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Top of the Queue: DVDs for the softie inside every sports fan

Jane Burns  —  10/07/2008 7:52 am

Supposedly, there is no crying in baseball. Or football. Or a sports broadcast.

Try telling that to anyone watching a handful of recent sports-themed DVDs. Sports might be popular because people can root root root for the home team, obsess about statistics, draft their own players or wear a really cool cap.

But at their essence, they tug at our emotions. That's why ESPN uses such overbearing orchestral music every time it has a heart-warming story to tell us.

Of course, it's easy to make fun of powerful ESPN, and Aaron Sorkin did just that with "Sports Night," (set at a fictional television show with a strong resemblance to "SportsCenter") which has just been released in an extras-loaded 10th anniversary edition. It wasn't always funny and that was the point; that hard-to-pin-down "dramedy" format still can perplex viewers and that certainly was the case 10 years ago.

Contrary to popular belief, Sorkin dreamed up the idea for "West Wing" before "Sports Night," the latter just got made first. "Sports Night" is about more than sports, at heart it's your basic workplace show with on-air talent played by Peter Krause and Josh Charles, and bosses played by Felicity Huffman and Robert Guillaume.

It gets a little goofy and it gets a little preachy, hallmarks of other Sorkin works such as "The American President," "West Wing" or "Bulworth."

And there's lots of time devoted to interoffice romance (such as the Jeremy-Natalie-Paula love triangle and the convoluted Casey-Dana-Gordon-Sally-Sam pentagon).

The show lasted just two years and 45 episodes, developing a passionate yet too-small audience. The stars went on to bigger and better things, particularly Krause ("Six Feet Under," "Dirty Sexy Money," also new to DVD) and Huffman ("Desperate Housewives" and an Oscar nominee for "Transamerica").

The boxed set, which retails for $69.99, comes with a 32-page booklet detailing the episodes, eight commentaries featuring Sorkin and cast members and two bonus discs. The extra discs include four featurettes, including "Real vs. Reel," in which real-life ESPN staffers compare their experiences with those shown on "Sports Night."

Two other recent DVD releases would also inspire emotion -- love or hate, depending on where you live. Earlier this fall, A&E released two straight-to-DVD collections of two of the coaches who were the bane of each other's -- and the Badgers' -- existence for a long, long time.

"Woody Hayes' Ohio State Buckeyes" and "Bo Schembechler's Michigan Wolverines" capture the glory years of the iconic programs back when they were nearly unbeatable, except to each other, in the Big Ten. (For fans of another Big Red, there's also "Tom Osborne's Nebraska Cornhuskers.")

Both recall a time long past (voting to see who gets to go to the Rose Bowl?), but for good theater, how can you not prefer Woody Hayes? Certainly he turned out good men, and two-time Heisman Trophy winner Archie Griffin is on hand to testify to that. But Hayes is a guy whose career ended when he punched out a player from another team, a shocking piece of video to watch, even today.

But where you really, really need the Kleenex is to watch a documentary about the New York Yankees. So many tears are shed about this franchise, they should just give away Yankee Hankies when they open the new stadium next year.

The biggest tear-inducer is a Major League Baseball release, "Yankee Stadium: Baseball's Cathedral" ($26.99). Love 'em or hate 'em, there's no denying the Yankees' stupendous history. This DVD goes through it all, from the team's beginnings to the opening of "The House That Ruth Built" in 1923 to this, its final, season. That stadium has aged out, and the team will play in a new one nearby beginning next season.

The memories live on in this DVD. Yankees history is baseball history, and the DVD and bonus features include Lou Gehrig's "Today, I am the luckiest man on the face of the Earth" speech (sniff); Babe Ruth, battling throat cancer, giving a whisper of a goodbye (sniff); the home run and winning single hit by Bobby Murcer the same day he eulogized Yankee captain Thurman Munson, who had died in a plane crash (sniff, sniff); and the no-hitter thrown by one-armed pitcher Jim Abbott (oh jeez, just give me the dang box of Kleenex).

For something more entertaining, however, there's the infamous George Brett pine-tar incident, where the former Royal finds out his home run didn't count and barrels onto the field looking like Jack Nicholson in "The Shining."

Although the documentary seems endless at two hours and is sometimes overwrought, it's admirable that it includes the people who really were part of this -- announcers, the organist, Yankee greats from Yogi Berra to A-Rod, while eschewing celebrities.

Another documentary celebrates Yankee Stadium, "The Essential Games of Yankee Stadium" featuring six full broadcasts of big games from 1976 to 2003. The same thing is available for the New York Mets, whose stadium also saw the wrecking ball at the end of this season, and the Boston Red Sox.

So far, no plans are in the works for this production company to put together a DVD set for the Milwaukee Brewers. It would be a bargain, though; at this point you probably could fit the entire Dale Sveum era onto just one disc.

Jane Burns  —  10/07/2008 7:52 am