Big Leaguer

Brian McLennan: [addressing the camera] I'm Brian McLennan a newspaper man. I do a sports column for one of the New York papers. And a few months ago in Florida, I came up with this story I'm writing. It's a baseball story. And while it won't make anybody yell "Stop the Presses!" or "Tear out the front page!", it's got a little different slant. And that's what makes it important.

Brian McLennan: [talking over archive footage] This is baseball. This is the way it is, when you reach the top. Fame and the headlines and the newsreel camera looking at you from every angle. This is the way it is in the big time, with your name on the lips and in the cheers from everyone in the box seats to the bleachers. This is baseball. The National Pastime. The game that has given us all the great names and all the great moments that fill memory and the record book with the achievement of things past. The game of Babe Ruth and of Lou Gehrig, of Ty Cobb and McGraw, and Christy Mathewson. And everyday the sports pages grab a new name and a new moment to go with all the rest. Somebody pitches a no hitter; somebody comes through in the clutch, somebody makes a great catch or a daring play or knocks in a wining run, and a new hero is born. Like at the Polo Grounds a couple of years ago, when a young man named Bobby Thomson, hit a ninth inning home run that won the pennant, and every fan in America, for the New York Giants. Yes, this is the way it is, at the top. The names and the faces at the end of the long way up. My story is about the way it is at the beginning. The names and the faces you've never heard of. The ones who give baseball its tomorrow. This is the story behind every Bobby Thomson, every ninth inning home run, every team like the Giants and every Polo Ground.