A League of His Own: Sam Pollard on The League

Admittedly, as a white, baseball-phobic critic (I’ve never seen A League of Their Own or anything starring Kevin Costner and a bat), I’m not exactly the target demographic for The League, which takes a deep dive into America’s pastime through the parallel sports universe of the Negro League. Nevertheless, the doc was a must-catch, no pun intended, for me during Tribeca since I also happen to have a baseball-obsessed (Bronx-born/Brooklyn Dodgers-raised) father and (Mets-maniacal) sister who visited the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum several years back, and still speak of that trip as some sort of exotic holy pilgrimage. (For the record, the NLBM is in Kansas City.) In other words, I figured that watching would at least shed some light on a baffling family fixation. And surprisingly enough, it actually did. Or maybe not so surprisingly as The League is the latest from Oscar-nominated (and Peabody and Emmy Award-winning) director Sam Pollard and has the Summer of Soul team (including EP Questlove) onboard. Which means the engaging film not only showcases a treasure trove of newly discovered interviews and archival imagery, introducing us to a slew of cinematic characters both on and off the field, but also offers a vital US history lesson – from the empowerment of African American entrepreneurship to the thorny downside of integration; the final strike for a once-vibrant Negro League.

To read my interview with the doc's veteran director-editor-producer-screenwriter visit Filmmaker magazine.