You might have noticed I haven't been writing much about what I’ve been watching lately.

That’s because I haven’t been watching much lately.

And if you think that’s because when I have time to watch anything it’s usually a baseball game, well, you’d be thinking correctly.

But I’ve had some time here and there to squeeze in some shows and, naturally, the first one I watched was about baseball.

Perhaps you heard of the Netflix series The Clubhouse: A Year With The Red Sox. It came out in April to much fanfare and, I think, kind of landed with a thud. Partly that was because the season it followed was a middling season, partly because there aren’t huge stars on this Red Sox team.

But overall I think I thought more highly of the series than most. I took some notes as they occurred to me each episode - let’s see if I can share some of my thoughts in a coherent manner:

First off, there was news when the documentary series came out that Netflix pulled some money from the budget or something like that and the director had to adjust the plan to make sure they could finish the project.

So that kind of painted how I watched the series - I kept watching to see where those flaws might show. My friend Kevin had mentioned to me that he thought it was way too much spring training -and then all of a sudden, after the first month of the season, it was the end of the season.

That’s true, but to me, it manifested itself in too much time spent on certain things because there wasn’t enough footage. Like, large chunks of game action - too much game action sometimes. To me, that’s what we could see without Netflix access…give us the behind-the-scenes stuff. It felt like some things were dragged out longer than they needed to be - it felt like filling time. (And the second-to-last episode was weirdly ten minutes shorter than the rest.) Here’s an example - the team dinner at the beginning of the series featured an elaborate prank on one of the players. I do not like baseball player pranks like that in the first place…but this scene dragged on too long and made me uncomfortable.

But there was plenty of good behind-the-scenes stuff. One of the good things in spring training you don’t usually see is - while the guys making the team are all over social media - the Netflix series sat in on guys getting cut, which was different.

It was also cool to see, early in the series, pitcher meetings, and how they approach batters…and then later in the series, video from a hitter’s meeting. You always hear about those meetings but they were a lot more informal than I’d imagined.

Similarly, there was an episode that focused on families, and that one was chock full of interesting stuff: The fact that the Asian integration specialist checked in on the Japanese players, the wives and girlfriends talking in the Fenway club while the game was going on was all very good. I’d watch a series focused on those aspects of a baseball team.

There was also the mental skills coach in a different episode talking with the guys rehabbing from injuries. That’s never covered.

Those were big highlights for me - and seeing stuff like Tyler O’Neill’s batting cage that he just sets up in a room in his house. I imagine that’s set up this year in Baltimore somewhere.

It was also interesting to me to see that Bryan Bello goes under the stands while the Red Sox are hitting and sits in that chair - he’s like a prize fighter retreating to the corner.

Speaking of Bello, one of the craziest things I took away from the series is the fact that pitching coach Andrew Bailey seems to have all of this technical pitching knowledge, like how to tweak the way you grip the ball to throw a certain pitch…but when Bello was struggling, he was surprised to hear about family difficulties - Bello’s family was in the Dominican Republic and he missed them. That seems like a leadership problem. I feel like coaches should know all of that. [I will note here that I wrote all of this before the Rafael Devers trade. Andrew Bailey is not the only one who maybe has leadership issues.]

One of the best features of this doc was the fact that we get good behind-the-scenes looks at Fenway Park, which is always cool. (Side note: turns out I knew a guy in the doc that I was surprised by - he’s someone I worked with briefly who is now one of the scoreboard operators.) That said, I didn’t like that they didn’t feature organist Josh Kantor more.

The things the doc got right they really got right - even though a lot of these names weren’t super recognizable baseball names, they did a good job of bringing out the emotion. There was a nice scene with Jarren Duran and Justin Turner when Turner came back to Fenway - I had heard Turner was a big proponent of bringing Netflix in when he was with the Sox - and it even featured some nice foreshadowing when Turner predicted Duran’s All Star appearance (where he was the game’s MVP). And the Cam Booser promotion was unexpectedly emotional, so they did a nice job of building up the drama there.

As far as the non-baseball baseball stuff, there was some pretty good footage of the group that meets at Dan Shaughnessy’s house to talk baseball every Wednesday. I’m not a huge Shaughnessy guy, but he came across as quite likable in his appearances.

And I liked the little bit they did about the mud that the baseballs are coated with. I thought it was clever that they played ‘Dirty Water’ over that clip.

I didn’t spend a lot of time at Fenway last year - I think I only went to a couple of games, neither of which was featured in the doc. Late April against the Cubs, and August against Arizona. (That picture above is from the game I attended in August with my cousin, where we sat in the first row down the right field line.)

And because I don’t have NESN, I watch very few Red Sox games, so I didn’t really know about this series in process - I think it would have been cool to have seen some of these games and followed the season more closely in real life and then watched the doc.

But it’s a baseball doc, and I like baseball, so it gets a good grade in my book. I was unsure if I should watch the Apple doc about the Dodgers-Yankees World Series…now I’m thinking I should probably check that out as well.