Major League Baseball 2004: Wo

Having attended the premiere in Boston last night, I can attest that this is not merely a World Series production. The Sox are covered from spring training through the season, then into the Anaheim Series. A fair amount of time is spent on the ALCS as well. More time is spent on the World Series because of MLB's focus, unlike the NFL as someone else mentioned.

The film starts with a recap of that curse thing and refers to it a couple more times before the end, but guess what? It doesn't bother me any more. During the season highlights, there is a brief segment on the Nomar trade. There is also a brief look-back at the two previous Red Sox-Cardinals World Series. Narration is by Massachusetts native Denis Leary, who does a fine job.

The clips are fun to watch, and the interviews make them even more exciting. Unfortunately, I only heard about half of what was said because of the frequent and enthusiastic applause of the audience, myself included. Can't wait to watch it in the quiet of my living room. From what I did hear, many of the interviews were done during the playoffs, so for example you see Johnny Damon talking about having to go into St. Louis and try to win 2 games on their home field. It's a peek into what the players (and Tito and Theo and Larry and JWH and the fans and...) were thinking as the story was unfolding, before we all knew the ending.

The production quality is excellent. The studio interviews were done against a black background, so there is nothing to distract the viewer from the interviewee.

While we saw only the main movie, the MLB Productions representative who introduced it said that the many extras on the DVD are "must see."

This info came from MLB.com, which is marketing the DVD. Apparently it covers a lot more than highlights of the four WS games:

"We didn't want to show a highlight reel of the postseason." said Gavant. "We wanted to show a film, a movie, and I hope we delivered in terms of a great story arc that we followed. We wanted to differentiate this production by really making it a documentary that could have been a theatrical release, more so than a highlight video.

"We could have even gone longer on this program," said Gavant. "It's 90 minutes long with an additional 20 minutes of bonus footage. There were really so many more stories to do. What we aimed to do is give fans an inside look at what was going on behind the scenes while they were watching the World Series."

Some of the DVD highlights include:

A look at the Red Sox Nation: A breakdown of the Red Sox season and highlights from their Division Series championship over the Angels.

An in-depth look at the history of the Yankees/Red Sox rivalry and highlights of the Red Sox's miraculous ALCS with New York.

In-depth highlights and behind-the-scenes footage from all four games with the Cardinals.

Highlights from Boston's championship parade following the series.

Interviews with most of the Series' stars, including Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz, Johnny Damon, Curt Schilling, Derek Lowe and manager Terry Francona.

Bonus footage includes: Ortiz's walk-off ALCS home runs, the ALCS celebration, postseason pregame radio and TV commentary and a section called "The Storytellers," containing historical interviews with Smokey Joe Wood, Joe Garagiola, Tim McCarver, Fred Lynn, Carlton Fisk and Dwight Evans.

The story of 2004 was the Red Sox finally becoming World Champions ending the so called curse of the Bambino. This was a four game sweep and the Red Sox rode high with no let down after another amazing ALCS against the Yankees. Down three games to none and feeling like they were about to be swept away the Red Sox behind the clutch hitting of David Ortiz amazingly won the next four games to be the first team in any playoff series to come back from being down three games to none. For a Yankee fan like me this was extremely hard to stomach especially the bloody sock heroics of Curt Schilling.

The tape is rescued because of the coverage of the Yankee - Red Sox rivalry and the highlights of unbelievable ALCS. Members of the Red Sox Nation will love it. I am disappointed because the Yankees let a sure win slip away. Also it is kind of boring to watch the Red Sox steamroll the Cardinals and their star first baseman Albert Pujois. It was disappointing to see a good team like the Cardinals unravelled by the Red Sox.