61* (2001/HBO Blu-ray) + Talking Baseball Vol. 1: Pittsburgh Pirates (DVD) + When It Was A Game (1991 – 2000/HBO Blu-ray)

 

Picture: B/C/B-     Sound: B-/C/B-     Extras: C+/C/D     Main Programs: B-/C+/B

 

 

Baseball is as successful as any sport on home video and three new titles show the appeal continues.

 

 

Billy Crystal’s celebrated cable telefilm 61* (2001) was a big ratings success and a great candidate as still one of the few major TV movies to hit Blu-ray to date.  Barry Pepper is hauntingly accurate as Roger Maris and Thomas Jane impressive as Mickey Mantle as both chase after the great Babe Ruth’s record of 60 home runs in a single season.  Very well written by Hank Steinberg, it is amazing this was not a theatrical release, but is easily Crystal’s best non-acting work and except for a few minor complaints, a fine telefilm in the tradition of the early great telefilms that became classics.

 

Besides looking good, The cats delivers nicely including Donald Moffat as Ford Frick, Anthony Michael Hall as Whitey Ford, Richard Mazur as Milt Kahn, Bruce McGill as Ralph Houk, Joe Grifasi as Phil Rizzuto, Seymour Cassel as Sam Simon, Michael Nouri as Joe DiMaggio and Christopher McDonald in a hilarious turn as Mel Allen.  The film also feels like it is taking place in its period throughout and something special about baseball at the time is somehow captured as well. 

 

Crystal delivers a real labor of love and now on Blu-ray, you can appreciate what he achieved in ways you would never think was possible.  Fans will be surprised too.  Extras include a feature length audio commentary by Crystal, The Greatest Summer Of My Life making-of featurette, Mantle & Maris Bio & Hitting Stats and Maris’ 1961 Home Run List.

 

Part of an extensive series that takes on several different baseball teams, Talking Baseball Vol. 1: Pittsburgh Pirates is a compilation DVD with vintage (and analog video) footage of many of the players that made their teams great.  Here, we get footage that includes Willie Stargell, Chuck Tanner, Jim Leyland, Dock Ellis, Bill Virdon, Ralph Kiner and more.  This runs about 3 hours including other pieces marked as extras and fans will be pleased, but the compilation nature only worked for me so much, so this is more of a fans-only affair.

 

Best of all here is a culmination of three TV specials from the When It Was A Game series.  All produced over the years by HBO, these are compilations too, but of rare, valuable film footage in the 8mm, Super 8mm and 16mm formats (often in color!) by fans and they are exceptionally well edited and paced, showing a side of the game that has been lost to time and might otherwise only be seen in stills and newspaper or magazine photos.  Best of all, the film footage looks great throughout in ways that will shock fans of the sport and film itself.  On Blu-ray, it proves once again that 16mm film offers qualities and detail only HD can capture and even the 8mm film types benefit from the HD transfer despite their obvious limits.  This is a big, pleasant surprise and all serious film fans will want to get their hands on this one too.  There are no extras.

 

The 1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image on both HBO Blu-rays look as good as they could possibly look in the format, with fine color, detail and little to no motion blur, in line with HBO’s exceptional line of releases in the format.  Even having seen their best prior releases, these discs impressed.  61* was shot on 35mm film by the great Haskell Wexler (Medium Cool, One Flew Over The Cookoo’s Nest) and this is some of his best work.  The 1.33 X 1 on Talking is going to be on the soft side throughout as the various analog NTSC video sources are also soft and the film footage that occasionally shows up cannot off set that, but this looks about as good as it could be without more work, but beware of staircasing, aliasing, video noise, video banding, some tape scratching, tape damage and cross color.

 

The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) lossless mixes on the Blu-rays are also as good as we can expect, with the 5.1 mix on 61* being a bit quiet and dialogue-based, so the soundfield is limited, but the audio is very well recorded, while the 2.0 Stereo on Game is a good accompaniment to the images and decodes in Pro Logic nicely, but is a simpler soundtrack.  That leaves Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on Talking which is aged and compressed, but about as good as it is going to sound in a lossy digital format.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo