Atlanta, five of seven games were settled by a single run, and four of those came with the last at bat.

-Lemke hits it into left field.

Here comes Justice!

Safe!

And Atlanta wins it!

-Three games went into extra innings, and two turned on spectacular plays at the plate.

-He is out!

Pendleton is tagged out on another great play by Brian Harper.

-In 1992, baseball became truly international.

The Toronto, Canada, Blue Jays won the World Series.

Their manager was Cito Gaston, a Black man.

[ Cheering ] ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -Nothing worries me about the future of baseball.

I'm worried about any number of things, but this is one thing I never, ever worry about.

When I read in the papers that escalating salaries or gambling are going to be the end of baseball, I love it because I've been hearing this or been reading about this for 130 years.

-I don't think -- You can't do too much.

'Cause we've done a whole lot of things to hurt it, but it's the type thing that you just -- I don't care how, you can't kill it.

You just can't kill baseball, because when you get ready to kill baseball, something going to come up.

Somebody going to come up to snatch you.

[ Bat cracks ] After the Black Sox scandal, here comes Ruth.

I heard Ruth hit the ball.

I'd never heard that sound before.

And I was outside the fence, but it was a sound of the bat that I had never heard before in my life.

That was Ruth hitting the ball.

And the next time I heard that sound, I'm in Washington, D.C.

I rushed out... [ Bat cracks ] ...and there was Josh Gibson hitting the ball, and I heard this sound again.

Now, I didn't hear it anymore.

I'm in Kansas City, and I heard this sound one more time that I hadn't heard only twice in my life.

Now, you know who this is?

[ Bat cracks ] Bo Jackson swinging that bat.

And now I heard this sound.

It was a thrill for me.

I said, "Here it is again.

I heard it again."

I've only heard it three times in my life.

But now I'm living because I'm gonna hear it again one day if I live long enough.

♪♪♪ -It is played everywhere -- in parks and playgrounds and prison yards... in back alleys and farmers' fields... by small children and old men... raw amateurs and millionaire professionals.

♪♪♪ It is a leisurely game that demands blinding speed.

The only game in which the defense has the ball.

It follows the seasons, beginning each year with the fond expectancy of springtime and ending with the hard facts of autumn.

It is a haunted game in which every player is measured against the ghosts of all who have gone before.

Most of all, it is about time and timelessness, speed and grace... -I got it.

-...failure and loss... imperishable hope... [ Cheering ] ...and coming home.

♪♪♪ -The idea that home plate has a little roof -- [chuckles] a little roof.

It has a little roof.

It's a little house.

It brings us back to where we're safe and where we care and where we're cared about And where we're loved.

Coming home on a baseball diamond is pretty darn dramatic.

You feel immense relief to have gotten out of all those hazards out there.

Between first and third is hazardous territory.

And then third home is joy.

You're out of trouble.

You're coming back and you're running toward the home team dugout.

You can see them and they're all grinning and they're glad to see you and their arms are out, and you come across that thing.

It's pretty big-league stuff.

♪♪♪ -It's passed along from parents to children.

My father was a football fan, but my mother was a baseball fan, so I went to ball games with my mother.

She passed along her sense of the game.

I'll pass it along to my son.

It is a family heirloom.

It is America's family heirloom because it goes back so far.

But the thing that's most important about that is that we respect the people of other generations in baseball perhaps more than we respect other generations in other fields in this country.

We've been called a disposable society.

But we don't dispose of Babe Ruth.

We don't dispose of Walter Johnson.

We treat them as though they are equals and contemporaries though they're dead.

That's a very special thing to hand on to children.

♪♪♪ -Baseball, because of the sense of its continuity over the space of America and the time of America, this is a place where memory gathers.

It's a place that we can return to, and it's a place that we can even imagine existing in the future.

I think we have some hope that baseball might look like baseball 100 years from now.

[ Cheering ] -There's a long drive way back in center field, way back... -The fun of recalling something that you saw five days ago or five years ago or a lifetime ago... knowing that that's there to be plucked back into your life in an instant -- Oh, God, that's rare.

♪♪♪ Baseball means what those of us who hold it in our heart need it to mean.

It can be a game, a pastime, or it can be something by which we measure the seasons of our lives, or it can be something that serves metaphorically for the battles, the wars, the triumphs, and the tragedies of any form of human conflict.

♪♪♪ I'm content for it to be a game.

And I think that more than anything else, it tells me that there is something in the world that I can count on and that's never going to let me down.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -I know so many times at the ballpark when I'm sitting with my kids, I look at them and their excited faces and the fact that they love baseball just like I do, and remember the days when I was at Ebbets Field with my own father, who died before they even had a chance ever to know him.

And he was the most wonderful character -- Michael Francis Aloysius Kearns -- with his optimistic view of life.

And I that they know him through baseball.

And sometimes when I close my eyes, it's almost as if he's there and not my kids.

And then it all gets mixed up together.

If there is a magic in baseball, I'm sure that's what it is.

♪♪♪ -The feeling of connection -- bat against ball, ball back and forth -- with your father or your brother.

The idea that you can throw a piece of yourself out there into the ether -- a ball into the ether -- and it comes back to you.

This is the promise of everlasting life -- that it's not going to end.

It's going to come back to you.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ [ "The Star-Spangled Banner" plays ] ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -Jackie, as a figure in history, was a rock in the water creating concentric circles and ripples of new possibility.

He was medicine.

He was immunized by God from catching the diseases that he fought.

The mercy of God permitted him to steal away home, where referees are out of place and only the supreme judge of the universe speaks.