In sports fandom, it’s all about the team … or the player. I’m more of a player guy myself, cheering for individuals even as they rotate from one club to another. I’ve loved Kevin Garnett and Kobe Bryant since they were making waves as high school seniors … Kobe’s been easy to root for as a Laker, but it was tough cheering for KG through twelve fallow seasons in Minnesota. To be honest, he looks kind of funny in Celtics green … but I love the hardware!
But when it comes to baseball, I’m a bit more traditional: New York Yankees for the win! Sure I was a huge Ken Griffey Jr. fan — from Seattle to Cincinnati to Chicago back to Seattle — but rooting for the pinstripes helps this wandering New Yorker stay connected to home.
So the idea of tuning in to Showtime’s new series, The Franchise, was a bit of a strange undertaking for me. Granted I wasn’t being asked to root for the San Francisco Giants, but some of these docu-series are done so well — see HBO’s Hard Knocks and ESPN Films’ 30 for 30, particularly “Winning Time: Reggie Miller vs. The New York Knicks” — that I feared the inevitable empathy for a team not my own.
Yet because of programs like Hard Knocks and 30 for 30 I felt confident that I’d at least not waste an hour of my time … what to do, what to do? Well, this made it easier to decide: my original subject for this week’s column, Roseanne’s Nuts, was so horrible that I had to quickly make a plan “B.” I couldn’t spend thirty minutes with Roseanne.
So instead I went with The Franchise: A Season With the San Francisco Giants, a show all about a team I don’t care about, in a league I don’t care about. The National League? Just call it what we all see it as: another level of the minor league system.
Despite that, and true to my hopes that Showtime would live up to the precedent set by HBO and ESPN, The Franchise is done really well. The stories are told in an interesting, informative, and fun manner, and it’s not about being a fan of this team or that … it’s about getting to peak behind a curtain that’s long been drawn between fans and athletes. We live in such different worlds that it’s nice to be reminded of how much alike we are — juggling family and work, missing your kids when you travel, getting into a funk, and at times struggling with your job. Because at the end of the day we’re all just people trying to live our lives.
Some of the more noteworthy parts of the premiere episode included:
I do wonder a bit about how this story is going to be told going forward. I was surprised that the first hour took us from the season opener to just a few weeks ago; I thought every episode would be playing a month or two behind. But in hindsight I realize that, while we followed guys like Vogelsong and Zito to the All-Star break, there are plenty more player stories to be told.
I’m looking forward to watching them all.