Baseball

Photo by Frankie Lopez on Unsplash

In 1998, History Television, a Canadian network fashioned after the US-based History Channel, broadcast the Ken Burns documentary series, Baseball. My creative director, Sandy Fraser (a massive baseball fan), suggested I try “something poetic” to capture the magical essence of the sport. Fantastic suggestion. It pushed my boundaries and forced me to refocus on the written word.

I was quite surprised when it was awarded a Global Excellence Gold Award from PROMAX (an international association for the entertainment marketing & creative industry). At some point I hope to find the finished on-air promo as it aired 25 years ago. If not, I would like to recreate it using footage and photographs of my own.

The narration as I wrote it is excerpted below. It was read to a very slow, solo piano rendition of take me out to the ball game.

BASEBALL

Its beginnings herald the warmth of spring
The ball the glove the bat
It is the babe the hammer the peach
A team named after its fans
It is the awkward country boy
Who became only known as Cy

Yet even the games great heroes
Fail more than they succeed
It is an idyllic past time
That flashes power skill and speed
At its best it inspires millions
At its worst exclusion treachery and greed

It is the shot heard round the world
The pitch named midnight rider
But when it ends in October’s glare
Of stats and swings and lights
It’s still a game that children play
With parents on summer nights

Would I do a few things differently today? Of course, but that’s not the point. This represents one of those key moments in my career I’ll never forget.