During the holidays and throughout the month of January, MLB Network has been playing the outstanding 1994 Ken Burns documentary Baseball, including The Tenth Inning, the equally outstanding follow-up that aired in 2010. It's been 15 years since The Tenth Inning came out, and Burns indicated back then that he hoped to do an 11th inning, a 12th inning, etc. He even knows when he would start The 11th Inning...with Armando Galarraga's perfect game that wasn't.
That's as good a starting point as any. But what else would be included in The 11th Inning? Well, a lot has happened in baseball over the past 15 years, so there are plenty of options. The 15 years from 2010-24 is a nice, round number, which makes it the perfect timeframe. And, frankly, so much has happened during that span that there's probably plenty of stuff that would be omitted.
We already know that The 11th Inning would start with Armando Galarraga. And the Cubs snapping their 108-year title drought in 2016 is the perfect midway point, so there would be no more fitting way to end Part I. Part II would also have a natural beginning with Team USA winning the 2017 World Baseball Classic. And, with the international focus of that episode, there's also a natural conclusion to Part II. Shohei Ohtani's spectacular 2024 season and Ichiro becoming the first Japanese player voted into the Hall of Fame.
So, we've got the beginning and the end of each part. But what (and who) else should we expect to see when/if The 11th Inning becomes a reality? I'll take a gander at some of the big ones that any documentary about baseball over the last 15 years would feel incomplete without:
- San Francisco Giants dynasty: The Giants moved to San Francisco in 1958, but had to wait until 2010 to win their first World Series since 1954. Then they went on that weird little run where they won it every other year. The last of those three titles came in 2014, where Madison Bumgarner had that memorable Game 7 performance in Kansas City (paving the way for the Royals' championship a year later).
- 2011 World Series: In 2011, the Cardinals and Rangers played an absolute classic! Games 1 & 2 had the showdowns between Alexi Ogando and Allen Craig. Albert Pujols (who'd get a whole segment himself in one of the parts) hit three home runs in Game 3. Texas was an out away from its first World Series title twice in Game 6, but David Freese had other ideas. The first World Series Game 7 in nearly a decade was a little anticlimactic after that incredible Game 6. This was also the last World Series before the introduction of the Wild Card Game.
- Mike Trout & Miguel Cabrera: Mike Trout burst on the scene in 2011 and was widely considered the best player in the game until Shohei Ohtani showed up. In 2012, there was the season-long debate between fans over whether Trout or Miguel Cabrera would be the AL MVP. That's the season when Cabrera won the first Triple Crown since 1967.
- Mariano Rivera & Derek Jeter: Two Yankees legends, both five-time World Series champions, both who wore Pinstripes for 20 years, who retired a year apart. Rivera was first, retiring in 2013 with a record 652 saves. Then Jeter retired in 2014 with 3,465 hits, sixth-most in history. Their Hall of Fame elections were just as historic. Rivera became the first player voted in unanimously, and Jeter was one vote shy of unanimous.
- MVP Pitchers: I'm cheating a little bit and grouping them all together, because how can you really separate them? Justin Verlander was the 2011 AL MVP. Clayton Kershaw was the NL MVP in 2014. While neither was an MVP, Max Scherzer and Jacob deGrom pitched at a dominating level. Then there's Matt Harvey, from his breakout in 2012 to starting the All*Star Game at home in 2013 and leading the Mets to the NL pennant in 2015.
- Houston Astros cheating scandal: This unfortunate chapter would probably take up a good part early in Part II. It started with that incredible 2017 World Series against the Dodgers, which was then tainted when the details of Houston's cheating scheme came out. It cost their manager and GM their jobs and made the Astros pariahs throughout baseball for the next several years, even as Houston built a dynasty (and proved that they didn't need to cheat to win).
- 2020 season: It was a weird season all around. It was all necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, of course, but it resulted in one of the most unique seasons in Major League history. Having everything put on pause in the middle of Spring Training, then waiting months before playing a 60-game schedule in empty ballparks (with plenty of negotiations between the players and owners about what the season would look like in the interim), followed by an expanded postseason (with eight teams per league instead of five) played entirely at neutral sites.
- Aaron Judge AL home run record: Aaron Judge's 2022 season would have to get its own segment. It could go back to his rookie-record 52 home runs in 2017, which was merely a prelude to what he'd do five years later. In a contract year, Judge hit 62 homers, breaking the 61-year-old American League record. His pursuit of Roger Maris captured the attention of baseball fans all summer.
- Special event games: Baseball's been expanding globally, with three series having been played in London so far, while also having games in Japan, South Korea, Australia, Mexico, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. And, of course, the World Baseball Classic. It isn't just the international games, though. There's the annual Little League Classic, the Field of Dreams games and Rickwood Field. They're all part of Baseball's expanded reach.
- Rule changes: They've made such an impact that they can't be ignored. First, there was the introduction of instant replay. Then there was the pitch clock, the three-batter minimum, the ban on shifts and the larger bases. It isn't just the "speed up" rules, either. The game has been fundamentally changed by the universal DH, the expanded playoffs and the new schedule format where you face every other team every season.
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