The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg
Aviva Kempner's Peabody Award-winning documentary is about baseball likeField of Dreamsis about cornfields. Kempner efficiently covers all the  bases of Detroit Tigers Hall of Famer Hank Greenberg's magnificent career with  archival footage and talking heads, including family members, former  teammates and baseball legends, broadcasters and sportswriters, and such  unabashed fans as Alan Dershowitz and Walter Matthau. If this biography's  style is not remarkable, its subject certainly was. Greenberg, the son of  immigrant parents, was a beacon of hope to Jews. As one observer notes,  baseball was a way of "showing we were as American as everybody else." To see  one of their own succeed in the national pastime at a time of virulent  anti-Semitism was a source of pride and inspiration. One lifelong fan, a  rabbi, states, "He was the baseball Moses." Winner of several critics  association awards for Best Documentary, this is a stirring film for all  seasons.--Donald Liebenson