A Sporting View: ESPN nails it
Oliver Platt’s George Steinbrenner, clad in blue Brooks Brother’s pajamas and a black terry cloth bathrobe, is trying to control John Turturro’s Billy Martin as he rampages drunkenly through his hotel suite, trying to find the ballplayers he heard from outside the door.
“Billy … nobody’s plotting anything and nobody’s queer!”
It’s scenes and lines like that from “The Bronx Is Burning,” ESPN’s just completed miniseries on the 1977 New York Yankees and really, the entire city, that make it so enjoyable to watch. It’s the little moments that make movies and television shows into classics, and “The Bronx Is Burning” served them up in spades. I’m not a television critic, but it’s easily the best thing to ever come out of ESPN Original Entertainment, and has to be counted as one of the greatest sports dramas of all-time.
For one, the subject material is so rich. The 1977 Yankees perfectly encapsulates the Steinbrenner era — a team anchored by “true Yankees” (in this case, guys like Thurman Munson and coaches Yogi Berra and Elston Howard), mixed together with free-agent superstars (Reggie Jackson and Catfish Hunter), lots of front-office meddling and tons of dramatic press coverage.
“We live in an age now where sports has been ‘SportsCentered,’ where everybody thinks that the best possible way to make themselves bigger is to draw attention to themselves … that the act has become as important as the talent,” longtime New York columnist Mike Lupica says in an interview extra that appears after one episode. Lupica notes that it was the ‘77 Yankees that helped usher in that SportsCenter era.
John Turturro, who is spot on as Billy Martin (and yes, Martin really did have big ears), agrees but says there is more of a Shakespearean element to it all.
“Let’s face it, the city was really happy when the Yankees won,” Turturro, a New York City native, recounts. “It was really good for the city. When the game is over and you’ve won and you get the trophy, you’re only left with the memory of what you did.”
And the memories are there. The fight between Martin and Jackson on national television, the near daily firings of Martin by Steinbrenner, the player clashes in the clubhouse, the constant media presence and the pressure of having to perform on the world’s biggest stage for fans hungry for success.
It’s been 30 years since that season, and even the boss himself (who criticized Platt’s barbering, of all things, during the series) has mellowed in retrospect — but he hasn’t apologized.
“Well, if you’re on a ship in a calm sea, you’re on a schooner or something, you never get anywhere,” Steinbrenner said to producers of the film. “There has to be a little bit of turmoil, a little bit of desire, to want to exceed and do better.”