The Bronx Is Burning
ESPN
The Bronx is Burning accomplished three almost impossible tasks. It made the story of a favored team a shaggy underdog story. It made
the New York Yankees and owner George Steinbrenner into sympathetic
figures. And it proved ESPN Original Entertainment actually can be
entertaining.
The eight-part miniseries about the 1977 New York Yankees season
recently wrapped up its run on ESPN, but there is still a way for you to
find episodes — and you should. The final episode is available online,
and one of the 37 ESPN networks is sure to be running the show for a
while. If you haven’t seen it, find a way to do so.
At first, the series appears to be biting off way more than an ESPN show
in particular could chew. The series is based on Jonathan Mahler's
excellent book Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx is Burning: 1977,
Baseball, Politics and the Battle for the Soul of a City. Mahler uses
the Yankees volatile title run — led by the bickering three-headed beat
of Steinbrenner, manager Billy Martin and newly signed star Reggie
Jackson — as a symbol of the struggle for the soul of the city itself
that summer, perhaps the most volatile any American city had ever had.
The Son of Sam murders; the rise of disco, rap and punk; a mayoral
election in the wake of New York's worst fiscal crises since the Great
Depression; and a blackout that resulted in images of looting and
rioting that cemented New York’s plunging image as an urban cesspool.
In Mahler's book, the Yankees' constant dissension and resulting
victory, with Steinbrenner’s free-spending ways and Jackson's arrogant
superstardom winning out over Martin's old-school toughness, is held as
a symbol of the transition New York itself was going through. After a
summer of rock bottom, the fall brought a World Series title, a new
mayor, David Berkowitz in jail. To show how idealized capitalism would
win out in New York, Mahler notes the first landing of the Concorde
happening the day after the World Series title. Why isn't a new punk,
disco or rap emerging from New York? Because it’s too expensive to live
there — and too safe.
Understandably, being a sports network, ESPN spent most of the
miniseries focusing on the Yankees. Even without the political and
social overtones, the 1977 Yankees are the most interesting team of
overdogs ever.
The team had won the American League pennant in 1976, but lost the World
Series to Cincinnati, which doesn't sound like the sad-sack resume
necessary for a sports movie. (Then again, the supposedly out-of-nowhere
1954 Milan High team that was the basis for Hoosiers had gone to the
Indiana state high school championship final four the year before, but
that didn’t stop anyone from hailing it as one of the most stirring
title teams at any level.)
Steinbrenner had bought the team in 1973 but couldn't be involved with
it for most of 1974 and 1975 after being suspended from baseball for
giving illegal contributions to the Richard Nixon campaign. When
Steinbrenner returned in 1976, he was determined to spend whatever it
took to win a World Series, and with the advent of free agency he could,
most notably signing Jackson to a then-staggering five-year, $3 million
deal before the 1977 season.
Martin, a Yankees second baseman on their 1950s dynasty who was hired as
manager in 1975, was a fiery, volatile, hard-drinking personality who
saw himself as representing everything good about old-school Yankee-dom
— hustle, grit, determination, fight — and saw the meddling
Steinbrenner as a fraud, and Jackson as a half-assing hot dog. Those
opinions were shared by many Yankee teammates, particularly captain
Thurman Munson, the 1976 AL MVP, particularly resentful over a Jackson
interview with Sport magazine in which he referred to himself as "the
straw that stirs the drink."
One of the best things about The Bronx is Burning is that it does not screw up an inherently fascinating story. Director Jeremiah Chechik
doesn't have a stellar resume (the best thing is probably Christmas
Vacation), but he shows great skill in pacing, keeping the story moving
quickly enough not to let any of the triumverate’s battles descend into
soap opera, and quickly enough to bring in the chaos happening outside
Yankee Stadium without letting it overwhelm the team’s story, nor make
the symbolism too thudding.
Yet Chechik, working from scripts mostly by James D. Solomon and Gordon
Greisman (with Mahler himself getting a writing credit for the seventh
episode), lets viewers see quiet and vulnerable moments — particularly
when they involve Martin's struggles with his personal life, and
Jackson's loneliness and alienation from his teammates. (Backup catcher
Fran Healy, also a consultant to the series, was his only friend on the
team.) It’s not all bathos; it's funny to see Jackson reading "Jonathan
Livingston Seagull" and other 70s feel-good tropes to soothing his
aching psyche and his soothes his aching muscles in the team hot tub.
But what makes this combination work so well (I'm really trying to avoid
saying "hit it out of the ballpark") is the cast. John Turturro should
win an Emmy for his Billy Martin, the role of a lifetime for a lifetime
Yankee fan. Turturro perfectly catches Martin's mood swings, his
insecurities and his managerial brilliance. Even Turturro's prosthetic
ears, worn to match Martin's Dumbo wings, become a character in and of
themselves, hearing everything bad Steinbrenner or Jackson says about him.
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Oliver Platt plays Steinbrenner, making the owner's flat, Midwestern
accent into a hammer to pound anyone who stands in his way of a title,
and a flower when he's courting the media or anyone else who can make
him look good. Daniel Sunjata, who came to fame playing a gay ballplayer
in the Off-Broadway play "Take Me Out," is a walking bag of insecurities
as Jackson, who after three World Series titles and established
greatness in Oakland, can't understand why his teammates, Martin, and
the New York fans and media aren't greeting him as a liberator. The
supporting actors are strong as well. Particularly Eric Jensen, who
plays Munson; Joe Grifasi, who plays Berra not as the wacky malaproper
we know, but as Martin's old teammate, current coach and sane shoulder
to lean on, and Max Casella, who plays third-base coach Dick Howser as
he was — an outwardly nice guy, a near-rube, who inwardly knew exactly
how to play Yankees politics and stand up for himself.
Again, this works because the 1977 Yankees are such a great story to
tell. For two-thirds of the season, they bickered and struggled. But,
coincidentally or not, after all the craziness of summer was over, the
Yankees felt a weight lifted off their shoulders as well and zoomed to a
division title and another pennant.
One of the more entertaining things about the series is how it splices
real game footage from 1977 into the actors' work. We see the 1977
Jackson loafing toward a fly ball during a televised game of the week
against Boston, and then we see Turturro and Sunjata fighting and
shoving in the dugout. We see Turturro bench-jockeying Royals pitcher
Larry Gura in the playoffs, and then we see the 1977 Gura reacting. In
the last two episodes, which over the World Series, much of what we see
on the field is from the original ABC broadcast, except more of it, like
when Dodgers manager Tom Lasorda is asking the home-plate umpire for
advice as he pulls Game Six starter Burt Hooton after he gave up a home
run to Jackson — one of three Jackson would hit that day off of three
pitchers in a Series-clinching victory, one of the greatest-ever
championship performances.
You don't have to be a baseball fan or an urban politics historian to
enjoy The Bronx is Burning, though it might help. Either way, the
series is riveting, and proves you can, indeed, make a stirring story
about a sports team that was expected to win, and did. It also proves
that ESPN Original Entertainment can make something worth watching —
now that's the real story of an underdog who came out of nowhere to
accomplish greatness.
— Bob Cook (bobc@flakmag.com)
