Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story

A warm and enthusiastic documentary.

Charting the presence of prominent Jewish major leaguers in every decade, their relationship to the world of big-time ball and the careers of such greats as Hank Greenberg and Sandy Koufax, helmer Peter Miller's historical docu strikes out a stadium-load of assumptions.

Nevertheless, if not as stirring as the similar "The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg," it remains a reasonably comprehensive tribute to athletics as the great melting pot.

Despite the film's odd assembly of talking heads (Koufax, sure, but Ron Howard?) and narrow scope that rarely addresses how a first-generation community sought a new-world identity via knuckleballs, Miller's survey is a breezy compendium of fun facts and colorful figures.

This contains enough candid interview footage with legendary athletes to be occasionally informative.

The problem is that once you get past the barriers that Jewish players dramatically overcame between the early 20th century and post World War II, the rest is precipitously less interesting.

Were it not for a masterly production coup - an extensive interview with the camera-shy Mr. Koufax - this slight and unambitious work would be wholly indistinguishable from basic-cable filler.