ESPN Films has produced such unmemorable made for TV movies as the Bobby Knight biopic “A Season on the Brink”, Pete Roses’ “Hustle”, and Texas A&M football flick “The Junction Boys”. These moves obviously required very little effort and featured absolutely no talent. Wait, I take that back. “Home Improvement’s” Zachary Ty Bryan (AKA Brad) starred in the Army football scandal movie “Code Breakers”.

I said at least not until now because ESPN has already signed up with Robert Redford to produce a Jackie Robinson biopic, a revolutionary move I have already talked about as breaking the baseball film color barrier. ESPN has also joined forces with indie cinema in creating the 2nd annual Tribeca/ESPN Sports Film Festival, with all eleven featured films appearing in New York back to back Sunday, April 27 and Saturday, May 3. ESPN Classic (channel 9,876 on most home sets) will also be airing festival coverage and related sports movies on May 15. But ESPN’s best move yet is teaming up with Spike Lee to produce a new documentary on Kobe Bryant.

Inspired by “Zidane: A 21st-Century Portrait” which followed the French soccer star during every second of a game, Lee wanted to do something similar with Kobe. On the second to last game of this season, Lee positioned 18 cameras around the Staples Center following the Laker’s star pre, during, and post-game.

So finally ESPN secured some talent in Lee and Redford, and put some effort into this film festival thing. And while I am by no means rooting for ESPN to monopolize anything else, I am excited about better sports films and the prospect of watching them for free through my cable service. The Spike Lee Kobe joint will be aired sometime next year on either ESPN or its sister station ABC. That is going to look great in HD.

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There is nothing more American than a baseball motion picture. It is like mixing apple pie with democracy. These movies are filled with classic Americana, dramatic sports action, and a subject that most boys and girls who grew up with a mitt in their hand can relate to. We even reserve our most beloved actors for these films like Costner in “Field of Dreams”, Selleck in “Mr. Baseball”, and even Tony Curtis in “The Bad News Bears Go to Japan”. This is why I was elated to hear recent news that a Jackie Robinson biopic would be in the works with Robert Redford producing and staring as Brooklyn Dodger’s Manager Branch Rickey. This is great I thought, I love a good baseball story and sadly, I know very little about Robinson’s life.

What I do know about him – he was the first African American player in the major leagues (of the modern era), and that he won the first rookie of the year award with the Brooklyn Dodger’s – came from the praise he received during last years MLB tribute, it being the 60th anniversary of his historic season. But why don’t I know any more about Robinson or the Negro Leagues where he got his start? The answer is probably that America, and Hollywood more specifically, has never embraced this subject, creating only two films to my know knowledge that even remotely fit the bill.

First you have “The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings” but since this movie is a comedy, it hardly lends an informative or even accurate portrayal of the players of the Negro Leagues. From watching this film as a kid, I remember Richard Pryor and James Earl Jones gallivanting around in goofy uniforms. I do not remember one historical fact or one nugget of digesitable information on this large chunk of baseball and American history. Now, there was, to the credit of some forward thinking filmmakers, a 1950 movie called “The Jackie Robinson Story” with Robinson himself, playing himself. However, and I don’t mean to gripe, this was a movie centered on civil rights made before the advent of the civil rights movement. And while I am not debating the historical accuracy of this movie, specifically because I have never seen it, I would like to know why these are the only two movies about the History of Black Baseball Players. Are there more films out there that I don’t know about? Or is Jackie Robinson once again breaking the color barrier?

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