Call it a textbook case of déjà vu all over again.
As it has done repeatedly in recent years, Major League Baseball is contorting itself — and the rule book — to figure out how to make the game more exciting, and thus more relevant in this age of attention deficits.
Maybe, though, the commish and his minions are looking for love in all the wrong places. Maybe it’s not to be found in pitch clocks and shrinking bases.
Maybe it’s more fundamental, hiding in plain sight in the film “It Ain’t Over,” one of the most embraceable and purely enjoyable baseball docs to come along since 2014’s “Battered Bastards of Baseball.”
Ostensibly, director Sean Mullin's film is a much-needed reframing of the indelible legacy of pinstripe icon Yogi Berra, who, Mullin proves, meant far more to the game than his famous turns of phrase and a certain copycat cartoon bear.
At the same time, though, and perhaps more importantly, “It Ain’t Over” is an ode to the onetime joy of baseball, in all its innocence, its elegant simplicity and its sense of just plain fun — all of which was perfectly embodied in the slumped frame of Lawrence Peter “Yogi” Berra.
On the first point, proving of Berra’s Hall-of-Fame bona fides is simple. His stats speak for themselves.
The funny thing is, the trait that made him so beloved — that aw-shucks charm — turned him into a caricature of himself.
Over the years, thanks to Madison Avenue and the fact that he didn’t look or sound like the prototypical baseball god — not to mention his willingness to play along — Berra became seen more as a baseball mascot than diamond legend.
“If there’s a problem about Yogi, it’s perception,” comedian and Mets superfan Billy Crystal tells Mullin’s camera. “Mantle was Elvis in pinstripes. Yogi was Sancho Panza.”
So, lest anyone has forgotten, let’s recap: In his 19 years as a player, Berra was an 18-time All-Star, three-time American League MVP and — perhaps most extraordinarily — an unprecedented 10-time World Series champ.
After his playing days were over, he added three more World Series rings as a coach.
How do you spell “greatest of all time?” It ain’t G-O-A-T. It’s Y-O-G-I.
Even if the reclaiming of Berra’s legacy was all Mullin's film did, that would probably be enough. But it takes things a step further by amassing its own Murderer’s Row of talking heads to reflect on just what made Yogi so special not just as a ballplayer but as a person.
The respect they have for Yogi’s game — and the love they still share for him as a person — is palpable.
In addition to Crystal, there are names like Costas, Scully, Jeter, Torre, Garagiola, Rivera, Herzog and even a Steinbrenner.
(Also there: Lafayette’s own Ron Guidry, with his irresistible Cajun patois, and — in spirit if not in person — Ron Swoboda, the former New Orleans broadcaster and play-by-play man who was famously responsible for The Catch while part of the 1969 Miracle Mets.)
Together, they have a heap of Yogi stories to tell. The infamous harmonica incident gets its moment. So does Jackie Robinson’s theft of home in Game 1 of the 1955 World Series. Significant time is given to Berra’s knack for creation of “Yogi-isms” and his sideline career as a TV pitchman.
The list of memorable moments goes on.
Also present and accounted for: a number of Berra’s progeny, the presence of whom lends the film a certain credibility. After all, who knew him better? At the same time, it also nudges things close to the realm of hero worship.
But, then, some heroes deserve the pedestal upon which they’ve been thrust. Berra is one of them, and “It Ain’t Over” is a lovely tribute to him. To visit with him, even if through archival footage, is a tonic.
This is the kind of movie that makes you want to sit through the credits, and not for some “hidden” scene featuring superheroes eating shawarma. Rather, it’s because it’s so pleasant you won’t want “It Ain’t Over” to be over.
Of course, all good things end. We can’t change that any more than we can bring back Yogi.
But MLB could move in that direction by getting over its fascination with moneyball, with base size, with making profits the size of some entire nations’ GDP. Instead they need to find a way to replicate the joy one got from watching a one-of-a-kind guy like Yogi Berra play — or the joy one gets from watching “It Ain’t Over.”
They do that, and maybe old Yog was right. Maybe it ain’t over, after all.
Mike Scott can be reached at moviegoermike@gmail.com.