The Bronx is Burning: From Baseball to the Son of Sam

Those of you who don't follow Major League Baseball probably won't care about this at all. For the rest of us, September makes us begin to drool. We sit in anxious anticipation, watching our favorite teams, praying to the baseball gods that they will make it into the playoffs. Other writers here have told you the story of The Bronx is Burning. I want to tell you about why I think the series was so good.

I haven't always been a Major League Baseball fan, coming to the game in earnest in the 1980s. Besides, growing up in the South, my least favorite team would have been the New York Yankees, so this ESPN original eight-week miniseries was truly news to me. The Bronx is Burning is about the confluence of The Son of Sam serial killer, Reggie Jackson, George Steinbrenner, Billy Martin and the New York Yankees that uncertain summer and that wonderful October of 1977.

I lived in Europe during the 70s, and had been way out of touch for ten years so I knew almost nothing about the impact The Son of Sam made on the people of New York City and even less about baseball. Remember, in the "old days" the Internet didn't exist for regular people, American television was only in the United States, and the only American newspaper available for expatriates in Europe was The Stars and Stripes. Being out of the United States was truly being cut off from the culture. So I missed 1977.

I came to The Bronx is Burning as a baseball fan curious about the subject, but fairly ignorant of what had taken place. Watching the first episode, I thought to myself that this was a very good way for ESPN to make use of proprietary film footage from previous World Series Games. The timing was great, showing in August to lead us into September playoffs and, of course, to October. But as I continued to follow the story, I became even more impressed.

Whether people recognized it or not, what made this series shine was not just what took place in front of the camera. Most of the casting was physically spot on. With the match in staging and lighting inside the locker room, this excellent casting allowed the editor almost seamless inter-cuts of the series footage with the 1977 news footage. In some instances, I had to watch the scenes again to see when the real Billy Martin was on screen as opposed to John Turturro. The final episode was especially brilliant in switching back and forth between the new and the old. The music relentlessly pounded, serving as a great tension and drama-building tool.

Masterfully, after the show itself ended, we got to see the Back-story; interviews with the actual people who created all that very real drama in 1977, from Baseball Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson to the Bat boy who convinced Jackson to give the New York Yankee fans a curtain call after his third homer run in the sixth and final game of the 1977 World Series of Baseball.

I have to admit that I'm a hopeless romantic and cry too easily, but, by the time I got to the end of that final episode, I felt almost as if I'd watched Gladiator, Ben Hur, or Old Yeller. Jackson, despite his enormous ego, still came across as a hero. The Steinbrenner character ... well ... a very complex rich guy good at manipulation. Yes, Billy Martin was a womanizer and, perhaps, crazy as a bedbug, but he was evidently a damned good baseball player and manager, and I came to respect him for that. I wonder if Steinbrenner would have ever gotten that first coveted ring without him.