Ken Burns’ ‘Baseball’ comes to Prime Afternoons

Wednesdays at 2:30 p.m., beginning March 24, part of Prime Afternoons

Just in time for the beginning of baseball season, enjoy Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s classic documentary series “Baseball.”

The story of “Baseball” is the story of America. It is an epic overflowing with heroes and hopefuls, scoundrels and screwballs. It is a saga spanning the quest for racial justice, the clash of labor and management, the transformation of popular culture, and the unfolding of the national pastime.

In the first episode, we begin in 1840s New York City, where people need a diversion from the “railroad pace” at which they work and live. They find it in a game of questionable origins. Inning One, “Our Game,” looks at the origins of baseball in the 1840s and takes the story up to 1900. Burns refutes the myth that Abner Doubleday invented baseball in Cooperstown and traces its roots instead to the earliest days of the nation.