Courtesy of Ed Wheatley
Jon Hamm and baseball just go together, you know?
The St. Louis native and outspoken Cardinals fan takes his love for the game even further with The St. Louis Browns: The Team that Baseball Forgot, a documentary he narrates about the city's American League team that operated here (before moving to Baltimore) for more than 50 years. The film premieres Thursday, March 8 at 8 p.m. on The Nine Network.
The documentary is based on the Reedy Press book St. Louis Browns: The Story of a Beloved Team—written by Bill Borst, Bill Rogers, and Ed Wheatley—and produced by local creative agency HLK. Executive producer Eric Karlovic, of HLK, was inspired to bring Hamm on to the project while watching an episode of the actor's show Mad Men.
"He did a fantastic job, as you would imagine," Karlovic says. "Working with him was great. He loves baseball and was really interested in the story of the Browns."
So what, exactly, is their story? There might be no better person to answer that than Wheatley, who's also a St. Louis Browns Historical Society board member. Between 1902 and 1953, Wheatley says there was a "back-and-forth battle" between the Browns and the St. Louis Cardinals (who are a partner on the documentary) "for who would win the city."
As you might've guessed, it wasn't the Browns. But though the team became a footnote in baseball history, it was beloved by St. Louis and had a big impact on its hometown.
Courtesy of Ed Wheatley
An overhead view of Sportsman's Park
Courtesy of Ed Wheatley
A 1944 team photo of the Browns
"If they didn't win, why did people keep going [to the games]?" Wheatley says. "You think about the world wars going on at that time, rationing, the Great Depression. Baseball was the distraction for a lot of these people. That's the memory of their life at that time."
The Browns documentary infuses memories of what St. Louis was like during the team's five decades here, with archival footage provided by the Cardinals, the Baseball Hall of Fame, and the St. Louis Browns Historical Society. Wheatley even helped HLK turn the Gateway Grizzlies' locker room in Sauget, Illinois into a replica 1940s Sportman's Park locker room—replete with authentic uniforms, gloves, bats, and spikes.
Interviews abound as well. There are currently 12 living Browns players, and HLK was able to interview some of them, including Chuck Stevens, the oldest living former pro-baseball player. He turns 100 this year.
"Hopefully [viewers] will see a documentary that really tells the story of the people behind the team, and the ball players that were a part of it, and the passion that St. Louis had for the Browns being here," Karlovic says.
Jon Hamm's voice is just the cherry on top.
