PBS - Baseball (1994) Part 1 First Inning Our Game

BASEBALL is a nine-part series that examines nearly 200 years of American history through the prism of our national pastime. Americans have played baseball in one form or another since the early 19th century—while they conquered a continent, warred with one another and with enemies abroad, and struggled over labor, civil rights and the meaning of freedom. At the game’s heart lie mythic contradictions it is a pastoral game that was actually born in crowded cities;it is an exhilarating democratic sport that tolerates cheating—and has excluded as many as it has embraced; a profoundly conservative game that has sometimes managed to be years ahead of its time.

Part 1 First Inning Our Game

Inning One, Our Game, looks at the origins of baseball in the 1840s and takes the story up to 1900. Burns refutes the myth that Abner Doubleday invented baseball in Cooperstown and traces its roots instead to the earliest days of the nation — there are records of a game called “Base” played at Valley Forge.

Wikipedia

Full Version Available Upon Request