This pick might have an air of "last kid picked" about it. Burns isn't an imposing physical presence, undoubtedly. But when it comes to the calm sashay of baseball history, his work is without cousins. Widely accessible presentations of historical information have, I think, the goal of adding movement (migration, descent, ascent, parallel transfer, confluence) to the human actions now committed to paper and lasting media. In that respect, the so-called "Ken Burns effect" is an exact analogy to the task. Still photographs--resting quietly in a file cabinet in an attic in a museum in a quiet New England/Midwestern/coastal California town--suddenly and marvelously shift and float across the screen (the epic Baseball is best enjoyed over an antennae broadcast, with a veil of static and the looming possibility that the single will go out completely).
The luminaries who talk baseball in the Burns documentary are the absolute lynch pin of the project. I could watch Robert Creamer's dentures dance for an eternity. And so in that sense Burns' task is not dissimilar to my own: team-building. Without his preternatural talent for finding the most interesting monologists in the baseball universe, all that's left are floating pictures. That might be enough in and of itself, but we are all lucky that the Ken Burns effect extends far beyond.
As far as the position is concerned, there is the threat that Burns' innings at second base might be a dreamy tour of duty. It is hard not to envision him losing himself to flights of fancy incessantly, pawing at the infield dirt with suggestions of OCD, or at the least a little hyperactivity and a distracted charm. "Burns! Look alive!" He jerks his head to the dugout and away from a single charismatic cloud floating across the sky--marking Zeus as the first true owner of the Ken Burns effect--moving like a drift log floating down a slow river.
Lineup - The Movies
C - John Kinsella
1B - Jack Elliot
2B - Ken Burns
3B - Roger Dorn
SS -
LF - Terence Mann
CF -
RF -
SP -
RP -
Manager -
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