PBS sends a love letter to a certain lyric little bandbox of a ballpark
What do the Hollywood sign, cowboys, the Gadsden flag (that’s the one with the words “Don’t tread on me”), the American eagle, the Statue of Liberty, Stone Mountain (the Confederate version of Mount Rushmore, outside of Atlanta), and the Golden Gate Bridge have in common? Each is the subject of an episode of PBS’s “Iconic America: Our Symbols and Stories With David Rubenstein.”
The series premieres Wednesday at 10 p.m. on GBH 2 for an eight-week run.
Wait, you might well say, only seven names are mentioned above. What’s the eighth? Ah, that one’s close to home. The subject of the first episode is a certain familiar lyric little bandbox of a ballpark, as John Updike famously called Fenway Park.
Early on in the episode, Rubenstein points out that he was a Little League all-star. We even see a photo. It’s a bit of a cringey moment. Rubenstein, a cofounder of the investment firm the Carlyle Group, has been a TV personality since 2016, when “The David Rubenstein Show” debuted on Bloomberg Television. He’s also hosted “Bloomberg Wealth With David Rubenstein” and PBS’s “History With David Rubenstein.”
Being an amateur doesn’t necessarily mean a lack of onscreen talent. The late David McCullough very successfully hosted PBS’s “American Experience.” Usually, though, it does. With Rubenstein, let’s just say that, as a TV presence, he’s a great businessman. His estimated worth is $3.2 billion.
Fortunately, there are a slew of talking heads to offer distraction — or maybe not so fortunately, since there are too many. This first episode of “Iconic America” manages to feel both hectic and lazy. It feels hectic because of the barrage of interviewees (also lots of vintage footage and many archival photos). It feels lazy because it never stops to develop any aspect of Fenway in any depth.
Heard from are no fewer than five former Sox players (Jim Lonborg, Fred Lynn, Bill Lee — who, being Bill Lee, offers a hilarious put-down of Yankee third baseman Graig Nettles — Keith Foulke, and the inescapable David Ortiz); five past or present Globe writers (Bob Ryan, Jackie MacMullan, Leigh Montville, Dan Shaughnessy, and Peter Gammons); two past or present Sox executives (team president Sam Kennedy and former general manager Theo Epstein — but not team owner John Henry who, yes, owns this newspaper); two comedians (Steven Wright and Bill Burr, both birthright Sox fans); historians (Bill Nowlin, Glenn Stout), one poet (the late Dick Flavin); several bloggers and, well, the list goes on. You need a scorecard to keep track of them all.
Three interviewees stand out. Two of them talk about the actual ballpark rather than the team: Paul Goldberger, the architecture critic, and Janet Marie Smith, the architect who oversaw the renovation of Fenway. The few things she has to say are interesting and informative. She’s also winningly modest. Who needs “This Old House” when Smith’s there to describe how this old ballpark became this new old ballpark? The whole episode could have been built around her. Instead Rubenstein spends all of three minutes with Smith.
The other standout is the sportswriter and author Howard Bryant, because he offers a righteous corrective to the gee-whiz breathlessness that otherwise mostly characterizes the episode. To the show’s credit, the legacy of owner Tom Yawkey’s racism is confronted head on. All that nonsense about “the Curse of the Bambino” (which, yes, the episode does not fail to indulge in) obscures the team’s true and enduring sin, which condemned it to many years in the basement of the American League: the curse of Jackie Robinson.
The team had a chance to sign him (and, later, Willie Mays — Willie Mays!) but did not, for reasons all too obvious and odious. Bryant is especially forceful and eloquent on the subject. One wonders if this is a preview of how the series will handle the Gadsden flag and Stone Mountain.
Even more than being about the ballpark the episode is about the team. Some of that’s unavoidable, and maybe all the inside baseball (so to speak) is enjoyable and revelatory for viewers who aren’t Red Sox fans. They get to hear about Babe Ruth and Ted Williams and the Impossible Dream season of 1967. There are accounts of the good Sixth Game and the evil Sixth Game (if you need to ask what those are you probably shouldn’t be reading this review)
Who needs ‘This Old House’ when Janet Marie Smith, the architect who oversaw the renovation of Fenway, is there to describe how this old ballpark became this new old ballpark?
as well as, you guessed it, breaking the curse. But it’s pretty stale stuff, and not all that interestingly presented.
“No place is more a shrine to the game’s history,” Rubenstein says. Well, you could argue for Cooperstown (which he pays a visit to, to examine the document finalizing Ruth’s sale to the Yankees), but fair enough. Later he calls Fenway “the foremost symbol of the game we love and the values it reflects: family, country, loyalty, and the unbreakable spirit of baseball fans.” Anyone who lived and died with the Sox during the 86-year championship drought can attest to the spirit part. But family, country, and loyalty lays things on awfully thick, though not as thick as Rubenstein saying of his visit to Fenway, “This is like touring Gettysburg.” Really? Or, rather, really? There’s fantasy baseball, and then there’s baseball fantasy.