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4.0 out of 5 stars
Good contemporary presentation of a classic World Series., May 20, 2003
If you remember the 1972 World Series or are a younger baseball fan who loves the game's rich history, this video is worth checking out. The film, done right after the Series ended, begins with somewhat grainy kinescope footage (in color) of the Cincinnati-Pittsburgh matchup in the National League Championship Series, and then the ALCS between Oakland and Detroit. Both Championship Series went the full five games for the first time ever in '72, so it's fitting that we get some sense of how hard these teams had to fight to get to the Fall Classic. Then, after an amusing attempt to contrast the clean-shaven, conservative-looking Reds with the mustachioed, colorfully-uniformed A's, the film shifts to the Series itself. All the obvious highlights are here -- Gene Tenace's HRs, Joe Rudi's great catch, the A's brilliant Game 4 victory achieved through three straight pinch hits in the ninth, etc. But what was most interesting to me was not only that the favored Reds lost the first two games at home, and subsequently fell behind 3 games to 1, but that they were one of the rare teams to win Games Five and Six and yet lose Game Seven. So often, with the momentum of those two wins, a team coming back from 3-1 is able to pull out Game Seven as well. The fact that they fought back so hard, and that the A's were still good enough to hold them down in a Game Seven at Cincinnati, is a testament to the high quality of both teams, and the film does an excellent job of conveying this. The print that's used here isn't pristine, but looks good enough considering its age. Overall, the production values are similar to, if not quite up to the standard of, a typical NFL Films production of the period.
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