The best sports docos are the ones that tell stories about us

It also does some weird, weird work too, but that’s bound to happen when you have two 24-hour-a-day channels to fill.

So they end up airing strange fare like chess boxing, where competitors play chess and then punch each other.

I wish I was making that up.

It also results in the World Series of Poker clogging up the programming schedule.

Seriously, playing cards is a pastime – it’s not a sport. We go back to my definition of sport; if you can hold a beer while taking part, then it’s not a sport.

But then there’s the 30 for 30 series, a collection of documentaries – sometimes feature-length – about sporting figures and events.

This is an example of when the network does amazing, amazing work.

It was a project designed to mark the network’s 30^th anniversary which means that, while it was their birthday, we’re the ones who get the gifts.

While the documentaries are all about sports, I’d put it out there that you don’t need to be a sports fan to watch them.

For example, there’s a heartbreaking doco about the 1989 Hillsborough tragedy, where 96 people died in a crowd crush.

It happened at a soccer game, but the sport is not the focus – it’s the investigation of the police and security inadequacies.

Then there’s the baseball doco Catching Hell. I hate baseball, but this was fascinating.

It’s the story of Steve Bartman, a Chicago Cubs fan who lent over the fence and disrupted a potential catch by a Cubs player.

Up 3-2 in a seven-game final series, the long-suffering Cubs were just a few outs away from making the World Series.

After Bartman’s error, the Cubs went on to lose Games Six and Seven and miss the World Series.

Bartman became a lightning rod for fan outrage and abuse – both on the night of the game and afterwards.

The Catching Hell doco doesn’t focus on the game itself but more the rage directed at Bartman, looking at how this sort of thing happens more and more in modern society.

While the events happened in a baseball stadium, the story here isn’t about baseball – it’s about us.