"Shadow Ball" is the fifth “inning” of Ken Burns’s landmark 1994 film Baseball and looks at baseball’s desperate attempts to survive the Great Depression and Babe Ruth’s fading career, while a new generation of stars, including Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams, is on the rise. It also presents the parallel world of the Negro Leagues, which thrived in the shadow of the Major Leagues, as they took to the road mixing showmanship with talent to draw crowds in big cities and small towns alike.
Baseball Shadow Ball-MonarchsKansas City Monarchs
The inning culminates with the greatest showdown in the history of the Negro Leagues: Satchel Paige, arguably the best pitcher ever, against Josh Gibson, “the black Babe Ruth,” in the Negro League World Series.
This encore airing of select episodes of Baseball on Wednesday nights celebrates Ken Burns's return to the story of baseball with the September release of The Tenth Inning, a new two-part, four-hour documentary by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick that picks up where the Baseball series left off. The Tenth Inning airs Tuesday-Wednesday, September 28-29, 2010, on PBS-HD.
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