Metaldude61

As someone who loves to read and do research on baseball of the 1800s, I came across this documentary on the .... documentary channel, interesting enough.

Much of what was highlighted in this documentary were well-known facts to me; i.e. that hand signals were devised, first with coaches and teammates, and later used by umpires, to signal various calls made during the game, like ball/strikes and outs. His personal life and the effort of different people and groups attempting to have him inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame were also highlighted.

It appears to me to be made with an extremely low budget therefore, I cannot be too critical of the final package, but a couple things get it downgraded to me: The background music is non-stop ragtime, which after a couple of minutes became very annoying, and the segment about the efforts for his Hall of Fame induction could have used some bigger names who have given support to the cause. Overall though, I thought it was entertaining and hit all the major points in Mr. Hoy's life and baseball career.

Honestly, on the subject of the death penalty, I could take it or leave it. The problem I have with this documentary lies in the fact that it is a complete love-fest for the murderer, with absolutely no sympathy for the family. The Execution of Wanda Jean, with it's completely one sided view, only reinforced my view that she should have been executed for her crimes. It tried to argue that she was mentally retarded, but nothing in the video supported that view. She seemed uneducated, but so did her entire family, but that doesn't mean they were all retarded. I can completely understand if someone is opposed to the death penalty, but to completely ignore the crime, as if it didn't happen, and try to put Wanda on some moral mountain top, is offensive in nature, and that's not the side of the issue I would be associated with.

I bought this DVD because of my life-long passion for baseball history, not as someone interested in seeing a story about a Jewish ballplayer. I am always interested in knowing more about these baseball greats of the past, and this documentary did include facts and stories that I did not know, and I enjoyed the interviews of other ballplayers of the same era. Some were greats of the game as well, some were not, but it is wonderful to put a face and a voice to the photos and stats I grew up memorizing as a kid. The documentary was trying so hard to be an exact copy of the Ken Burns style of film making, so much though that it does serve as a distraction, a feeling of unoriginality dimmishes what could have been a great documentary. With that complaint asside, I felt it succeeded in conveying the whole person behind the Stats, behind the Legend, and the WWII Veteran. 8/10