TV Review

You were looking for a string of baseball highlights - home runs, great catches and all that? That's not how life works, even in baseball, and that's not how the producers approached Hank Aaron: Chasing the Dream.

The two-hour documentary on America's all-time home run king welds his sparkling career to his time, leaving no doubt that, despite all the cheering, it was no picnic.

Aaron started playing for pay in the early '50s, scant years after Jackie Robinson thundered through baseball's racial barrier. Aaron's odyssey took him through the tumultuous '60s, with all the civil rights struggles, into the not-so-enlightened '70s.

While Robinson opened the door for black players, he couldn't make them honored guests. As Chasing the Dream makes clear, the tragedy of Aaron's unparalleled accomplishments is that in his moment of supreme triumph, he was able to do little more than breathe a whooshing sigh of relief.

Numerous comments from baseball people and Aaron's relatives give this story the human touch.

But the use of "docudrama" to illustrate Aaron's early years is somewhat disturbing, although there had to be pictures to break up the talking heads and illustrate Dorian Harewood's voice-over. Besides, it's not as if everyone were running around with a VCR in Mobile, Ala., in the '30s and '40s.

As a result, we get dramatizations of a little actor-Hank playing ball in a field (batting cross-handed, as he did until he became a pro), hauling ice and thrilling to Robinson's exploits via radio.

There is plenty of good baseball footage, effectively interspersed with scenes of the Montgomery bus boycott, the march on Washington and slithering Klansmen.

The show is at its best detailing Aaron's pursuit of Babe Ruth's mythic total of 714 home runs. After Aaron reached 600 in 1971, it became clear he could catch the Babe.

Not long after, he and his children needed bodyguards. As he approached and passed the 700 mark in 1973, he was subjected to a blizzard of vile mail ("most of it from the North") from racist cowards. The FBI became involved.

The ordeal didn't end until the night he hit No. 715. "I'm just glad it's over," Aaron told the Atlanta fans, and it's obvious he meant it.

It must be noted that Aaron now serves as a vice president and director of TBS (owned by Ted Turner) and as a vice president of the Atlanta Braves (also owned by Turner). Such connections could take their toll on the credibility of a show like this, but a few minor corporate and political stains (comments from Chairman Ted, his pal Jimmy Carter and several mayors of Atlanta) come nowhere near dragging Chasing the Dream into the muck of puffery.

It's on target, a fitting tribute to one of the game's great men.