Phillies great Mike Schmidt ‘opened up on another level’ in MLB Network documentary about his career
The “Michael Jack Schmidt” documentary, which airs on Thursday night, takes viewers inside Schmidt’s emotional and on-field struggles to live up to crowd expectations during his Phillies career.
Mike Schmidt arguably is the greatest player in Phillies history. Schmidt played his entire career with the franchise, from 1972 to 1989, yet his relationship with the fan base and the media was tumultuous.
“Philadelphia is the only city where you can experience the thrill of victory and the agony of reading about it the next day,” Schmidt once said, a quote repeated to open Michael Jack Schmidt, the new MLB Network documentary about his career.
The documentary highlights Schmidt’s stellar baseball career and takes viewers inside his emotional and on-field struggles to live up to crowd expectations.
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“For those of us who don’t live in Philadelphia, there’s kind of a one-dimensional view of him, which is he was a great player,” senior coordinating producer Bruce Cornblatt told The Inquirer. “Philly fans are tough. They booed him. Why did they boo such a great player? End of story, and that’s what Mike Schmidt is. It’s so much more complicated than that. There’s so much more nuance to it.”
Producer James Potocki collaborated with Schmidt on a previous documentary for Royals great George Brett, in which Schmidt gave an interview. After a few conversations with Potocki and seeing the MLB Network team’s previous work, Schmidt was on board for a documentary of his own.
It wasn’t hard to get his friends and fellow Philadelphia sports legends on board to be part of it, Potocki said. Every person they reached out to wanted to be in it, which Potocki said is almost unheard of. Former Sixers Doug Collins and Charles Barkley reached out on their own to provide their thoughts. Julius Erving, Johnny Bench, and Brett also participated.
Initially, Potocki wanted the documentary to be a reflection on Schmidt’s relationship with the fans and how he’s found peace, culminating with his 1995 Hall of Fame induction speech in Cooperstown, N.Y., where the usually reserved Schmidt was cheered by the fans in attendance and showed how much he cared about the city. He wanted to end the documentary with Schmidt throwing out the first pitch at a Phillies playoff game this year, to document the reception he got from the fans as a heartwarming moment.
But the Phillies never got that far. After just two home games, the Phillies lost in the National League Division Series to the New York Mets, and Schmidt never got the chance to throw out a first pitch, leaving Potocki without an ending to the documentary. Instead, the producers sat down with Schmidt for a second interview.
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“His relationship with the media and the quotes that he made about the fans were so important, and we felt like, how great would it be for Mike to read back his quotes and reflect on them?” Potocki said. “In that process, we were able to get the actual quotes into the show, which can be hard to do sometimes. On top of that, Mike was really able to read, he was actually reacting to his quotes. He couldn’t believe that he had said some of those things, and he opened up on another level that we hadn’t seen in the first interview.”
Michael Jack Schmidt will air at 8 p.m. Thursday on MLB Network.