3 stars out of 5
I didn’t want to see it. But I had 8 hours to kill between checking out of the Berkeley Hotel and doors opening at the House of Independents for the rock and roll hootenanny. Eating only lasts so long. But movies, movies are good. You go in at one time, and when you come out, boom, it’s later. Alas, there was really nothing to see besides Chris Pratt Cashes a Paycheck in Outer Space With Even More Obvious Good-Time Oldies on the Soundtrack Vol. 3 and Donkey Kong in Movie Form Except Now It’s 18 Bucks Instead of a Quarter. And the artsy Showroom Cinema in Asbury Park apparently doesn’t show movies anymore, which is a bummer.
I schlepped out to the mall to see the Yogi Berra documentary It Ain’t Over.
Now, there’s nothing wrong, per se, about this film. It is a perfectly pleasant viewing experience. There’s great old footage. There is a solid assortment of talking heads: Costas, Joe Maddon, Torre, Mariano, Billy Crystal, Suzyn Waldman, Al Downing, Bobby Richardson, VIN SCULLY (r.i.p.), etc. Also, fairly randomly, Russ Salzberg. (Why.) We get to spend time with Yogi’s sons, including Dale, who those of us of a certain age recall as a player. And the thesis, from Yogi’s granddaughter, is well-meaning — that Berra is remembered more as a clown than as an amazing ballplayer (on account of his charming Yogi-isms and Yoo-Hoo commercials and Yogi Bear, etc. etc.) — and this documentary aims to set the record straight.
Ah, but that’s flawed thinking. Because anyone who would pay to see this film ALREADY KNOWS ALL THAT. We baseball fans are nerds. Or is it, we nerds are baseball fans? We don’t really like football, because those guys bullied us in school and dated all the pretty girls, leaving us bruised and alone. But baseball, baseball is beautiful, truly a game of inches, of angles, and of endless, mind-numbing statistics, which we’ve pored over since childhood. (And they keep coming up with arcane new stats and I have no idea how it all fits on the back of a baseball card anymore.) We know the numbers and the stories and when we get together and discuss these important things we are super annoying and when there’s no one around to talk with we call up sports radio shows in the middle of the night.
This is a movie for grandpas to bore their grandsons with, or for adults to patronize their drooling aged parents with. (“Look, Dad! You remember! Ooh let me get a tissue for you.”) But it really belongs on MLB Network, trimmed down to an hour, where it can air over and over again in the bleak off-season, as we pray for spring, secretly terrified that this year, spring won’t come.
Jack Silbert, curator