Director: Edward Sedgewick
Year:  1934
Rating: 6.0

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Baseball season begins tomorrow so time to sit back drink a Coors and watch a baseball movie. A fairly obscure one at that but not bad at all. From way back in 1934 when everything including the ball was white and no one was on steroids. It is a peculiar little film that begins as a romantic comedy but morphs into a gambling racket before finally settling into a decent murder mystery. The St. Louis Cardinals are not expected to do much until a whiz kid rookie played by Robert Young (Father Knows Best and Marcus Welby) comes up to pitch and a pennant race is on. The gambling syndicate gets nervous and players begin to die. The real Cardinals won the Pennant and the World Series in 1934 with the likes of the Dean brothers (Dizzy Hall of Fame), Leo Durocher (HOF), Frankie Frisch (HOF), Burleigh Grimes (HOF), Jessie Haines (HOF), Joe Medwick (HOF) and Dazzy Vance (HOF). The Gashouse Gang.

This is an MGM production and it is a goldmine of character actors. Mickey Rooney as the batboy, Nat Pendleton, Paul Kennedy as the reporter, Edward Brophy as a cop, Joe Sawyer, Alice Lake from all those Fatty Arbuckle shorts and in blink and you will miss them Dennis O'Keefe, Walter Brennan and Ward Bond. Now play ball!