By fall 1981, Ted Turner was on a nice streak of turning big ideas into big successes.
The media mogul had won the America’s Cup sailing competition, launched Superstation WTBS and created CNN and a spin-off network all within a five-year span.
As big ideas go, the one he brought to a lunch meeting in October 1981 certainly wasn’t start-a-24-hour-news-channel big, but it was plenty ambitious for its time.
The new big idea: Turner wanted a comprehensive television special about the Atlanta Braves, the baseball team he had owned since 1976 and which he beamed via satellite to homes around the country on WTBS.
With Turner’s pledge of full access and with the full resources of WTBS, the documentary would use the Braves to tell the story of a year in the life of a typical major league baseball team, offering a deep look at some of the usually hidden aspects of big-league life.
By any measure, it was an unprecedented undertaking.
Decades before HBO’s “Hard Knocks” and other productions brought the inside-access idea into the mainstream, this was a groundbreaking attempt to give fans a season-long, intimate look at the human side of professional sports.
But despite their growing national prominence on WTBS, the Braves weren’t exactly a compelling product on the field, having finished at or near the bottom of the National League standings nearly every year Turner had owned the team.
Still, the ever-enterprising businessman/showman saw a marketing opportunity and had his executives get cracking on his idea, which fit in with Turner’s larger goal to turn the Braves into a national television commodity. Through WTBS, Turner wanted to make the Braves, as he would dub them, “America’s Team.”
Between its conception and its premiere, the project that came to be known as “It’s a Long Way to October” transitioned from a timeless, generic baseball production into a laser-focused narrative as it documented one of the more unexpectedly dramatic team seasons in MLB history.
This is the story of how it came together.
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During lunch one day in the weeks after the 1981 baseball season, Turner looked to colleagues Terry Hanson and Robert Wussler, both executives with Turner Sports, and mused aloud.
“I think we oughta have a special on the Braves,” Turner said. “We own the team. We can have full access. What do you guys think?”
It was an intriguing idea.
“How many hours do you want?” Wussler said.
“Four,” Turner said.
Say what? Nothing on WTBS lasted four hours unless the Braves went into extra innings or had a rain delay.
“I kind of gulped a little bit thinking, ‘Wow, that’s going to be a long special. But yeah, I’m sure we can do it,’” Hanson said.
Good entertainment was all Turner wanted. He left the details up to Wussler and Hanson, who outlined a program that would focus on the behind-the-scenes aspects of a baseball season in a way that, while told through the Braves, would appeal to fans of any team.
How does a player occupy his day? What does he do on a road trip? What happens in a team meeting?
“The routines of ballplayers,” Hanson said. “That was my intention going in.”
It didn’t matter that the Braves weren’t a good team. The documentary would be structured so that the season’s on-field results would be secondary, serving mostly as a backdrop, so the content could be entertaining and relatable for years to come.
“I kind of wanted it so that any fan of any baseball team could tune in and get a real idea of what their team was also doing,” Hanson said.
If nothing else, the Braves had a new vibe in 1982, with Turner hiring the charismatic and sometimes fiery Joe Torre as manager to help further develop young players such as Dale Murphy and Bob Horner, who seemed on the cusp of becoming superstars.
There was perhaps a flicker of optimism, but it would take a lot to shake the Braves’ long-established reputation.
“The Braves weren’t high on the list as far as anybody’s favorite team,” longtime ace Phil Niekro said.
But regardless of their merits as a baseball team heading into 1982, the Braves were set to be the stars of this documentary that would aim to paint the picture of big-league life.
Hanson saw the potential for something special, as full access would, literally, open doors. His enthusiasm only grew when he learned Torre had joined the team.
“Talk about a gift,” Hanson said. “When Joe Torre was hired, I knew we were in business because Joe was such a great media type of a person. He was known for his great interviews and how accessible he was to the press. And I knew we’d have a willing audience in him.”
Torre showed enthusiasm from the beginning.
“It wasn’t mandated to me that we were going to do this. They asked me and I volunteered,” Torre said. “It was my first year with the Braves, so I was excited to get that opportunity."
Though the ingredients were in place for a unique and entertaining baseball production, the magnitude of the project immediately put Hanson’s mind on numbers — specifically, dollars. He wondered whether cost would become a hindrance.
“One of the first things I said is, ‘What is my budget?’ And Ted says, ‘Well, whatever it takes,’” Hanson said. “So we never felt that we had to cut corners.”
‘We just thought it was kinda cool’
As baseball routines go, spring training is about as routine as routines get: basic drills, tedious bus travel, honing the fundamentals.
But while spring workouts offer limited appeal as far as action, the time the documentary crew spent in West Palm Beach, Fla., in 1982 provided a low-stakes setting to capture some of the more intimate routines to which fans aren’t normally privy: Bob Gibson holding court in the bullpen. Torre consoling a frustrated Murphy . And, perhaps the most intimate of baseball routines, Torre informing Braves player Ed Miller that he’s been traded to the Tigers .
For the most part, players didn’t mind the extra scrutiny, despite the potential vulnerability the cameras and mics presented.
“Generally, we just thought it was kinda cool. We didn’t have any hesitation to it,” Murphy said. “Most of us just thought, ‘This is a fun idea.’”
The documentary-style approach was a new experience, for sure, but it was one that most were willing to accept — even if they didn’t know where it was all headed.
“We didn’t exactly know what they were doing,” Niekro said. “I don’t think anyone ever told us why they were doing it.”
From team meetings, to calisthenics, to infield instruction, to life on the bus, the routines of March were well-documented.
The Braves left West Palm Beach with an exhibition record of 18-6 — a meaningless stat, perhaps, but a prophetic one in hindsight.
‘I think we should win an Emmy’
As opening day approached, Hanson knew that a project of this scope would undoubtedly be an intense grind, so he needed someone with the right personality, the right skillset and the right work ethic to be the daily shepherd.
Young Atlanta TV news producer Glenn Diamond came to mind immediately.
Hanson had worked with Diamond before and knew his buttoned-up professional demeanor was the perfect fit for this ambitious enterprise that carried high expectations even before it really got started.
“I think we should win an Emmy,” Hanson told Diamond up front, given the time, money and resources going into the project.
It wasn’t so much an opinion as an informal order.
“I was half-joking with him at the time,” Hanson said, “but only half-joking.”
Diamond, just 23 at the time, was thrilled to get the opportunity, even though it meant leaving his job at the local news station.
“It was a dream come true for somebody who grew up a baseball fan,” he said.
It would also be a bit of a whirlwind at first.
Diamond didn’t have the luxury of spring training to get acquainted with the crew and the Braves, so he had little time to prepare for the season-long slog.
“Basically, my first day on the job was opening day for the Braves, which was out in San Diego,” he said.
That morning — April 6, 1982 — Diamond met Torre for breakfast at the Town and Country hotel to talk logistics. It was their first introduction.
“We tried to get to know each other, talk about what he thought it could be, should be, and how we were going to go about executing,” Diamond said. “So everybody was going to have to get to know each other quickly.”
Both men were enthusiastic, but there was an air of mystery over the whole thing.
“I don’t think any of us knew what it was going to turn out to be,” Torre said.
What Torre did know was that Diamond and his crew, through their ubiquity, would essentially become an extension of his team — strangers given access to the clubhouse brotherhood, and faces with which the team would have to get comfortable.
It would be a little like guerilla filmmaking for Diamond and his crew. The general mantra: stick to the outline, but be flexible.
Flexibility would be huge in 1982.
‘Dropped into history’
It didn’t take long for plans to change.
To the shock of the baseball world, the Braves began 1982 on a torrid streak, eventually setting an MLB record with 13 straight victories to start the season.
Their on-field results weren’t supposed to factor much into the documentary, but this was a story that couldn’t be ignored. Despite the outline, despite the plans, the on-field drama had hijacked the narrative.
“Dropped into history” is how Diamond describes it. The kind of history that made April feel more like October.
When the Braves returned from a road trip after winning their 11th straight game to tie the old MLB record, set just a year earlier by the Oakland A’s, more than 6,000 raucous, sign-waving fans greeted them at the Atlanta airport.
Two days later, when they won their 12th straight game to break the record, hundreds of euphoric fans stormed the field, much like after Chris Chambliss’ walkoff homer for the Yankees to beat the Royals in the 1976 ALCS.
The players were awestruck.
“It was a World Series atmosphere and it was just the first two weeks of the season,” Murphy said. “It was just crazy.”
Crazy for everyone, including the documentary crew.
The Braves had become not only the focus of Atlanta sports, but of national sports. Forced to adapt on the fly, the crew encountered a new level of stress.
Forget having to document history in real time. There were more basic issues.
“We were all still trying to figure out everybody’s name,” Diamond said. “I had new camera guys, new audio guys, and I’d never worked with these people before and they’d never worked with me before. We were all learning as we went those first two weeks.”
As Diamond tried frantically to manage his duties amid the historic frenzy, he got some veteran wisdom from the Braves’ broadcasters, who tried to stress that baseball seasons are full of ebbs and flows.
Announcer Pete Van Wieren was a particular voice of reason. There was no reason to exhaust all energy in April, he told Diamond.
“He kept trying to keep me calm, saying, ‘Glenn, this is a long season. Just take a deep breath,’” Diamond said. “I looked to the announcers to mentor us as we went through this process.”
As far as the Braves were concerned, Diamond’s crew could stick around forever. This little documentary project might have some cosmic pull, they figured.
“The way we started the season, any of us that were superstitious, certainly we felt it may have been good luck,” Torre said.
‘You buy in’
The idea behind the documentary was to take fans where they’d never been, to show them things they didn’t normally see, to let them hear things they didn’t normally hear.
Of particular interest on that front were the in-game conversations between a manager and his team.
What does he say during a mound visit? What does he discuss with his pitching coach? What does he say between innings?
A simpler way to put it: What in the world does a manager actually do?
With the gregarious Torre mic’d up for about 50 games during the 1982 season, there was plenty of material with which to work as the crew pried into this usually unseen world.
Having played and managed in media-rich New York, Torre normally didn’t flinch at cameras and microphones. But this was different. This was an intimate set-up that could potentially capture even the most private of conversations between a manager and his players.
“It takes you a little time to get used to it, but it really came down to trusting the people you work with. You buy in. That’s it,” Torre said. “That’s so against what I would ever allow to have happen, only because I just feel there’s so much inside baseball that you don’t want to share. But just the fact that it was in-house and they had their finger on the button, it was basically just something I trusted.”
Even with Torre’s willingness to be seen and heard at nearly all times, the crew couldn’t help but feel like stalkers.
“You are basically invading this guy’s privacy,” said videographer Rafael Ortiz-Guzman, who filmed hours of footage of Torre in the dugout that season. “There are moments that you can actually feel his thoughts.”
Sometimes, those thoughts were on lighter things — the quality of haircuts in St. Louis or an upcoming appearance on “Good Morning America” — but mostly the microphones captured a manager managing, whether it be venting over poor play, talking strategy or giving firm but fatherly instruction to his players.
A frequent recipient of that instruction was Murphy, who, despite putting together an MVP season in 1982, was still a developing player rough around the edges.
“He’d give me a little sarcastic dig now and then or (say), ‘What are you thinking out there?’” Murphy said. “I didn’t look like a very high-strung player … but on the other hand I was probably a little more intense than people realize, and so sometimes Joe could pick up on that.”
Torre’s attention and instruction certainly proved helpful, even if Murphy felt a tinge of embarrassment when it played out publicly in the documentary.
“Not because of what he did or said — it’s just because it was on TV,” Murphy said with a chuckle. “It was cool and hard to watch at the same time.”
Sometimes, the audio setup provided accidental, but made-for-TV entertainment.
During a crucial game against the Dodgers, Torre went ballistic over an umpire’s decision to send a runner back to third, rather than allow him to score, after a portion of a wall in foul territory collapsed and sent fans spilling onto the field.
Torre didn’t hold back, unleashing a colorful tirade that almost certainly would get a manager ejected today, but brought no repercussions in 1982.
Diamond, listening in real time on a headset, looked to audio engineer Ken Noland with an expression that said both, “Can you believe we’re getting this?!” and “Good luck editing that.”
“We really had to bleep that out,” Diamond said with a laugh. “I remember back in the edit room, in the audio room, that took us a few days to go through that and take all the … language out.”
Like all the banter the microphones captured, this gem and others like it were just further examples of the human element of baseball. It was sometimes raw, but it was always authentic.
“When I did watch the finished product and watch all those bleeps, I tried, unsuccessfully, to tell people I was saying ‘bleep’ the whole time, I wasn’t using a curse word,” Torre said. “I couldn’t sell that one.”
Ultimately, though, wearing a mic became just another of Torre’s daily routines.
“You never gave it a thought,” he said. “It was so run of the mill.”
‘Part of the family’
Despite the ubiquitous presence of the crew, and despite Turner’s pledge for full access, and despite Torre’s general enthusiasm for the project, it took time for Diamond & Co. to fully embed itself with the team. That required the building of trust, the building of relationships.
“You have to learn the protocol of the sport — what to do and what not to do, and when to do it,” Diamond said. “We learned that very quickly.”
In baseball, the protocol governs a number of seemingly routine matters: which bus to ride from the stadium to the hotel, when to board the team plane, where to sit, knowing where cameras are welcome — and, more importantly, where they’re not.
“I felt that if we were respectful to the protocol and used good judgment and common sense, then we could gain better access to get behind the scenes,” Diamond said.
Hanson offered his own advice: Befriend Bill Acree, the team's traveling secretary and the man who truly kept everything functioning from a logistics standpoint. Other than Torre, Acree would be the crew's biggest ally.
"He’s our inside man," Hanson told Diamond. "Keep him happy and play by his rules."
Both strategies paid off.
As the season went on, the comfort and trust grew — and the access got better, allowing the crew to chip away at the kind of behind-the-scenes showcase Hanson had envisioned.
The crew recorded players goofing around in the clubhouse. It shadowed players on road trips. Diamond and Co. followed Torre and his coaches to dinner in New York. They even got to attend and shoot a private team awards banquet in Montreal.
“They were like part of the family,” Torre said. “They were part of the clubhouse, no matter where you looked. You gave them access to everything.”
The relationship between the crew and the team became somewhat symbiotic.
“We all became friends, thus the relationship gave us even more insight to get to know these guys,” Ortiz-Guzman said.
This didn’t mean that the players held back on having fun at their new friends’ expense, sometimes playing pranks on the crew — stealing hotel keys, for example — or ribbing them with sarcasm — “Are you gonna follow us into the bathroom?” — or feigning anger at having to be in the spotlight.
“It got to the point where one of the things I do is (yell), ‘No cameras! No cameras!’” said ’82 Braves reliever Gene Garber. “And that was just a way of saying hello to these guys.”
It probably helped that the team’s initial introduction to the crew coincided with a record-setting 13-game winning streak, Diamond said. Had the team started the season 0-13, the reception probably would’ve been different.
“I think it set a tone for relationships,” Diamond said of the streak. “When teams win, the attitude is different.”
Garber offered a more matter-of-fact reason.
“The guys were with us so much of the time,” he said. “And it’s just like, ‘OK, well this is the way things are gonna be. We’re gonna have them around.’”
More than anything, though, the team’s cooperation was a credit to Diamond’s personality and professionalism, Torre and players said.
“Glenn did his job perfectly because he never got in anybody’s way,” Torre said. “He was never demanding in any way and yet let you know what he needed.”
Whatever razzing, nicknames or hijinks came his way, Diamond took it as a good sign.
“It’s when they stop giving you s— that you start to worry,” he said. “And they gave us s— every day.”
'We were basically on 24/7 watch'
To capture baseball’s human side, especially in a four-hour program, meant looking for interesting people and stories away from the field, showing a baseball season from different perspectives.
What does the traveling secretary do? What’s it like to be a clubhouse attendant? What keeps a trainer occupied? What’s a game like for umpires?
These people are key figures in baseball’s routines, so their stories fit right in.
“It was all the different aspects of getting through a baseball season: who you deal with, how you deal with, who are the important people and how you navigate through that,” Diamond said.
Navigating through the 1982 season sometimes meant navigating through unpleasant or awkward situations, such as when Turner called all-hands meetings at his office to demand answers when the team struggled.
Cameras are generally verboten in front-office meetings, but Turner had promised access — and he gave it, even when he planned to chew someone out.
Diamond would get warning of the meetings so he and the crew would be ready to capture everything. But other than Turner, those in the meetings — Torre, Gibson, general manager John Mullen and others — had no idea their chewing out would be preserved for public consumption.
“You can tell in their demeanor and in their faces that that was not something that they were real excited about,” Diamond said. “I don’t think they were happy about the meeting anyway, and the fact that when they walked in to the room … they were walking into basically a conference room that was turned into a television studio.”
Being at the ready to capture such moments was part of the job, and the crew never quite knew where the next bit of unexpected drama would emerge.
“We were basically on 24/7 watch for seven months,” Diamond said.
During a road trip in late August, word came that veteran reliever Al Hrabosky had been released. Diamond scrambled the crew to a hotel suite, where Hrabosky opened up about his career, his season, and his belief that he still had value as a pitcher.
It was a real, human moment from the man whose intense on-field persona had earned the nickname the “Mad Hungarian,” but who was hit with the reality that baseball is mostly a young man’s game.
Getting the perspective of an expendable player was an unexpected gem, but it showed the value of that mantra of flexibility.
“It’s like players making adjustments,” Diamond said. “We had to be able to have a game plan, but be able to make adjustments as we go because you don’t want to miss that moment.”
It also, again, showed the importance of relationships.
“Al was one of the players we got closer to as we went though the year,” Diamond said. “Some of the guys really embraced what we were doing and some — we didn’t really get pushed away — but some guys embraced it more. Al was one that really embraced it more.”
‘We were their friends’
Even as the documentary crew continued to pursue its timeless behind-the-scenes showcase, the Braves’ roller coaster season kept getting in the way.
If there was ever a time in 1982 when the cooperation between the team and the documentary crew might’ve felt strained, it was during a brutal stretch in August when the team lost 19 of 21 and tumbled out of first place.
Nothing went right. Blown leads. Ill-timed errors and misplays. One-run losses. Extra-inning one-run losses.
At one point, the team lost 11 straight.
“Doing all the camera stuff and goofing around was a lot easier the first two weeks of the season than it was in August,” Murphy said. “No one wants to sit there and talk about the fact that we can’t win a game. …
“Certainly there are times where you’re thinking this isn’t such a great idea and this isn’t so much fun.”
Sometimes there was real anger directed at the ever-leering cameras.
“Shut that bleepin’ thing off!”
“Get the camera off me!”
“During that losing streak,” Diamond said, “we document it, but … we were just very, very careful when to and when not to.”
Lest it be suggested that the crew’s presence distracted the team into a nightmare August, that wasn’t the case.
“You really didn’t notice that,” Niekro said. “You’re so much involved in the game and the pennant race. I think that’s the last thing that came to anybody’s mind.”
The same cameras that documented the record-setting winning streak in April had captured the malaise in August. Just part of the scenery, as they had been all season.
“I don’t think we ever felt that anything that was happening to us was because we were being filmed all the time,” Garber said.
The players might not have wanted to be recorded amid the wretched skid, but they ultimately remained willing — again, because of relationships.
“The beauty about this project is that we became friends. We were not the media. We were not WXIA. We were not WSB. We were their friends,” Ortiz-Guzman said. “There was no animosity.”
In fact, local media would sometimes get the cold shoulder on interview requests, then watch in dismay and envy as players would open up to Ortiz-Guzman.
“When people saw us interviewing somebody, they would run (over to us) simply because this was their chance to get something good,” he said.
Diamond and the crew tried to use good judgment in documenting the struggles, to not focus their attention for too long on a slumping player after a poor at-bat, or after a critical error in the field, or after a blown save.
They tried to recognize the line between documentation and exploitation.
“I can’t say once in a while we didn’t cross over the line,” Diamond said.
‘Caught up in the euphoria’
The Braves and Dodgers fought a seesaw battle down the stretch, with the race for the 1982 NL West title coming down to the final day of the season.
Coincidentally, for Diamond and for the Braves, the regular season concluded in the same place it began: San Diego’s Jack Murphy Stadium.
The Braves, entering the day with a one-game lead, lost to the Padres 5-1 and had to wait for the conclusion of the Dodgers’ game against the Giants to determine whether they’d soak themselves in champagne or travel to Los Angeles for a one-game playoff the next day.
Nobody wanted to play a Game 163.
Thankfully for the Braves, just moments before their game’s final out, Joe Morgan put the Giants ahead late with a three-run homer.
But those Dodgers were pesky, so nobody took anything for granted.
Diamond and crew followed the team to a TV room off the visitors’ clubhouse as players anxiously gathered to watch the final innings of the Dodgers and Giants at Candlestick Park.
The Braves hadn’t done things the easy way all season, so this extra obstacle seemed only fitting. After all the ups and downs the season delivered, the Braves’ immediate fate was out of their hands — and that made for spectacular drama.
“It was like, ‘You can’t write this script,’” Diamond said.
The room was a mix of nerves, fatigue and hope, the tension rising with each out.
When the Dodgers’ Bill Russell grounded out to the Giants’ Darrell Evans at third to give the Braves the division, the emotions quickly shifted to relief, jubilation and satisfaction.
But the wild celebration that unfolded tested Diamond and his crew, who, after months of bonding with the team, struggled to remain impartial observers as the champagne flowed.
“We had to be careful not to get so caught up in the euphoria that we were going to miss documenting the story,” Diamond said. “Part of my youth was, this was so exciting and so mesmerizing that sometimes I had to take a step back. My job is to document what’s going on not be a part of what’s going on.”
With the Braves headed to their first postseason since 1969, the story was nearly complete. There was only one way for this epic to end — with a World Series championship.
It just seemed meant to be.
“We had no idea how we were going to tell the story if we lost,” Ortiz-Guzman said.
But the Braves did lose, and it wasn’t even close — swept by the Cardinals in a rain-soaked National League Championship Series. The documentary, with its happy ending gone, would have to go in another direction.
Forced to adapt yet again.
“We had a dilemma,” Diamond said. “Here’s this great program and the season ended with a thud. How do you end it?”
The solution: Film a teletype machine, ala “All the President’s Men,” announcing the Braves’ loss in the NLCS.
Understated, but effective.
And just like that, after seven months in the trenches of a baseball season, there was nothing left to document.
'This is the way it happened'
With the Braves bounced from the playoffs, Diamond, director Mark Johnson and the rest of the crew dove right into editing 400 hours of tape into something not only cohesive but compelling.
How do you choose? How do you format? How do you tell this out-of-nowhere baseball story while also showcasing the behind-the-scenes nuggets that had been the point all along?
The editing process was nearly as daunting as the filming.
So many unexpected gems had been captured during the season: the arguments, the banter, the hijinks. Finding them and weaving them into the overall narrative was just part of the challenge.
“I was pretty good to say, ‘June 21, fifth inning,’” Diamond said. “That was part of my responsibility — to remember. And I kept copious notes. We had to remember when, what, how, and how it was going to be part of the story.”
Turner and the WTBS brass generally stayed out of the editing process, opting not to interfere with the authenticity of the documentary, even the parts not so flattering to the team.
“I was never told, ‘You’ve gotta cut that out,’” Diamond said. “It was basically, ‘This is what happened, and this is the way it happened.’”
The editing process also birthed strokes of creativity, most notably the use of what would later become a staple of ‘80s sports entertainment: the musical highlight montage.
Using pop songs to accompany highlights and underscore key themes was still a somewhat novel production technique in 1982, and the crew repeatedly found inspiration in the mountain of footage: “Dirty Laundry” by Don Henley, “Slip Slidin’ Away” by Paul Simon, “Pressure” by Billy Joel, among others.
These pop-culture crossovers were just a way to give the production an extra jolt of energy or attitude, a way for the show to stand out amid an entertainment landscape that was crowded, even in the early ‘80s.
In other words, water cooler moments.
“You’re looking for things that people don’t usually get and that they’ll remember,” Diamond said.
The music montages were an expensive licensing endeavor, but Turner’s “whatever it takes” budget made it possible.
Not all songs came easily, though.
A particular challenge came in clearing “I’m So Excited” by the Pointer Sisters, a pursuit that eventually led Hanson to approach a woman in the company who knew a member of the group.
“She somehow got involved and that last piece of music was approved,” Hanson said. “It’s a damn good thing, too, because we already had it in the special.”
When it came time to find a narrator to voice the script penned by Atlanta writer Jim Huber, Hanson wanted “a voice of baseball,” a nationally known personality to lend further credibility and familiarity. But Mel Allen was unavailable. Vin Scully was too associated with the Dodgers. Then it came to him: Red Barber.
Hanson hoped it would be an inspired choice. Then again, this was in the days before the internet.
“I didn’t even know if Red was even still alive,” he said.
Barber was indeed still alive, though the Hall of Fame broadcaster had been retired for more than 15 years and wasn’t paying much attention to baseball anymore. But Diamond tracked him down in Florida and persuaded him to join the project.
“Couldn’t have been any nicer. Professional. Took great pride in his work,” Hanson said. “… I believe he was in his 80s at the time, (and he) just really jumped into the project and embraced it.”
From editing to music licensing to Barber’s voice-overs and other technical aspects of production, the process seemed never-ending.
“We went down to the wire getting that program done, and it took us all winter,” Diamond said. “I bet you we were still editing the day before it aired.”
There was also the matter of coming up with a title. Turns out, the solution was in front of them the whole time.
“I think one day we were going, ‘This is a grind.’ And somebody said, ‘God, it’s a long way to October. It was like, ‘Oh, hey. Hello?!” Diamond said. “How did we come up with the name? I think because we lived it.”
'The greatest thing in the world!'
“It’s a Long Way to October” aired on WTBS over two nights beginning March 28, 1983. The crew, along with Turner, watched the premiere in a private room at an Atlanta restaurant.
The reviews were unanimously positive — especially from Turner, who whooped and hollered and shouted praise around the room as he watched the idea that he proposed nearly 18 months earlier play out in front of him.
“This is the greatest thing in the world!” was Turner’s feedback that night.
“To watch Ted’s pride — this was his baby. This was his idea from the beginning,” Diamond said. “And here he was watching it and he was excited.”
After all, good entertainment is all Turner had wanted.
“He was clapping,” Diamond said. “He was like a fan watching it. … That was as much fun as any of it, enjoying the night that it aired with Ted.”
That the special was produced during the 1982 season seems fortuitous in hindsight, given the drama that unfolded. Perhaps Turner had an inkling that good things were in store. Or perhaps it was all luck.
“Ted was always optimistic and enthusiastic. It wasn’t like we finished two games back in ‘80 and ‘81 where we thought, ‘Hey we have a shot this year,’” Murphy said. “… We were lucky all the way around, and then to have cameras around documenting it, it was a lot of fun.”
The praise wasn’t limited to the WTBS inner circle. After Hanson spent more than a year busting Diamond’s chops about winning an Emmy, his pseudo-demand was realized when television’s top prize did indeed come calling.
“It’s a Long Way to October” won Emmys not only for Diamond and Hanson, but also for Ortiz-Guzman, Noland and director Mark Johnson.
In one sense, the Emmy — and, later, a Cable ACE award — represented a job well done. In another sense, there was more work to do.
The success of “It’s a Long Way to October” led Turner to commission two more Braves-centric behind-the-scenes specials: “A Tale of Two Seasons” (1984) and “Baseball Behind the Seams” (1985).
“Two Seasons” focused on the last month of the 1983 season as the Braves sought back-to-back division titles, while “Behind the Seams” was a more intimate affair that centered around four players in different career stages during the 1984 season. Barber returned for “Two Seasons,” while actor Kirk Douglas, at Torre’s invitation, narrated “Behind the Seams.”
Though the other productions had their own approaches and merits, and saw their own success, “It’s a Long Way to October” remains the standout of this unofficial trilogy, even for Diamond.
“The 13-game winning streak, winning the division at the end, the access that we had … I think the uniqueness of ‘Long Way to October’ and how the drama played out, that really puts it a step ahead,” he said
Industry praise and accolades aside, there were long-term rewards as well.
The documentary propelled Diamond’s career in sports broadcasting, leading to a long run with Turner Sports producing Braves games and other events, and in recent years producing Dodgers games for SportsNet LA.
Making “It’s a Long Way to October” taught him to feel baseball. Not just watch and observe, but to actually feel, to anticipate. Thirty-five years removed, those lessons about the sport’s intricacies, on and off the field, continue to pay off.
“‘It’s a Long Way to October’ was an iconic professional moment in my life,” Diamond said.
One of a kind
Even though “It’s a Long Way to October” didn’t pioneer the concept of athletes and coaches wearing wireless microphones during games, it certainly took it to the next level and made the possibilities and benefits clear.
In Game 7 of the 2016 World Series, as the Cubs were battling for their first championship in 108 years, Chicago first baseman Anthony Rizzo confided in a mic’d up David Ross that he was teeming with nervous energy.
“I’m an emotional wreck,” Rizzo told Ross for millions to hear.
“It’s only gonna get worse,” the veteran Ross responded.
It was a viral, human moment that echoed what “It’s a Long Way to October” achieved in 1982, but it was also a reminder that we’re unlikely to see anything on that scale again.
“It would be much tougher to do this now because Major League Baseball has such stringent rules on microphones, where the cameras can be and where the crews can be,” Diamond said. “It would be so much more involved.”
Not to mention the potential for controversy, as even one hateful word or unfortunate exchange that happens to be recorded can ruin an athlete’s image — especially in the social media age.
“People are more cautious now with the microphones. People have to be careful and more politically correct and those types of things. Back in ’82, we didn’t have all that,” Diamond said. “In some ways, back then, ‘Long Way to October’ was more authentic of behind the scenes (happenings) than what you see now.”
‘He’s family’
The legacy of “It’s a Long Way to October,” if there is one, might be that big risks can have big rewards, or that unexpected challenges can produce pleasant surprises, or maybe that sometimes you break new ground without really meaning to.
Or, on a more personal level, that long-time relationships can start in the weirdest places.
Neither Diamond nor Torre could’ve envisioned that their first breakfast meeting in San Diego back in April 1982 would be the start of a decades-long relationship. But perhaps that’s just what happens when people are embedded together for an entire baseball season.
“It’s a bond that Glenn and I will always share,” Torre said.
It’s a bond that extends beyond professional dealings.
During production on “It’s a Long Way to October” and its two follow-ups, Torre and Diamond developed a genuine friendship, with their wives also becoming friends and the mutual admiration growing even stronger.
“It was really easy to become friends with him because of just who he was and the kind of person he was,” Torre said. “… To this day it’s like we were lifelong friends.”
In fact, when Torre was between baseball jobs and spent time selling life insurance, Diamond was the first to buy a policy.
“I had that policy until about three or four years ago,” Diamond said.
These days they see each other occasionally, usually at baseball games when Torre’s there in his job as MLB’s chief baseball officer and Diamond is producing for TV.
Whenever their lives intersect, there are usually smiles, hugs, pictures and questions about wives and families.
“We have a great relationship. I love the man. I actually love the man, and I love him to this day,” Diamond said. “He’s family. Joe Torre’s family. And those relationships started on ‘Long Way to October.’"
'I'm thankful they did it'
The significance of “It’s a Long Way to October” hasn’t been lost on those it documented.
In September 2012, to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the 1982 season, Murphy organized a private gathering of former players and fans at the Omni Hotel at CNN Center in Atlanta.
In the weeks before, Murphy sent a DVD of “It’s a Long Way to October” to everyone who planned to attend. That was a primer for a screening over lunch at the Omni, with live commentary from Murphy, Niekro, Garber, third baseman Bob Horner, catcher Bruce Benedict and broadcaster Van Wieren.
“It’s fun to look at. Not only what happened, but the clothes, the hair, the '80s,” Murphy said. “I think an argument could be made that it documents part of the cultural history of the Braves and Atlanta and Ted Turner and TBS in a really unique way.”
For fans, it allows the memories from the season to be more about the journey than the destination.
“We finished just kind of blah,” Murphy said. “… To see some of the lighter side of things, to see some of the ups and downs, helped people forget about (the playoff sweep) and say, ‘Hey, that was a pretty exciting year.’”
For players, the program helps preserve details and memories slowly seeping into the past.
“The older you get, the more you’re removed … the more you appreciate it,” Murphy said of the 1982 season. “I’m thankful they did it.”
The consensus among players is that the season’s drama only enhanced the intent of the documentary: to show fans the normally unseen aspects of baseball life.
“What they did was a tremendous project. There ended up being probably no better year that they could’ve picked than that year,” Garber said. “It was a perfect year to do what they had in mind to do.”
Diamond deflects such praise back to the players.
“It’s their story. We just documented it,” he said. “They’re the ones who made the project successful because it was about them.”
MORE: Read more about the making of "It's a Long Way to October"
But despite all the praise, “It’s a Long Way to October” has become a forgotten blip in baseball history. That’s mostly because the Braves’ 1982 season became the focus, preventing the type of production that would have lasting, broad appeal among baseball fans.
“It hasn’t really had a lot of re-showings because it basically just chronicled that one season,” Hanson said.
In fact, it’s a challenge to find it anywhere. YouTube has a few clips, and bootleg copies can be had, but there’s not been a public, nationwide broadcast in decades.
That means a whole generation of baseball fans — even Braves fans — doesn’t know it exists. But they aren’t likely to discover it through official means.
The limited focus of the program and the likely expense of re-licensing the music segments would make a commercial DVD release or even a re-airing cost-prohibitive.
“If you had done something like that today, it’d be in the stores — (but) again, it was before its time,” Diamond said. “I think we knew it had a pretty short shelf life.”
That’s not to say it’s totally unappreciated.
The program has developed a cult following through the years, fueled by older, die-hard Braves fans who saw it in 1983 and happily copy or circulate worn-out VHS tapes to introduce younger fans to this unique bit of ‘80s Americana.
Some fans have written to Diamond and Hanson in hopes of securing a copy, or just to express gratitude.
It’s feedback that’s always appreciated.
Because every email, and every repeat viewing, means their unique and groundbreaking baseball story is still alive somewhere.
“Only a few people remember ‘It’s a Long Way to October,’” Diamond said. “But those who remember really remember.”
Jason Foster is the MLB editor at Sporting News. Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @ByJasonFoster.
