The Battered Bastards of Baseball

Bing Russell played cowboys on television for years. Then he gave up acting and went to Portland. The city's baseball team had folded. Bing puts a team together: one tied to no major club, entirely independent. Tryouts are held and people come from everywhere; players who had been cut, men who walked away from jobs, men counted too old. Nobody expects this team to win. The Portland Mavericks start winning. The stands fill. Baseball's management is uneasy because the team stands outside the established order. Chapman Way directs with Maclain Way. Kurt Russell, Todd Field, Jim Bouton and the team's players speak in it. It is an American production. Bing Russell is the actor Kurt Russell's father; Kurt played for the team for a time. The directors are Bing Russell's grandsons. The documentary works with a wide archive; game footage and news reports from the seventies are used. The matter it treats is independence; the team's existence is described as an objection to a system. The narrative romanticises the team and gives little room to the other side. The team had the first woman general manager and made other unusual choices for its time. The ending comes with the team being shut down and turns on a legal ruling. Its limit is method; the narrative is one sided and the structure follows the classic sports documentary. Who it is for: viewers who like sports documentary and stories of underdogs. Who it is not for: it is one sided, the subject narrow, and the ending sentimental.