Film Review: Fight for Glory: 2024 World Series

5 Stars

As a former Angeleno who once spent lazy afternoons at Dodger Stadium watching the groundskeepers (in a time when you could still walk in on game days and sit in the stands with the sports reporters), I was immediately drawn to the new three-part documentary series Fight for Glory: 2024 World Series, now streaming on Apple TV+.

It’s a perfect fit for the start of baseball season and is directed by one of the most interesting filmmakers working today: R.J. Cutler.

Cutler’s deeply personal work ranges from the iconic political documentary The War Room (1993), to the Anna Wintour profile The September Issue (2009), to most recently Martha, the riveting Martha Stewart documentary on Netflix. So he seemed, at first, an oddball choice to helm an encore retelling of the riveting 2024 World Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the New York Yankees (a matchup many called epic).

But Cutler is not only the right person for the job, he’s somehow found a way to turn what could have been a MLB hype-assignment into something special: a true inside and behind the scenes look at the “Fall Classic” that makes it more human and accessible than ever.

That’s because the film is told in the language of baseball, moving from the seemingly idle to the height of drama with the swing of the bat.

From the unlikely heroics of Freddie Freeman, Shohei Ohtani, and Mookie Betts for the Dodgers, to the grit and determination of Gerrit Cole, Juan Soto, and Aaron Judge for the Yankees (to name just a few), Fight for Glory gives you an inspiring rundown of five games in five days at the same microwave pace the teams themselves must have felt.

Even though we all know how this story ended, Cutler and his team manage to recreate all the inherent drama again using archival footage galore and clever animated typography to help you follow along. But the best asset of the project is the exclusive access to players and their families, training rituals, and even the dugouts themselves. Fight for Glory is a generous private look into the players’ world, intercut with gameplay highlights that will blow your mind all over again.

The documentary thankfully doesn’t take a talking head approach, but instead overlays testimonials and narration into the footage from those who lived it. There are tiny moments, like umpires acting as the kind of Catholic priests of sports, checking gloves for contraband, while simultaneously reassuring edgy pitchers, “Hey it’ll get better.” And there are giant moments too, like watching Freddie Freeman round the bases after a Grand Slam walk off win in Game One to the soundtrack from The Natural.

For the most part, baseball is still a showdown between top pitchers and top hitters, and that tradition continues here in the main storytelling arc of the story. But in between, unexpected players step up and new heroes are made. And even though no one wants to revisit a loss, many Yankees players do, and they speak from the heart about it.

With a total running time of 3 hours and 14 minutes, be advised Fight for Glory does at times expose the adult language and tempers of those involved in the game, so it may not be right for your kids. But I thought it was a wonderful tribute to baseball as an international language, and the lessons we desperately need from it right now. Everyone can play. Teamwork. Dream Big. Lose Gracefully.

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