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Show:		3.0
Picture:		7.0
Sound:		5.0
Extras:		4.0
Score:		5.0

Director(s):	N/A
Starring:	Various
Genre:	Sports
Release Date:	December 15, 2009

List Price:	DVD - $15.49
Amazon:

If you opted out of buying the 2009 World Series collection and you’re a Yankees fan, you might find this a more palatable and sensible use of your time. It’s not the 20 hour megalith the other is, it only asks for an hour of your time and features a rather brisk run through the Yankees’ 2009 season starting with their departure from their old stadium and the spring training in the new structure they’ll be calling home until New York decides it needs to spend more money on their most reliable sports team. The feature has everything you’d expect from a sappy season retrospective: cheesily written narration, talking heads saying great things about the team and its legacy, and a series of really laughable segues from one piece of archive footage to the next.

Lots of traditional pieces get coverage like first home runs of the season (and for the stadium), team bonding and traditional rivalries. Obviously certain games of the season get special mention here, like the initial games against the Boston Red Sox at Fenway – actually, there’s a bit of drama that they attempt to infuse into the proceedings. They start with the disappointing turn at Fenway (where the Yanks get hosed 16 to 11 – ouch) and then move on to A-Rod’s return midway through the season. Joe Girardi, the team’s manager, and fan-favorite player Johnny Damon get lots of front-and-center time as they say rueful things like “At that point in the season, they [the Red Sox] were a better team than we were.” A-Rod’s return receives an almost miraculous twist making it seem like he gave the team a new boost of confidence and pulled them all together. But did he? A-Rod is sort of a polarizing figure amongst Yankee fans, so it’s no wonder that after a few minutes of stressing the man’s key role in the season they move on to say the same things about other players and games against other stand-out teams like the Twins. There’s no real emphasis placed on any one person or series because frankly, looking back on a season, you realize that no one cause deserves credit for the final effect. This realization makes retrospective features about teams somewhat ineffective because they end up as nothing but an hour’s worth of fluffy, sycophantic noise.

Ultimate fans may find the smallest events of the season worth reliving, but for the casual Yankee lover, listening to the narrator and players make a big deal about plays that seem insignificant or bestowing incredibly lofty titles like “the greatest closer to ever play the game” it all seems like indulgent fluff. Like any feature covering the Yankees, it’s hard not to find an almost vainglorious spin in the proceedings. It’s universally accepted that you’ll do well if you bet in their favor, so all the drama the narrator attempts to create by hyping up the possibility that maybe the Yankees wouldn’t win and head to the World Series. This only gets worse when it’s done as a retrospective and you already know the result.

If you’re a fan and buy up every piece of Yankees merchandise made, this was made for you. Anyone with a less emphatic take on the team’s importance will find the entire disc a waste of space on their shelf. They watched the season. They followed the team as events unfolded. Reliving it all with such a dramatic streak just feels silly. Maybe the publisher (the Yes Network) could have avoided this issue by nixing the overly hammy narration, but even then you’d have a final product of the league’s arguably best team patting themselves on the back as they walked through a season in a brand new stadium with a roster of all-stars. There was never any drama in the season, even going 0-8 against the Red Sox before their first win they were leading the league. If you’re a superfan go ahead and buy the disc, but otherwise skip it entirely, there’s nothing of value here.

DVD Bonus Features

There are so many inane video clips scattered in the extras section that it’s hard to find anything really worthwhile. Complicating the matter is the fact that none of the bonus clips are worth your time. Like the main feature it’s a huge library of fluff that doesn’t necessitate viewing.