The Kid from Left Field

Remade with gary coleman.

Lauren chapin's brother, Billy Bisons.

This review is for the original version of "The Kid from Left Field", not the remake with Gary Coleman from 1979.

The story is about a VERY precocious kid, Christy Cooper (Billy Chapin*) is a fanatic about baseball. Much of this is because his father, Larry (Dan Dailey) used to be a major leaguer and the pair talk almost non-stop about baseball. Eventually, Christy gets a job as a batboy for the local team, the Bisons, who are one of the worst teams in the majors. However, batboy Christy offers suggestions to some of the players...and soon these suggestions are paying off. Word spread amongst the players that Christy can help and soon he's secretly coaching the team. But the actual manager of the team learns what is happening and instead of acting like a grown up and letting the kid help, he tosses him off the team. Then, however, the team returns to its losing ways and the players all go to the manager to ask something crazy....for Christy to actually be the coach! What's next? See it and find out.

While the story is ridiculous, it is fun and a nice family picture...one today's kids might also like. But, fortunately, it's not schmaltzy and it's a film any age can enjoy. A cute little fantasy baseball movie.

*Billy is the brother of Lauren, who used to be a regular on "Father Knows Best". Unlike his sister, Billy worked mostly in movies.

No, this is not a masterpiece of cinematic art. And, if you have no interest in an knowledge of baseball, it's probably slow. (Which is nt to say that the real subject of the movie is baseball. Not at all. It's about a father overcoming his shortcomings so that his son can be proud of him. One of the great universal themes.)

But it is, nevertheless, a movie you can watch over and over for all sorts of reasons.

Tonight, when I watched it, I marveled at the fact that it never talks down to its presumably baseball-savvy audience. When the nine year old boy manages the Bisons in their pennant-winning game, the strategy gets fairly complicated and is explained - by a nine year old to two other nine year olds - in all its glorious detail. I find it impossible to believe that today a major studio would be willing to make a movie for such a very specific audience.

In all fairness, though, I suspect that the number of Americans with that sort of detailed interest in and knowledge of baseball has shrunk considerably.

The twelve previous reviewers seem to buy the argument that Billy gets all his insight into getting the best out of players from his father. Yet it is very clear, over and over, that he comes up with much of his advice when he is nowhere near his father. He is just one very perceptive young boy. Maybe with a little help from the same angels who made the contemporaneous movie *Angels in the Outfield* such a joy. Baseball fans obviously believe in magic, or they would not go on rooting for losing teams year after year. (See: *Damn Yankees*)

If you like baseball in the summer, you'll probably like this movie. If you don't, you probably won't.

The title role of The Kid From Left Field is played by Billy Chapin from a whole family of juvenile actors. He's a baseball crazed kid who gets to live the dream of any kid like that, he gets to manage a major league ball club. More important than that, he's a success at it.

Of course it's not all him by any means. He comes by his baseball smarts through Dan Dailey his father who know is a peanut vendor in the Bison ballpark. But Dailey was once a former big league player who missed his big chance because of an ungovernable temper and an undisciplined nature. A sadder and wiser Dailey knows it and now is a vendor for the team he used to play for.

Young Chapin becomes a bat boy and then gets to giving advice, good advice to the players, but that undermines manager Richard Egan's authority. He gets the kid fired, but then Egan gets fired and young Chapin realizes a dream.

You know how this film is going to end, every cliché that is involved in a baseball film is used here. Still The Kid From Left Field is a nice family picture with eternal appeal. Such folks as Lloyd Bridges, Fess Parker, and Bob Hopkins as Bison players, Ray Collins as the owner and Anne Bancroft as his secretary all perform admirably.

Best scene in the film is when manager Chapin takes over an argument from player Bridges with an umpire and gets thrown out of the game. But Billy Martin and Leo Durocher were not picked up by the seat of the pants deposited in their dugouts by an umpire.

The Kid From Left Field was remade more than two decades later with Robert Guillaume and Gary Coleman taking over the parts that Dailey and Chapin had. I've not seen it as yet, but it will have to go some to beat the charm of the original.

Jack Sher wrote this undemanding feel-good baseball comedy which drips with sentiment but isn't insufferable about it. Former major league ballplayer, now a single dad living on a slim salary hawking fresh roasted peanuts at the ballpark, gives his son invaluable player-tips once the kid becomes a bat-boy for the Bisons. The youngster passes his father's advice on to the teammates (along with some of his own baseball savvy) and soon the team is winning every game. Original sports entry for families is nearly an anomaly for the genre; the screenplay doesn't resort to heavenly assistance or wild gimmickry to get the team to the winners' circle, although little Billy Chapin is briefly appointed the team's manager. The pacing only drops off in the romantic subplot between 'over-the-hill' 36-year-old ballplayer Lloyd Bridges and secretary Anne Bancroft. Otherwise a very likable film, not sharply directed or incisively written, but entirely pleasant. Remade for TV in 1979. **1/2 from ****

Since no one really knows about this movie and no one will re-release it, it contains a magical innocence that helps you take it seriously when watching it. This is a baseball movie but you don't have to be a fan to enjoy the father and son relationship that exists and blossoms throughout this loving fantasy. While watching, you can't help but hope your own kid has half the heart that Christie Cooper does(played by Billy Chapin). The rest of the cast is great and this is one of those sweet, fun movies that just works. Dan Daily (the father) does a great job but the real joy is how he doesn't steal the spotlight from Chapin and lets the story really develop.