It's twice as long as it needs to be, but it's not half as powerful or moving as "The Civil War."
At its worst, it's a bloated gasbag of middle-aged, male, media-elite talking heads in horn-rimmed glasses competing to see who can use terms like "American psyche" and "national consciousness" most often in the same sentence.
At it's best, it's a narrative told so skillfully in the language of myth that it manages to achieve moments of apotheosis -- brilliant flashes where we almost believe that it's subject isn't a game at all, but rather a religion, a gift from the gods to lighten this load called the human condition.
Stop me before I use the adjective "Homeric," because I'm talking about Ken Burns' 18 1/2 -hour PBS documentary, "Baseball," which will start Sunday night at 8 on MPT (Channels 22 and 67) and WETA (Channel 26).
Burns is not shy about saying that he sees himself as the American Homer. He's recently even mass- mailed press releases full of quotes -- from people he has sanctioned as "experts" in his documentaries -- comparing Burns to Homer, the blind poet of ancient Greece who sang the epics that came to be known as "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey."
I mention this not so much to suggest that Burns ought to study his Homer for the poet's many warnings about the dangers of hubris, but because understanding Burns' attempt to be an epic poet on film is key to appreciating the triumph and excess of "Baseball."
First, this is not history -- despite the claims of Burns, PBS and others. It's not about facts, context, consensus and claims of truth.
In its s vast middle range -- that area between inspired and tedious where most of the 18 1/2 hours is spent -- "Baseball" is a whopping smorgasbord of anecdote, lore, pictures, words and music subjectively chosen by Burns and his associates.
How subjective? Highly subjective. Burns is from New England and loves the Boston Red Sox. Thus, the Red Sox are everywhere, while Cal Ripken, to pick just one name that comes to mind in Baltimore, is mentioned only once in passing.
Burns structures "Baseball" to give it the appearance of being the definitive chronicle of the game.
The series is divided into nine "innings," which will air over nine nights during the next two weeks. Each night opens with the National Anthem and a short burst of facts attempting to elevate baseball to the level of national history: "During the 1960s," narrator John Chancellor says, "Americans lost a president . . . and Dwight Gooden was born."
The first three innings cover the periods 1840 to 1900, 1900 to 1910, and 1910-1920, respectively. They are the worst of the series. They are slow and lack any sense of drama. One of the reasons is that Burns is trying to find an American Creation Myth for the game -- a Book of Genesis kind of "In the beginning" story -- but the origins of baseball are too begged, borrowed and stolen for that.
So, instead, after too much talk of games played on the Elysian Field in Hoboken, N.J., Burns spends too long acting like he has a scoop when he trashes the myth that the game was invented by Abner Doubleday.
Two colleagues have told me that they fell asleep while screening the first three innings, but that they didn't want to admit it in print. I will. I fell asleep twice.
During these innings, all of Burns' technical tools from "The Civil War" are on display, including the use of slow and sensuous camera pans of still photographs and portraits.
Burns can take a photograph and close in on it tighter and tighter until it seems the person in it is alive and staring back into your eyes, demanding that you connect with them across the ages. I believe that part of the hold "The Civil War" had on viewers came from Burns' meticulous pacing of the presentation of still photographs. It had a hypnotic effect.
But during the first three nights of "Baseball," Burns doesn't have a real leading actor -- a Sherman, Lincoln or a Lee -- to give him a biographical lightning rod. By the third inning, you'll think you'll scream if you see one more picture of a bleacher section full of faceless, nameless men in bowler hats.
In Inning Four (to air Wednesday night), however, Babe Ruth arrives and the the series heats up.
With the arrival of Ruth, Burns finds a pair of eyes that you can't stop staring into and dreaming about. The face of the young Ruth -- just out of Baltimore and pitching in Boston -- is burned into my memory forever, thanks, I suspect, to "Baseball."
Burns is at his best as a biographer. With Ruth, he finds one of the two story lines that makes "Baseball" start to cook.
The other great biography in "Baseball" is that of Jackie Robinson, the first African-American allowed to play in the major leagues in this century. Burns lays the foundation for Robinson's story in the Fifth Inning, an evening devoted in large part to exploring the Negro League and its greatest stars, Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige.
Burns continues the story through inning six, the story of the 1940s, including the Brooklyn Dodgers after Robinson joined them in 1947. These are two nights not to miss, whether or not you consider yourself a serious baseball fan.
Throughout the series, Burns uses the song "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" over and over. Dozens of times a night, it's sung and played in different voices and musical styles -- until you come to either love it or hate it. Either way, you can't get it out of your head.
The Sixth Inning closes with a gospel version of the song that gives emotional credibility to what Burns has been trying to say about baseball as religion. It's one of those moments in which you almost believe.
But by the middle of the Seventh Inning -- the 1950s -- Burns once again loses the live wire needed to light up this lumbering epic. It's there, in the person of Henry Aaron, the last former member of the Negro League still playing in the major leagues when he broke Ruth's home run record. Aaron was already hitting home runs in Milwaukee in the 1950s, which would have provided a perfect jumping-off point from the stories of Ruth and Robinson.
But Burns doesn't give Aaron the full-blown biographical treatment. When he does briefly deal with Aaron breaking Ruth's record in the Eighth Inning, it's too little and too late to revive the series again.
In the end, the worst failing of "Baseball" is that Burns didn't spend more time talking to ballplayers such as Aaron. Talking heads can be wonderful in the documentary format. Former Negro League player and manager Buck O'Neil provides some of the series' most uplifting moments with his reflections.
Instead, Burns spent most of his time talking to the likes of writer George Plimpton, magazine editor Daniel Okrent, poet Donald Hall, columnist George Will and New York Gov. Mario Cuomo. Everybody, except Will, embraces Burns' wildly overstated thesis of baseball as metaphor for America.
Just as bad are the talking heads, such as Billy Crystal and Bob Costas, who seem more concerned about performing for the camera than anything else. The cumulative effect of such testimony is a brittle and artificial tone, as opposed to the passion felt in hearing historians talk about the Civil War.
Should you watch? Yes. If you are from Baltimore, you'll probably love the stuff on Ruth, especially his childhood. Innings eight and zTC nine do well by the Orioles with mini-profiles of Frank Robinson and Earl Weaver. Most of the Orioles' World Series appearances are covered on those two nights.
The World Series legend and lore is especially poignant now that there will be no World Series this year, for the first time in 90 years.
Watch and enjoy. But understand that it's not really history, and it's not what Burns calls the "soul of America" that you are seeing.
When you hear such crackpot pronouncements as Okrent's saying that left field at Fenway Park is like a Civil War battlefield, ask yourself if anyone ever lost his life or the use of his legs because he misjudged the bounce of a line drive off the Green Monster . . . and remember, "Baseball" ain't "The Civil War."