It’s never been Ken Burns intention to revisit any of the epic documentary films he’s made. He’ll make an exception when his “Baseball” warrants “The Tenth Inning” a two hour, two night coda next month.
And yes, his alliance to Boston and their long-in-coming 2004 World Series win may have a little to do with it, he said at press tour.
For the first film, he says, “I’d had to edit, so painfully, so many terrible moments in Red Sox history: ’46, ’67, ’75, ’78, ’86. And when you edit it, it’s over and over again. It’s not like something you can avert your eyes and walk out of the room and turn off the TV set in disgust. You actually have to live it and tell it well, which means tell it in all its pain.”
The 2003 season was a “horrific another defeat, and the fact was that they came back made for some pretty great drama — the greates t comeback in the history of our sport.
“But,” he adds, “that wasn’t enough really to do it.”
It was mostly the steroids controversy, and to a lesser degree the rise of the high dollar game and the strike that played out during the showing of the first “Baseball” that helped convince him.
“You know, 2004 made me think about it,” Burns says of the Sox. ”Steroids made us decide to do it.”
Not that the film is especially one sided; the film was made with his longtime directing partner Lynn Novick, a native New Yorker who is a diehard Yankees fan.
With Boston and New York at the helm, how did “The Tenth Inning” ever get finished?
“You know it just made it fun, honestly,” Novick says. “there was a lot of ribbing, but ultimately respect for each other’s team — as much as is possible. And you know, empathy to understand where the other person’s coming from. That’s always good when you’re working together.”
“We’ve worked together for 21 years,” Burns says. “We have never yelled at each other in the editing room or any other place in these productions, and I am, I have to say, and I have been for nearly 40 years, a Red Sox fan, as proud of the scenes on the Yankees as anything.
“These are first and foremost good stories, and that’s what we’re first and foremost about,” he says. “And I think Lynn would say the same thing about the Red Sox scene. They are integral parts of the history of baseball. We had known who the Yankees are or would be the dominant team throughout the whole history of the game.”
But, he adds, “the Red Sox have certainly been at the heart of some extraordinary drama, which we felt compelled to treat in great and glorious detail.”
When “Baseball” first aired during the 19994 strike, it was sort of the only game in town.
“We were the only baseball on,” Burns says. “So I think it helped the people who were really dying for the national pastime… we were tossing a bone to those rabid fans. I think it helped to mitigate a little bit of the anger, because it reminded people of that age.”
“The Tenth Inning’ airs Sept. 28 and 29 on PBS.