Customer Reviews

Great American Baseball Box

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This set is amazing and I recommend it as a gift for anyone who you know has a great love for baseball. And I do mean GREAT - this is an exhaustive set and lots of the radio broadcasts preserved here are going to bring back memories for those have been fans of the game for a long time - altho I must admit I got a kick out of hearing some of the milestones of baseball as people must have heard them for the first time. Some great old and new baseball themed songs here as well - really this is a showcase for the national pastime and illustrates what a huge part of our lives this game was and still is.

Here's what I love about this box set - everything! It has all the tunes you would want that are related to music, but more importantly, it has the sound bites that will always be remembered. I have traveled to 17 MLB baseball stadiums and have used a video editing software to make a personal "documentary" of my trips (I did it for myself and friends I travel with). I used music and sound bites from this set to enhance my movie.

Simply put, this is just a great compilation. I have yet to find something better out there.

Our son bought this CD set for me a couple of Christmases ago. I really enjoy it, but the material is so scattered especially on the 3rd and 4th disks that it's unclear what the project staff was thinking. The only organization seems to be by date, and that's OK.

The baseball-themed songs on disk 1 are pretty standard but fun to listen to, if you don't mind the overly topical songs like "I Love Mickey," "The D-O-D-G-E-R-S Song," "Joltin' Joe DiMaggio," etc. Taken as a whole, it's amazing that baseball fits into so many musical styles! Disk 2 contains game broadcasts, old-time and more contemporary; again, nothing surprising in the choices the project staff made...we've heard most of them before.

Disk 3 contains 42 comments on various baseball topics by various well-known baseball personalities. Unfortunately, there's no context to these comments...basically, they amount to a bunch of "one-liners." Perhaps the most inexcusable example of this is Lou Gehrig's farewell speech: instead of presenting the entire speech, all we get is the well-known "luckiest man on the face of the earth" part...the whole speech is only about a minute and begs to be more widely known and would have been much better than Sammy's Sosa's comments on his corked bat incident.

Disk 4 is even less comprehensible. Are commercials featuring Walter Alston and Roy Campanella pushing Packard-Bell TV's and Reggie Jackson hawking the VW Rabbit (as if we are to believe Jackson actually ever drove one...) the best selections of recorded baseball societal memorabilia available? On the other hand, the routine with Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Dorothy Lamour, and Ralph Kiner is a real hoot; if one remembers the context of Hope and Crosby owning parts of a couple of major league franchises (which ones are obvious when you listen), the comments make sense and are hilarious.

If one is not a baseball fan, that person would probably not enjoy this set. On the other hand, for the baseball fan (or even an old-time radio fan for the radio recordings) I can recommend it.

Only one CD with music, and that is essentially Rhino's "Baseball Greatest Hits." All songs have been previously released on other compilations. Steeerike ONE!

Packaging comes in box that looks like a base. Not very clever. Steerike TWO!

Overpriced!
Steerike THREE!

Fans will appreciate nostalgia evoked from listening to radio play-by-play calls, but THREE CDs are filled with radio calls, interviews, etc. Too much! More songs!

For baseball music, other options include Diamond Cuts (Vol. I through VIII) and "Baseball" documentary soundtrack.