‘Bronx Zoo ‘90: Crime, Chaos and Baseball’ Is The Antidote To The Recent Glut Of Overly Sanitized Sports Docuseries

With the landmark success of The Last Dance, a 2020 ESPN series focused on the ascendency of Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls from ’80s era Eastern Conference also-rans into 6-time NBA champions in the 1990s, sports documentaries suddenly found themselves to be a hot commodity as the Streaming Wars escalated. Everywhere you turned, feel good stories about popular teams (the New York Mets, the Los Angeles Lakers) and popular athletes (Tom Brady, Derek Jeter, Tiger Woods) began appearing on your favorite streaming services, which in turn led to even more feel good stories about increasingly niche subjects (professional bull riders? a British cyclist? soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo’s girlfriend?!?!). Listen, we all love a good, heartwarming sports story if it’s well told, but the docuseries dregs we’ve been served over the last few years were starting to make us think that that particular well has about run dry.

Enter Bronx Zoo ’90: Crime, Chaos, and Baseball, which is set to premiere on Peacock on May 16, 2024. This 3-part docuseries is distinctive precisely because it is NOT just another piece of promotional, backpatting fluff. Based on a searing series of articles by New York Post columnist Joel Sherman and directed by D.J. Caruso (Eagle Eye, I Am Number Four) — it’s worth noting here that both Decider is a division of the New York Post — Bronx Zoo ’90 tells the outrageous story of the 1990 New York Yankees, a team whose exploits on and off the field live in baseball infamy.

How so? Well, for starters, the team only won 67 games that season, which was the worst performance for the storied franchise dating all the way back to 1913. Adding insult to injury, the controversial Yankees owner (George Steinbrenner) was banned from running the team’s day-to-day operations midway through the season for hiring a known gambler to dig up “dirt” on one of his star players (Dave Winfield). Think it couldn’t get any worse than that? Well, we regret to inform you that one of the team’s outfielders, the then 29-year-old Mel Hall (pictured above), struck up a romantic relationship … with a 15-year-old high school student! (It’s worth noting that Hall is currently 15 years into a 40 year stretch in a Texas state penitentiary.)

Bronx Zoo ’90 promises to be one of the most explosive docuseries in recent memory, one that feels more like true crime than sports mythologizing. Don’t believe us? Take a look at the trailer above, and be sure to sign up for Peacock so you can watch the tumult unfold for yourself starting on May 16.