According to the
Juneau Empire, a new documentary film about Alaska's long, storied, and little-known (to the Outside) love of baseball has just been released online. "
Touching the Game, Alaska" chronicles baseball in Alaska from the first Midnight Sun Game in 1906, to the founding of the Fairbanks Goldpanners (and other, less historic Alaska teams), to the formation of the Alaska Baseball League, all the way up to the present day. Interviews with some of baseball's all-time greats , including Dave Winfield, Tom Seaver, and Peter Gammons, are also featured. The filmmaker got the idea after he made a previous movie chronicling the Cape Cod League (a similar wood-bat amateur summer league on the East Coast), and people kept asking him to do a movie on Alaska's league. Read more
here, and see the movie's website
here. The Beat hopes that Alaska's ballparks don't wind up looking like piles of surplus lumber on the screen, but above all, we hope this movie will finally explain to the rest of the world how some kids from Alaska can grow up loving baseball way more than hockey.
Have you ever wondered what the mushers eat while out on the trail?
