An Interview with D.J. Caruso, Director of ‘Bronx Zoo ’90: Crime, Chaos and Baseball’

BRONX ZOO '90: CRIME, CHAOS AND BASEBALL -- Pictured: "Bronx Zoo '90: Crime, Chaos, and Baseball" Key Art -- (Photo by: Peacock)

D.J. Caruso is a highly accomplished Director and Writer, and an outright baseball fan. Which is why his current project is of note. For D.J. stepped behind the camera to helm the docu-series, Bronx Zoo ’90: Crime, Chaos and Baseball, on Peacock, which chronicles the wild story of the 1990 New York Yankees, and we here at NTG had the honor of sitting down with D.J. to discuss this ambitious documentary.
 
John Betancourt: I'm very curious what inspired you want to step behind the camera to shepherd through and tell this tale?
 
D.J. Caruso: Well, you know, when I read Joel Sherman’s journals and articles in the New York Post, I was just sort of compelled by the you know, there's a lot of things that you don't know about – you know, I know about the Yankees and the dynasty and how unbelievably successful they are as a franchise. I remember 1990, sort of, I remember Steinbrenner getting kicked out of baseball. But when I started to read this, there's so many great human stories in there, you know, some horrible things happened. But it just felt to me that there was this great, great template for, you know, in order to succeed, and in order to survive, you have to go through a lot of dark times. And so, the Yankees went through a lot of dark times in 1990. And they came out somehow stronger for it at the end. So that sort of theme and that parallel of me just loving baseball and loving sports. And also, I also felt like growing up in and around New York City, George Steinbrenner, when I was growing up, was a huge celebrity. Like, he was the first celebrity owner, and he was sort of like, Donald Trump before there was Donald Trump, right? And I thought, nobody's really ever dealt with that recently, you know, whether you're a Yankee fan or anybody else, he's such a compelling character, and he's flawed. He's loved, he's hated, and his behavior at times is reprehensible. And at times, he does things that are so human, and so kind, I just felt like there was a great tapestry to go in there and tell a story as a filmmaker and get behind it.
 
John Betancourt: Now as a fan of baseball, what did it mean to you now to be able to tell this essentially definitive story of the 1990 Yankees?
 
D.J. Caruso: Well, I do think baseball parallels life. You know, in baseball, if you succeed one out of three times, you're like a superstar. So that means you're great 33% of the time, right? And I think that's kind of like life. In life, if we can succeed 33% of the time, I think we'll be doing okay. So, there's a real parallel between baseball being a difficult sport, and life being difficult, right. So, I thought it was really nice to kind of get in there. And then also, there's beautiful moments in the documentary where someone like Kevin Moss comes in and gets a chance. And he has 10 minutes of fame where everyone in the city is enamored by this guy, even though the team is awful, there's this one thing. So, there's always that bit of hope. And so, I think baseball is always about the hope of hitting and the hope of doing something. So that was very compelling on that end, and then, you know, who knew that Deion Sanders was a Yankee in 1990, right? Like the Deion that we know. And so, it's sort of like all that stuff was sort of forgotten. So, I felt like for a baseball fan, it'd be great to just sort of get in there, cover the sport that I love so much, but also to tell stories that you sort of think you think you know about this story, but you really don't know what the truth is behind it.
 
John Betancourt: What kind of challenges went into assembling this amazingly broad and sweeping documentary?
 
D.J. Caruso: Well, the biggest challenge, the biggest challenge is it was 1990. And a lot of the stuff we're getting is 1980s. And so, it's like, you know, I always… like The Last Dance was a great, great documentary, but they were so fortunate that someone documented that entire season and had cameras in the locker room and all that. S,o they have all this great footage. And Peter Jackson got to do, you know, the Get Back documentary, and someone recorded the Beatles writing “Let it Be” so like, wow, we had to start from scratch. Like, there was not a lot a lot of stuff. There wasn't any filmmaker following them around, back then, believe it or not in 1990, it was all print media. You know the baseball coverage was more print media. And then there was one national game a week on Saturday on NBC, you get one baseball game a week on Saturday, if not, you have to watch the Yankees on channel 11. And the Mets on channel 9. So, it was really difficult to find people, find some of the old footage that we needed to find. And so, it was really like, it was research intensive, like we had a really good research team. And then also, you know, finding people that were still alive. Like there could have been a lawyer in certain cases. They were older. So, it was it was interesting. And then who remembers what. So, it was really it was an extensive research project. And it's the first time I've ever done sort of a documentary or docu-series. So, it was really interesting. It's almost like you're, you're almost like a college student writing a thesis and you want to hope that when you start to do these interviews that some of these things line up and support your thesis.
 
John Betancourt: How long was the research phase to get all this information assembled?
 
D.J. Caruso: Oh, it was over a year and a half, like, you know, while we're doing it, we line up an interview, but then we have to go, “Great. Well, how do we find out about Dave Winfield? And how do we find out about the book that he wrote?” So, then we go, “Great.” And then you'd go down this avenue, and you realize, “Oh, that person is no longer with us. Great. So, who can we talk to?” And you know, “I want to talk to Fay Vincent but Fay’s older and doesn't want to go on camera” and certain things. “Okay, who is Fay’s number two person? Let's see if we can find him. He's in Florida. He's retired,” you know, so all those things. So, it just was an ongoing process of, of finding stuff and getting things together. So, you know, if it was difficult, but we had a really good team, a really good team.
 
John Betancourt: Now. I'm curious, was there anybody that was reticent to discuss anything that happened that season? Or was it pretty much an open book for those that did participate?
 
D.J. Caruso: The ones that participated, it was pretty good, it was really good, you know, they were kind of an open book, like the one person I really wanted to get, who didn't want to speak at all, because he doesn't want to go down this road at all, was Dave Winfield, because I felt like Dave would have been a great, a great person to talk to and get his perspective on what was happening. But it's interesting, you know, I think, to bring up something in 1990, that was not great for him, it just didn't seem like, he just didn't want to go there. You know, and I understand that, I respect that. But you know, everyone, was very pretty open talking about what they needed to talk about. And, you know, again, culturally, things were a little different in 1990. So, you know, particularly in the Mel Hall situation, they were all kind of like, “Well, it was weird, because her parents were there. And we just felt like everything was complicit, like, we didn't know.” And so, it's like, so it was just a different time, but everyone was really open. And I think again, they also look back in retrospect and realize, like, if it didn't get this bad in 1990, then we wouldn't be the championship team that we became.
 
John Betancourt: How many people declined to speak about the season?
 
D.J. Caruso: Oh, interview wise, I think maybe not that many, maybe three or four people declined.
 
John Betancourt: Wow. That's really impressive. People really wanted to talk about it.
 
D.J. Caruso: Yeah. People want to talk about it. You know, I think there's certain things you know, particular people and stuff, but yeah, I think maybe three or four people declined. It wasn't that many.
 
John Betancourt: Now, I knew nothing about the whole Mel Hall incident, and I was just stunned by that entire segment. How uncomfortable ws it to put that piece together? Because that's a pretty wild subject matter.
 
D.J. Caruso: Well, I think there's a little bit of, there's an aspect of being uncomfortable, but there's also the aspect of telling the story, right? So that lik, particularly like, you know, from Chaz’s perspective, and Chaz Easterly is an amazing woman, how to how to sort of earn her trust so that you can kind of get the story, take it in, how did this all happen? How did it get to your house? And you know, you just wanted to get a baseball signed in the mail, and how did he get your phone number? It's like, all of these things. So, there's a respect and a reverence you want to give her because of this. And then, you know, interviewing Mel in prison, it's, it's, it's uncomfortable, like, I'm not like a true crime guy who does this, you know what I mean? Like, you know, it was sort of like the whole idea that he was just a number. And he was Melvin Hall, Jr. and he was 106… inmate, one of the guys in Texas didn't know that he was a baseball player, they had no idea, right? Because he's just, that's Mel, he's an inmate, right? He's an inmate, he's going to be here forever. And so it was, it was interesting, but like I said, there was a little bit of uncomfortableness, but at the time, it was also just like, trying to be respectful and tell the story in a right way. Because I do think that Chaz’s and Mel’s story, particularly Chaz’s aspect of the story is someone who came out on the other side and came out stronger the way the Yankees did, like, they went through all this and they came out stronger. So, to me, as a filmmaker, I really liked that those arcs and those paths of those stories were, were sort of linked.
 
John Betancourt: Now as you mentioned, there's so much to dive into so much that was documented differently than it was now. What did you learn from this journey that you didn't know before?
 
D.J. Caruso: I think what I learned is that if you look at anything enough, and you know, a baseball season, and you look at the different personalities, I mean, a baseball team is like a family, right? It's sort of like, you have the well-behaved son in Don Mattingly who's doing everything, right, who gets hurt, and he hurts his back. You have the superstar athlete who's doing both things. And I think at the end of the day, what I really learned was that like the human aspect of, of behavior, and baseball, there's a real parallel between those two things. But the thing I got most out of it, was the idea of no matter how dark things can get, that if you really take your time and heal, you can come out stronger. So, I think that was probably what I wanted the documentary to be. And then not to my surprise, but I was so pleased that what it ended up being.
 
John Betancourt: Why do you think now is the right time to tell this story?
 
D.J. Caruso: I think now's the right time to tell the story because we're out of, you know, we're near to outside of this pandemic. And we've come out a little bit stronger. And like you want to kind of get back and you realize like, the tabloid journalism of Steinbrenner, and Winfield and how it was sort of ahead of its time, and how the New York media sort of almost mirrors like in a microcosm, it almost mirrors the way like social media is today. But in New York, it's like the way that all this news passed through and the stories of the reporters, going to the newspaper, and from the newspaper it went to the local TV station, local TV station to maybe ESPN. And so, it was sort of like in that pocket. It was something that I thought was incredibly fascinating. And fascinating in that way. So I think that's sort of why, and then any human story, right? Someone who's been through hell and come out stronger, someone who's made a lot of mistakes, who's going to pay for those mistakes and the human aspects and the human stories and Steinbrenner you know, it's just like, there's a love hate between someone like that, who's so passionate and wants to win it all, causes like, you know, you'll find Yankee fans… there’s a love-hate, there's no middle ground. And so, you know, even he had his heart pierced when he saw the fans cheering when he got kicked out of baseball, right? You love this town; you love the city. And all of a sudden, you realize like everyone is on their feet cheering, giving a standing ovation, because you're no longer going to be involved in the team that you love. So even there's like, you know, there's, there's that pain of making the mistake, of then maybe coming back and being a better person. So, there's a universality in all of this, whether you like baseball or not, you're going to find a character or story in here that's going to be fascinating to you.
 
John Betancourt: Now, I hear some serious passion in your voice when you talk about the sport, what is it that you genuinely love so much about baseball?
 
D.J. Caruso: It's funny because I played tennis in college. But I have three sons that are all playing, two that played Division One baseball, and one that's about to play Division One baseball, so from the Little League on you know, and in seeing baseball, I really have a love for baseball and sort of what it represents, particularly here in America and how it's sort of an American sport. And so how regional, like you know, whether you're a Yankee fan or a Met fan, or you're a Rockies fan, how you sort of adopt these players and you adopt them, and they become part of your family. Right. And so, I think there's something I love about that, like I'm, I grew up a Met fan. So here I am, like Tom Seaver is still my hero. And he was my hero, and the Mets and all these things. So, I think there's sort of like, I love, I love the fact that baseball becomes like, your baseball team becomes your extended family. And you feel like you get to know them. Because guess what, in baseball, you're playing 162 games a year. It's not like football, where there's one game a week and you get to see your guy, and he goes, with baseball, like every you can almost count on every day. From you know, April to September, you can turn on the TV and see your friend playing baseball, like it's all part of your family.
 
John Betancourt: Obviously, we talked a bit about what you kind of hope audiences universally take away from this and the inspiration in that story. But there's gonna be a lot of sports fans that gravitate to this particular piece and I’m curious what you hope sports fans take away from this documentary?
 
D.J. Caruso: I think sports fans -- I want sports fans to kind of take away things that maybe they didn't know about the Yankees and you get to see the dynamic between an owner you know, an owner who signs you know, he gets… George Steinbrenner comes in, he has Reggie Jackson, who's the hero of all heroes in the 70s they win these World Series. He then goes out and buys the greatest player in baseball, Dave Winfield, to replace him. And the day that he signs Dave Winfield and realizes his contract was not what he expected, he wants to divorce him, so he married Dave Winfield and wants to divorce on the same day. So, if you're a baseball fan, you have to realize that they went through 10 years of that drama. You get to see Deion Sanders play against Bo Jackson an amazing experience and amazing game you get to see someone throw a no hitter, and lose, which is something you'll never ever see. Right. And so, for a baseball fan, and then the Kevin Moss experience, the Kevin Moss of it all, of a guy who came in and had his 10 minutes of fame in the city went crazy for him and all that stuff. So that's great. And then you get to see a guy like Don Mattingly, one of the important things to me like Don Mattingly never made the World Series as great as the Yankees would be, such a great Yankee, that he never made the World Series, but he does have this… there's a really emotional moment for me at the end. When Don gets up and he has that one graded bat in the playoffs, and he hits home run and the stadium… is just rocking right? So, if you love baseball, there's a lot of goosebump moments that's in here for you. And then like I said, if you're not a full-on baseball fan, there's great human stories in here that you're going to find captivating,
 
John Betancourt: Since this is the definitive story of this wild season, what do you hope the legacy of this docu-series is going to be?
 
D.J. Caruso: I hope the legacy of the docu-series is what we talked about before is like, man, it was awful. It was terrible. But if you kind of keep persevering and coming out, you can see and, and there's a bittersweet aspect to it like Buck Showalter. And I think this way, life is like, you kind of, you don't really get credit for things you do, always, but you kind of know that you were part of it. And I think there's a bittersweet aspect of that I want people to get out of it and say, like, “Hey, I was part of this. I was part of this resurgence. I was part of this disaster. But somehow again, we came out and we worked, we came out stronger,” like Don Mattingly, Buck Showalter, Gene Michael, who even orchestrated building this team. They weren't around when the Yankees won the World Series, because the way Steinbrenner was. So, I think in life, it's all, there's a universality in all of us trying to do the best we can and not always getting credit. So, you'll see a lot of that in this documentary. But in the end, I just want people to know, like, you know, the Phoenix can rise from the ashes and you can rise and you can come out stronger, and a lot of bad things can happen to you like they did to the 1990 Yankees, but in the end, if you if you persevere, you can be okay.
 
John Betancourt: Now I’d be remiss to not ask this, but as a fan… man… what did you enjoy the most about getting to talk to some real legends, like Don Mattingly?
 
D.J. Caruso: Like… there was a reverence to just interviewing Don Mattingly, to sit down with Don Mattingly because, you know, growing up and, you know, my friends who were real big Yankee fans had their Hitman poster in their room and all that stuff. And I, you know, I just always thought Don was the guy who came into work and did his job and kept his mouth quiet until Steinbrenner provoked him. So, I really, I really enjoyed that part of interviewing him. And then again, I think I mentioned this to you, like I was, I was fascinated. I almost feel like you can make a movie just about these. But like, the beat reporters, these young people the Michael Kay's, the Joel Sherman’s, Suzyn Waldman, who was also assigned to the Yankees. They were like… anything that you learned came through these reporters. Like, it wasn't anything. It was all pen and paper and notebook. And when Dave Winfield, imagine today, you know, Juan Soto, the biggest Yankee, you know, the signing, they spent a fortune on him. If the Yankees decided today, they were going to trade Juan Soto and have a press conference. Okay, that would be seen by a billion people in less than five minutes, right? They would literally go all over the world. So, when they decided, they were going to trade Dave Winfield and make the announcement in Seattle. There were six reporters, there with notebooks. Yeah, there were no cameras, there was no anything. And so, the timing is so… the power of the beat reporter like the journalistic integrity and the journalistic, insular way that they got in with the team was something that was that wow, this is really fascinating. Like, it could be this could be its own a movie in itself, you know. And so, I thought that was fascinating.
 
 
John Betancourt: Last question that I have for you today. What are you most proud of when it comes to what you've assembled here?
 
D.J. Caruso: I'm most proud of just the team and the research team. And it's such a collaborative effort, a documentary a docu-series, it's a collaborative effort. And, yes, you're the filmmaker and all that. But I was so pleased with the collaborative effort of the team and digging up footage and finding things that we could do. And you know, there's, a lot of stories in here that maybe baseball doesn't want you to tell or hear and talk about. But you know, just the fact that we collaboratively all went to do this. And two of the biggest researchers that are producers on this research project were my sons. Because during COVID, we started to read these articles. And once we knew we were gonna get involved, they just went into this deep dive. So, it was a great family effort to work with both of my boys on this. And they both were baseball players in Division One and they both love baseball. So, for me, it was an incredible experience to work with my two sons on something that you know… is gonna live forever. So, I'm proud of that. That's pretty awesome.
 
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

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