Here's A Baseball Documentary For You

 

No, no, not the one about Derek Jeter that is currently showing on ESPN.   Nope, this one is confined into 90 or so minutes and is as tight as the grip on one of Nolan Ryan's fast balls.  

And quite compelling in its simplicity.

Now going back into the time capsule, Nolan Ryan was a big deal for me.  I mean, he is one of the primary reasons the Mets won the 1969 World Series.   At the tender age of 22.   And I was bit heartbroken and a little confused when he got traded to the Anaheim Angels in 1971, especially since they got the broken-down third baseman Jim Fregosi in return.

But perhaps the real reason why I and some of my hotly hormoned friends were going to miss Nolan was because we were also losing his wife Ruth.   All of us were a bit gaga over her.   The good news about the new documentary "Facing Nolan" is that she is one of the prominent talking heads to this story.   And, even in her 70s, she's still a bit of a fox.

"Facing Nolan" is one of those linear baseball biographies that goes from this thing happening to then this thing happening and then another thing happening.  A simple story about a kid who loved baseball and ended up pitching at an elite level for 27 years!

Do you learn a lot of new information?  Surprisingly, yes.   I had no clue that Ryan starting out with the Mets did not have a pitching coach giving him guidance.   I also could not fathom this little factoid.   Despite a career of over 5000 strikeouts and seven no-hitters, Ryan never once won the Cy Young Award for pitching.  Just writing that down here in this blog makes my jaw drop all over again.

So, in "Facing Nolan," you go from season to season and accolade to accolade.  Multiple talking heads are included from the Mets' catcher Jerry Grote to President George W. Bush.   And the movie concludes with a sweet moment where Nolan and his family of children and grandchildren are reading his plaque in the Hall of Fame at Cooperstown.

And yes, Ruth is with him.

"Facing Nolan" tells a baseball life in a nice and compact style.   You can breeze through it easily.

And that brings me to the other baseball documentary that I mentioned earlier.  I'll be discussing that later this week.

LEN'S RATING:  Four stars.

Dinner last night:  Leftover SPO.