Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The League’ on Hulu, a Documentary Focused on the History of Baseball’s Negro Leagues

Many baseball fans know a bit about the Negro Leagues’ existence prior to Major League Baseball’s integration–but few know the full history of these thriving, vital leagues. The League, a new documentary from acclaimed director Sam Pollard that just arrived on Hulu, attempts to tell that history in a feature-length film package. It’s a history much broader than Jackie Robinson and Satchel Paige–and a history worth learning about.

THE LEAGUE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The League doesn’t reinvent the wheel when it comes to documentary filmmaking–it’s structured much like Baseball, the beloved Ken Burns documentary that told the history of Major League Baseball. But it doesn’t need inventive structure–not with a filmmaking team like this, and not with a story this worth telling. Director Sam Pollard (MLK/FBI) and executive producer Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson helm a film that doesn’t pull any trick plays in telling the history of Negro Leagues baseball through archival footage, newspaper clippings and photos, and interviews with historians and figures in and around the sport.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: It’s got similar energy to an episode of Ken Burns’ Baseball, with a balance of vintage footage, old photos and clippings, and both contemporary and archival interviews.

Performance Worth Watching: There’s no one person to single out here, as The League’s story is structured around a chorus of voices including journalists, historians, cultural critics and stewards of the Negro Leagues’ history.

Memorable Dialogue: “If a guy went into the hole, flipped it behind his back to start the double play… well, we see that now every night of the week as a Top Ten highlight on some network,” notes Bob Kendrick, President of the Negro Leagues Baseball Musuem. “Back then, the Major Leaguers would say they were ‘showboating’. But what the Major Leagues were trying to say then was that the Negro Leagues didn’t play the game ‘the right way’. But really, that was a code word to say they didn’t play the game the white way.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: The history of the Negro Leagues is the history of America. That’s a bit of an obvious statement to start out with, perhaps, but it’s true. To tell the history of the leagues and how they came to be is to tell the history of racial discrimination in America–of Jim Crow and the Great Migration, of African American culture and the slow, torturous integration of American society. And–like so many other things in American history–there’s probably a lot you don’t know about something you think you know.

Most baseball fans probably know the broad strokes: the Negro Leagues were a place for Black players to play before Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s long-standing color barrier in 1947. Once he did, a number of players who’d gotten their start in the Negro Leagues–players like Larry Doby, Satchel Paige, Roy Campanella and Hank Aaron rose to Major League stardom. Perhaps you’ve heard the legends of Josh Gibson–a hitter whose power was said to rival that of Babe Ruth, or “Cool Papa” Bell, reputed to be one of the fastest men to ever play the game.

For many fans, though, knowledge of the Negro Leagues’ history probably stops there. The League seeks to remedy this–and does a capable job considering the constraints of a sub-two-hour runtime.

Featuring a host of historians, journalists, critics and other figures associated with the sport’s history, the film gives a well-paced, entertaining retelling of the complex and fascinating history of baseball’s Negro Leagues–not a single league, but a constellation of associations that at its best was second to none in on-field product. (In 2020, Major League Baseball announced that it would soon recognize the records of seven Negro Leagues organizations as Major League records, though the process of merging those stats is still a work in progress.)

This isn’t a dry history lesson, though. Much like Ken Burns’ much-loved documentary Baseball–a point of comparison that is impossible to avoid here–it keeps the story lively and entertaining throughout. Often, the Negro Leagues are portrayed as a sort of tragedy–a place where players who could’ve starred in the Major Leagues were stuck. The cruel racism of baseball’s segregation isn’t denied here, not by any stretch–but The League truly succeeds in telling of the joy that existed in the Negro Leagues nevertheless.

“The age of the 20th century, the Harlem Renaissance, the New Negro Renaissance, was the age of the rise of the Black professional,” cultural critic Gerald Early muses. “You got a new kind of presentation of the Black professional musician. You got a new kind of presentation of the Black professional athlete with Negro Leagues baseball. These were professional men, sometimes women, who were doing something at a very, very high level, and had a tremendous virtuosity. Any time you saw Black people doing something virtuosic, you felt like… okay, I can go on and deal with the rest of my week, ‘cause I saw some Black people doing something that’s really excellent.”

Our Call: STREAM IT. If you love baseball, you’re probably aching a little bit with the prospect of a long winter between us and spring training. The League is a great chance to scratch that itch while rounding out your knowledge of the national pastime.

Scott Hines, publisher of the widely-beloved Action Cookbook Newsletter, is an architect, blogger and proficient internet user based in Louisville, Kentucky.