![]() "The Glory of Their Times" pegs Walter Johnson as everybody's nice guy. Legends grew up under him: Mathewson, his pride, the college football and baseball hero from Bucknell, who came up in 1900, and wom 30, 33 and 32 games in a three-year span and gave baseball a respectability it did not know before: "Young ladies could now ask their escots to take them to the Polo Grounds to see that college boy play," the narrator said. If the film is heavy on McGraw, well, he was Mr. "It came up to the hitter as black as the ace of spades," testified Fred Snodgrass of the old Giants. After being tossed once around the infield following an out, each baseball bore the stains of tobacco juice spat on it by the first, second and third basemen, plus the shortstop. ![]() Army.įor the pitchers, no new shiny white baseballs. ![]() and what was Orville Wright doing in 1908 while Fred Merkle was committing his famous fail-to-touch second base boner? The film shows Orville trying to make an air plane stay up for 60 minutes for the U.S. ![]() Winslow's soothing Syrup."Īnd while McGraw was winning all those pennants for the New York Gilants, what else was happening? Nicely worked into the film was the New York Times headline "The Titanic is Sinking," and the William Jennings Bryant "Cross of Gold" speech and Teddy Roosevelt's "Give 'em Hell" speeches. So are the funny, leato ball parks, rung by carriages in the outfield, with the grandstands packed by derbied fans paying 75 cents to yell their heads off.įilmed snippets of the fence advertising in the old parks tell what Americans were wearing at the turn of the century: "Kuppenheimer Clothes." And what the he-men were chewing: "DEVIL Chewing Tobacco." And what they were shaving with: "Gem Double Life Blades" and holding up their stockings with "Boston Garters, of Course." And for the ladies: "Mrs. John McGraw, Christy Mathewson, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Honus Wagner and Babe Ruth are alive again in their funny, buttoned uniforms. For everybody, it is a titilating study in roots. For the super annuated it is pure nostalgia. For the baseball fan, it has to be a one-hour fascination. Twas not ever thus, "Glory of Their Times" is telling us with its snippets of ancient baseball films of surprising quality, and the thinning voices of eager old ballplayers telling of the good ol' days. "The Glory of Their Times" is now delivered with a special thrust in this year of baseball's free-agent orgy when the game's new fat cats are the athletes when one outfielder (Reggie Jackson, who never his 300 in his life) could demand and get a Rolls Royce as a fringe benefit for signing a $2.9 million contract when a mere relief pitcher could get $2 million from the Red Sox. Public Broadcasting took the cance, and has a winner whose ratings are heded out of the park. It was filmed in 1969, based on the 1966 est-seller by Ritter, but pride-fully withheld by Greenspan until some network would give it prime time. It is a filmed-for-television flash back to the grimy, turn-of-the-century days of baseball when big-league ball-players were regarded as toughs and unwelcome at first-class hotels, when they walked from their rooming houses to their jobs in the wooden ball parks of the big cities, when a $3,000 salary was common pay for the times (1904-16). Between them, writer and producer, they come up with "The Glory of Their Times," a full-hour history lesson, a learning experience. Bud Greenspan raked the files and raided the dilm libraries. Lawrence Ritter searched out the survivors and got their croaking old voices on tape.
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