The Brooklyn Dodgers, An American Treasure (2007)

The beloved "Boys of Summer" are back in this trademark film...Pee Wee Reese Roy Campanella Don Newcomb Gil Hodges Johnny Podres Carl Furillo and Duke Snider are just some members of one of the most beloved teams in all sports. Owned by Walter O'Malley as reviled in Brooklyn as he was loved in Los Angeles the Dodgers appeared in 9 World Series while in Brooklyn finally winning their only World Championship in 1955 by beating the hated Yankees. Known for their propensity to lose the pennant on the last day of the season including by "the shot heard around the world" in 1951 the Dodgers also created one of the most meaningful events of 20th Century America in 1947 when Branch Rickey broke the color barrier in professional sports by signing Jackie Robinson. Live the history of the legendary "Bums" from Brooklyn from their beginnings in the 1880's through the sad day they left Brooklyn forever in 1957.System Requirements:Running Time: 63 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: SPORTS/GAMES Rating: NR UPC: 690445045621 Manufacturer No: RD0456 Product Description

America's Team---Before The Term Was Invented

THE BROOKLYN DODGERS---AN AMERICAN TREASURE (not, as Amazon.com lists it, "An American Tradition") is a short but moving documentary about the beloved Brooklyn Bums, "the team of the ordinary man."

In their earliest years, the Dodgers were known as "The Brooklyn Bridegrooms," but "The Brooklyn Bridesmaids" would be more appropriate. Perennial winners of the National League Pennant, the Dodgers took ten trips to the World Series altar, but were kissed only once, in the mythic year, 1955, when the Boys of Summer of the Borough of Brooklyn conquered their dominant American League crosstown rivals and opponents, the New York Yankees. Still remembered "unto the third generation," this lone victory has achieved the status of legend.

The DVD is divided rather informally into two parts. The first (untitled) part recounts the history of the Dodgers from their earliest 1840s beginnings in Brooklyn up to their kidnapping (so it is referenced) to Los Angeles by Walter O'Malley in 1958. By default and by document, most of this history focuses on the Golden Era of New York Baseball (between 1947 and 1957, New York teams played in ten of eleven World Series competitions). Fuzzy, unrestored black and white film footage of the seemingly endless string of eleventh hour Dodger defeats is overlaid with commentary by actor David Hartman. Their 1955 victory crowns this history.

The second (titled) half ("The Players") gives us capsule biographies of key players such as Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, Gil Hodges, Roy Campanella, and Jackie Robinson, leavened with fellow-teammate interviews. Although the packaging is dated 2007, and the film is dated 2001, these clips are more randomly dated, and include comments by Campanella, Willie Mays, and others, both dead and living.

There are no DVD "extras."

The Brooklyn Dodgers were not only beloved by the fans. They clearly loved each other (even when they didn't necessarily like each other). They were a spectacular group of athletes, possibly the best assemblage of baseball players in history. Still bitterly missed by their fans, the Brooklyn Dodger mystique has been passed down from Brooklynite to Brooklynite by seeming osmosis.

Hartman puts it all in perspective. The Brooklyn Dodgers were a great team, nearly the best team never to have won a championship. Individual defeats and victories aside, the Dodgers (and Brooklyn) were far more crucial in American history and to American society than any other sports team, ever, because of their quintessentially American refusal to be defeated despite all odds, and by the simple expedient of being the first professional sports team to integrate.

The ability of a talented black man to play a game on the same team and the same field as a talented group of white men was absolutely revolutionary in 1947, and went far in changing America; this took place seven years before "Brown v. Board of Ed. and eight years before the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Jackie Robinson blazed a trail for teammates Don Newcombe and Roy Campanella. He blazed that trail too, for Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and Malcolm X, each of whom followed his lead. He also blazed that same trail for the next generation of African-American competitors, Tiger Woods, Arthur Ashe, and Venus and Serena Williams.

In fact, Robinson blazed a trail for equality among all races. And it happened in blue-collar, ethnically and racially-diverse, and innately tolerant Brooklyn, perhaps, as Hartman says, the only city in America where it could have happened in 1947.

THE BROOKLYN DODGERS---AN AMERICAN TREASURE is a great and entertaining documentary, worthy of being watched over and over and over. January 7, 2008

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