Documentaries, present and future

Grantland recently aired Spyball, one of those 30 for 30 short documentaries produced by the folks at ESPN.

Spyball is the story of Moe Berg, one of the most interesting characters to play in the Majors. A very quick recap of Berg’s career: He was a brilliant scholar, linguist, lawyer, etc., as well as mediocre catcher in the 1920s and 30s who managed to hang around for 15 years with five teams. He was part of an American “All-Star” team that visited Japan in 1934 during which time he sneaked off and took “home movies” of the Tokyo skyline that were purportedly used during the Dolittle Raid in World War II.

Berg was enlisted by the OSS, the predecessor of the CIA, to attend a lecture in Germany given by physicist Werner Heisenberg with instructions to kill the scientist and commit suicide if it appeared the Germans were close to developing their own atomic weapon. The story is much more eloquently told by Nicholas Dawidooff in his 1994 biography The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg. Previous projects include Louise Kaufman’s Moe Berg: Athlete, Scholar, Spy.

The documentary, by Christina Burchard and Daniel Newma, has an interesting look, a la “Movitone-type” news reels show in the theaters back in the day. Former Major Leaguer Bill Lee — another colorful character — serves as narrator and he does a decent job, although it might have been better handled by a professional actor/narrator. At less than 18 minutes, it seems understandably rushed. I would think such an unusual event deserves at least an hour, and that still might not be enough time to effectively tell the story.

Still to come: Jon Leonoudakis’ homage to a legendary sportswriter.

Leonoudakis — whose previous work includes The Day the World Series Stopped (about the 1981 “Earthquake Series” between his beloved San Francisco Giants and the Oakland Athletics) and Not Exactly Cooperstown (about The Baseball Reliquary) — is hard at work on Hano: A Century in the Bleachers, which pays tribute to Arnold Hano, author of the seminal A Day in the Bleachers, published in 1954, among hundreds of other books and articles. (Full disclosure: I was interviewed on camera for this one.)