If you didn’t grow up in Pittsburgh (which boasted rival baseball greats the Homestead Grays and the Pittsburgh Crawfords) or watch Episode 5 of the 1994 Ken Burns docu-series “Baseball,” you may not know much about the Negro Leagues. That’s about to change.
Sam Pollard’s “The League” is an eye-opening slice of American baseball’s 154-year history. In fact, the recent rule changes imposed on the Majors by Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred were inspired in part by the practices of the Negro Leagues: while Babe Ruth focused on home runs (like many players today), these extraordinary Black athletes favored a fast, hit-and-run, base-stealing game.
“If you watch footage of Jackie Robinson from the ’40s and the ’50s, his style of play, his aggressiveness, all came from the Negro Leagues,” Oscar-nominated documentary director Pollard told IndieWire during a recent interview. “If you watch the players who integrated Major League Baseball,...
Sam Pollard’s “The League” is an eye-opening slice of American baseball’s 154-year history. In fact, the recent rule changes imposed on the Majors by Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred were inspired in part by the practices of the Negro Leagues: while Babe Ruth focused on home runs (like many players today), these extraordinary Black athletes favored a fast, hit-and-run, base-stealing game.
“If you watch footage of Jackie Robinson from the ’40s and the ’50s, his style of play, his aggressiveness, all came from the Negro Leagues,” Oscar-nominated documentary director Pollard told IndieWire during a recent interview. “If you watch the players who integrated Major League Baseball,...
- 7/13/2023
- by Anne Thompson
- Indiewire
Sam Pollard’s “The League” Is Not Your Typical Baseball Doc.
The documentary filmmaker grew up in the 1960s watching the St. Louis Cardinals, whose roster of players included Black or Latino players including Bill White, Curt Flood, Orlando Cepeda and Lou Brock, but did not know much about the Negro Leagues that existed when the sport was still segregated.
“I knew who Jackie Robinson was and that it was because of him Blacks had integrated the Major Leagues in 1947,” says Pollard. “But what I did not know much about in 1964 at the age of 14 was that he had come out of the Negro Leagues and that the Negro Leagues had been home to Black and Latino ballplayers who had to play segregated baseball during the height of the Jim Crow era.”
While some segregation in the sport always existed, the color line in baseball was not rigidly enforced until...
The documentary filmmaker grew up in the 1960s watching the St. Louis Cardinals, whose roster of players included Black or Latino players including Bill White, Curt Flood, Orlando Cepeda and Lou Brock, but did not know much about the Negro Leagues that existed when the sport was still segregated.
“I knew who Jackie Robinson was and that it was because of him Blacks had integrated the Major Leagues in 1947,” says Pollard. “But what I did not know much about in 1964 at the age of 14 was that he had come out of the Negro Leagues and that the Negro Leagues had been home to Black and Latino ballplayers who had to play segregated baseball during the height of the Jim Crow era.”
While some segregation in the sport always existed, the color line in baseball was not rigidly enforced until...
- 7/7/2023
- by Addie Morfoot
- Variety Film + TV
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