Documentary up on Netflix about the Portland Mavericks. The team was the vision of Bing Russell, longtime actor in westerns and huge baseball aficionado (also father of Kurt Russell). He had lost his love for acting in his mid 40s after a 15 year run on Bonanza. Portland had lost its AAA affiliate and connection to baseball. The two found each other to create something special.

Independent teams had all but disappeared by the early 1970s. Bing decided to start a class A in a spurned location. He opened tryouts to the general public and cobbled together a rag tag group that excelled from its very first game until it was destroyed by MLB half a decade later. Russell was a Veck like owner who defied convention and embraced the fans. His teams ran atop the league on the field and broke minor league attendance records. In the meantime it employed creative, quirky guys like Jim Bounton the former Yankee trying to revitalize his career after Ball Four, the guy who invented Big League Chew, and a bat boy who played the piano man in Eyes Wide Shut. Oh, yes, it also was the early career for Kurt Russell before the movies.

This is a quick watch and a lot of fun.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.