When It Was a Game.

• Author: Rothenberg, Robert S.

The advent of 8mm and 16mm color film in the 1930s turned a lot of Americans into would-be Cecil B. DeMilles. When they got done shooting home movies of their families, many turned their cameras on baseball, then indisputably the National Pastime. An amazing amount of footage has survived, from fans capturing their heroes in action to ballplayers filming teammates fooling around during spring training or before the game. The producers of this documentary have sifted through hundreds of reels of amateur photography and come up with a fascinating portrait of the 1934-57 era, when baseball news filled the sports pages, not the business section or crime blotter.

The screen is overflowing with the legends of the sport--Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Bob Feller, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Stan Musial, Willie Mays, Carl Hubbel, and even such storied names from baseball's formative years as Ty Cobb, Cy Young, and Honus Wagner, long retired, but unable to stay away from the field of dreams. Changes in society are reflected throughout, most strikingly by the realization that this was a whites-only sport until Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947, followed by a flood of black stars, including the fabled Satchel Paige.

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