30 for 30: Four Days in October

You never know what can happen. Things can change.

— David Ortiz

“When he left the dugout steps, I just winked at him and that was my way of saying, ‘Go get ’em, big boy.'” Recalling Game Four of the 2004 American League Championship Series, Terry Francona smiles. Even then, when his team was down three games to none, and down in this game 3-2, the manager believed — or says he believed — that his pinch runner Dave Roberts would find a way to turn the game around. Yes, he admits now, beating the Yankees once was “tough enough,” and going on to win three games after that would be something close to miraculous, as it had never been done before. Still, it seemed… possible.

The story of the 2004 Red Sox is a story of hope against hope. The team went on to beat the Yankees in four games straight and then to win the 100th World Series versus the St. Louis Cardinals. Yet, as this story is told in Four Days in October, airing 5 October in ESPN’s 30 for 30 series, is less than riveting. Unlike the other documentaries in the series, this one is not directed by a filmmaker with an interest in the subject but is instead assembled by “Major League Baseball Productions.” The result is a series of television clips and interviews with a few Red Sox, none especially enlightening, all reminding you of what you already know.

For many viewers, being reminded will be enough. The film includes a series of exchanges between two longtime Sox fans — Bill Simmons, the Sports Guy, and Boston-based comedian Lenny Clarke — describing plays and remembering their own reactions. They sit in an otherwise empty bar, facing and reinforcing one another. “I did not go to Game Three,” admits Clarke, because it was so painful to see the team going down, again, to the Yankees. His feelings at the time were typical of fans disappointed by 86 years of the Curse of the Bambino: “You suck, you suck, we all suck.” But when, in Game Four, Roberts stole base on closer Mariano Rivera, Clarke remembers thinking, “There’s a chance here.”

Repeatedly, the two men narrate their experiences of the games, restating what’s visible on screen or recounting what’s obvious: “At some point,” during the extra innings fourth game, Simmons asserts, “It became a life experience.” When David Ortiz comes to the plate, the film includes “Middle Eastern”-sounding music, perhaps connoting the magic he’s about to work, perhaps just a poor choice out of MLB’s music archives. Big Papi hits his home run, the fans in Boston are delirious and the guys in the bar remember being delirious.

The immediate trouble for any film recalling a monumental event like the 2004 ALCS is that likely viewers will know how the story ends. The question becomes, how to arrange its elements to provide insights into as well as a rehearsal of that event. If you’re MLB, with access to all the footage (some 100,000 hours, according t promotional material), compiling it is only the beginning. Here, the expected interviews with participants — from Ortiz and Francona to Bronson Arroyo, Pedro Martinez, and Kevin Millar — don’t shed new light so much as they reiterate.

And so the narrative unfolds without suspense and with plenty of self-confirmation. Yankees fans like Spike Lee and Donald Trump weigh in, via archival footage. “In a movie,” says Lee, “That stuff is fake. That’s why sports is the greatest, because it can’t be scripted.” Indeed. Wasn’t it amazing that Curt Schilling pitched with his bloody sock in Game Six? “I knew that once the game started,” Schilling says now, “there was gonna be a lot of stuff flying from the emotional side of it.” (Millar refutes those who suspect a ruse: “People say, ‘Was that real blood or is that ketchup?'”) And what was A-Rod thinking when he swatted the ball out of Arroyo’s hand? (And you won’t know, as Rodriguez isn’t interviewed.)

You do learn that Francona put Martinez in to pitch (when he probably shouldn’t have) because he wanted Pedro to have a part of the last game, and Martinez appreciates it to this day: “We finally made it over the Evil Empire,” he says. Ortiz delivers more hits and home runs, Johnny Damon a grand slam in Game Seven. The music swells. Simmons and Clarke rejoice: “Everybody had their job to do, and they did it!” That’s true. But dull too.

RATING 5 / 10