Baseball

Examining the history of baseball in the United States. The opening episode tells the story of baseball's rise from a gentleman's hobby to a national sport played and watched by millions. The programme highlights the first baseball magnate, the game's first gambling scandal and early attempts by women to play the game in the 1860s.

Introducing some of the most extraordinary individuals ever to play the game, including Ty Cobb, the volatile outfielder who may have been the greatest ball player of all time but who was `possessed by the furies'. Other stars featured are Walter Johnson, the modest farm boy with an intimidating fast ball, college-educated pitcher Christy Mathewson, and the manager of the New York Giants, John McGraw.

The Black Sox scandal, which is at the centre of the third programme in the series, reveals how eight members of the Chicago White Sox, including the incomparable shoeless Joe Jackson, `played with the faith of 50 million people', as F Scott Fitzgerald later wrote, by taking money from gamblers to throw the 1919 World Series.

Babe Ruth, the Baltimore saloon-keeper's son who became the best-known and best-loved athlete in American history, and who was described by sportswriter Jimmy Cannon as a `national heirloom', is the focus of the fourth programme. It details how Ruth's phenomenal performance thrilled the nation throughout the 1920s and rescued the game from the scandal that threatened to destroy it.

Looking at Baseball's desperate attempts to survive the Great Depression and Babe Ruth's fading career, while a new generation of stars, including Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams, was on the rise. It also presents the parallel world of the Negro Leagues, which thrived in the shadow of the Major Leagues, and culminates with the greatest showdown in their history as pitcher Satchel Paige faced Josh Gibson, as 'the black Babe Ruth'.

The sixth episode of the series focuses on the 1941 season, one of the most exciting of all time. Joe DiMaggio achieves the longest hitting streak in history, Ted Williams becomes the last man to hit 400 in a season and the Brooklyn Dodgers win their first pennant in 20 years. Then the war intervenes and baseball's best players become soldiers. On their return, the game - and the entire country - is changed.