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A very youthful looking ROBERT YOUNG plays a star pitcher hired to help the St. Louis Cardinals win the '34 pennant race. He falls in love with the manager's daughter, pretty MADGE EVANS.

The team is soon involved in a series of murders that take place on the baseball field or in the locker room. Since most of the action takes place in broad daylight, there's no chance to build up the suspense to turn this into a crime melodrama. Instead, the heavier touch is on comedy, supplied by NAT PENDLETON and TED HEALEY. Unfortunately, their humorous material is a bit strained for laughs.

Real footage of the Cardinals is integrated with the studio footage shot at Wrigley Field, with mixed results that are more distracting than anything else. Revelation of the murderer comes in the last reel and is far from satisfying, leading to a scene of ham acting at its worst.

Nothing special about this one, even with a cast that includes PAUL KELLY, WILLARD ROBERTSON and pint-sized MICKEY ROONEY in supporting roles.

Some uncredited bits by GARY OWEN, WARD BOND and DENNIS O'KEEFE for those who stay awake during the proceedings.

"You can't tell the American people they can't have baseball."

Combining baseball with a murder mystery, weaving in a love triangle, and sprinkling in some gangster spice, this film is as wacky as Dizzy Dean or the rest of the eccentric real-life St. Louis Cardinals Gashouse Gang that won the 1934 World Series. Is it a good film? No, it is not a good film. But as interested as I am in the Cardinals, it was intriguing to see a story where the team makes a run for the championship but which begins having its players killed to prevent that from happening. And I have to say, with gambling on the rise in sports and gun violence in America ever a threat, the concept of an athlete being shot during a game takes on terrifying, real dimensions today, when in 1934 it must have seemed just dark fantasy.

The premise is that an owner/manager ala Connie Mack must win this year, because as he explains early on, he's in debt, including having borrowed to pay for a hot new pitcher (Robert Young). If they don't win, and thus fail to receive the money for getting to the World Series, he has to sell the team, so that's the first possible angle for a motive. Added to that is a gambler (C. Henry Gordon) who is also going to lose a million dollars if they win, after having taken $50,000 in bets at 20-1, and a couple of players who've been kicked off the team for having been caught gambling. The film also makes the love triangle a possible motive as two teammates are both interested in the owner's daughter (a plucky Madge Evans), and there's a joker in the deck as well.

Many of the elements of the whodunit are clumsily executed to say the least, and there are gags that are overdone, like the repeated ribbing of an umpire by calling him Crawford. (It also has him secretly in need of eye medicine, good grief). The cops are dimwitted in pursuing leads, including smudging the prints on a murder weapon by handling it with their bare hands, but worse, the film doesn't follow up on any of the obvious suspects, losing quite a bit of dramatic tension in the process. Don't come here expecting a good murder mystery or you'll be disappointed.

Offsetting that were some of the unintentionally campy elements, like a player found dead standing up in his locker, falling face forward when it's opened, and the "death by hot dog mustard." There are elements of authenticity, like the Cardinals uniforms and simple caps from the era, and the use of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for the fake newspaper stories. Robert Young looks reasonably smooth on the diamond, Madge Evans is a plucky love interest, and you'll see a young Mickey Rooney appearing briefly as well.

I also enjoyed seeing some of the old ballparks, as footage from real games is regularly inserted to make the film seem more realistic (something it's not very successful at, but I didn't mind). We see quite a bit of Sportsman's Park in St. Louis, including its ad on the left-field wall for the now defunct newspaper the Globe-Democrat, and exactly halfway through its lifetime (1902-66), the park is noticeably very simple. The rightfield pavilion which is often seen was where my dad saw his first game, and it's also notable for having a 33-foot screen which extended to the roof, so that home run balls had to go over it. As Sportsman's Park was the last stadium to desegregate it's seating in 1944, it was also the only place black fans could see a game during these years. During an away game in the film, we also see Crosley Field, home of the Cincinnati Reds, with the distinctive slanted line of right field bleacher seats and the Paper Boxes advertisement on the building behind it. There are a hodgepodge of others shown, apparently including a minor league park in Los Angeles, but they were harder for me to discern.

If you like baseball, this is probably worth seeing, but obviously don't expect a masterpiece. Rebooting the concept in today's world would also make for a chilling drama, and I'd lay odds that someday we'll see such a film.

The only reason to see this picture is for its historical value. You can trace the beginnings of some Hollywood careers as the film contains some famous movie names. It is also an interesting commentary on how sophisticated Major League baseball has become in the ensuing years; major league rules, regulations and business structure - how innocent and unstructured life and baseball were years ago.

It's a nice vehicle for Robert Young and the lovely Madge Evans but the story is trite and predictable. There are numerous plot holes to navigate but if you can just overlook them you can make your way through a harmless 69 minutes.

Seeing that this film was released in September of 1934 when in real life the St. Louis Cardinals were in a tight pennant race with the New York Giants, it's a wonder that this film didn't give some miscreant the idea of doing in the Dean brothers who were to lead the famous Gashouse Gang to the National League pennant and World Series that year.

The Cardinals are in desperate financial straights this year as owner/manager David Landau and daughter Madge Evans put the team in hock to get star pitcher Robert Young. Madge has a thing for Bob, but other players have a thing for Madge.

In the meantime the rejuvenated Cardinals are screwing up all kinds of gambling interests who don't want to see the long-shot Cardinals win the pennant. They'll stop at nothing including murder to see the Redbirds of St. Louis don't triumph. Murders of three players do occur before the culprit is found.

Nat Pendleton and Ted Healy provide the comic relief as a perpetually quarreling catcher and umpire. Someone did some research for this film or was a fan because legendary umpire Bill Klem who was still active in 1934 had an unbelievable aversion to the name of 'Catfish'. In Healy's case Pendleton calls him 'Crawfish' to get his goat.

Some establishing shots will give you a look at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis which is long gone now. Otherwise the cast MGM put together for this film shot it in and around Wrigley Field in Los Angeles, the minor league park of the Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League which also now history.

The ending of the film is the very least bizarre. Nearly the entire cast is suspect at one point, but the guilty party in this baseball mystery comes right out of left field. No, the left fielder didn't do it.

Paul Kelly has a very good role as a sportswriter with a nose for news that serves him well, the scoops he does get in this film.

I might have liked the film better had the ending which I can't reveal been so bizarre. It did give one player an opportunity for a grand piece of scenery chewing.

David Landau is the owner-manager of the St. Louis Cardinals -- for the moment. The franchise's finances have been underwater for a while. Everything he has is mortgaged, and he's spent his last moment buying pitcher Robert Young. If the team can't take the World Series this year, he's finished. But the team performs and it looks like they may go to the World Series, until key players are murdered.

It's a pretty good effort from MGM, with Madge Evans as Landau's daughter and Young's love interest, Nat Pendleton, Ted Healy, Henry Gordon, and the usual assortment of MGM players to add gloss. The mystery is ok, although Young does not do the real investigating. That's up to Paul Kelly. It's the sort of enjoyable programmer that MGM could turn out when they weren't trying for greatness.