The series is based on the well-received 2005 book "Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx is Burning," which interweaves the Yankees' season with the other dramas that roiled New York that summer, from the heated mayor's race to the Son of Sam murder spree. ESPN does cursory service to history, using archival footage of the mayoral candidates and other sideshows of the era, including a long-ago-forgotten guy who decided, one day, to scale the World Trade Center.
Son of Sam gets far more airtime, perhaps because Jimmy Breslin, who had a famous correspondence with the killer, is one of the series' advisers. But the murder-mystery sequences, meant to be ominous, feel tacked-on and tonally ill-fitting. This series wants badly to be about baseball, and its portrayal of the Yankee drama is so meticulous and rich that everything else feels like an afterthought.
Anyway, it's much more fun to dig into Yankee clubhouse culture, the way the players love and razz each other and -- more strikingly -- the way they tolerate, use, and get used by the reporters in their midst. Baseball writers are ever-present here, treated partly like therapists, partly like functional furniture. In one scene, a reporter sits patiently next to Yankees captain Thurman Munson , who is lounging on a couch, opining as he eats from a plate balanced on his bare belly.
Still, Martin takes up most of the energy in the room, and in the dugout, and on the field. He knocks over furniture, kicks dirt , and sobs on occasion. According to a least one esteemed source, who covered the team as a baseball beat reporter, Turturro gets it right, down to the hunch and the swagger.
