The Kid from Left Field

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 ****

I know it's only a fantasy film but, still, if you know the slightest thing about baseball this movie can be annoying at times because ballplayers would NOT act like this. Even worse, Major League players wouldn't be this inept, to begin with. These guys couldn't make a Little League team, and they are playing professional baseball??? Come on...how much are we supposed to swallow here?!!

Listen.....it's a nice story and a good-natured film, but it's just too far-fetched. However, I can some non-baseball fans enjoying it, or older folks enjoying this for the pure nostalgia of seeing some baseball back 50 years ago. I like that part, myself, and appreciate a movie with some sentimentality and sweetness to it, which this does. I also like Dan Dailey, who plays the boy's father. Billy Chapin is likable as the kid, too....so what I am crying about?

It's just that no ballclub is going to employ (or even listen to) some little kid, even if it is secretly coming from his knowledgeable dad. Maybe I've watched too many Steven Spielberg movies. He always portrays kids as smarter than adults, which is ludicrous. I hate to see the same in a classic-era film in which writers had more sense than the twisted politically-correct morons of today.

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.

Great actors, mediocre movie. The premise of this movie has been used in many movies. You know, where a team is slumping terribly and along comes some 'magical' external influence to change it all around (eg. Major League). The problem with the screenplay of this movie is how they depicted the teams' slump, with balls rolling through infielder's legs, dropped easy fly balls, and batters clueless as to their hitting slumps. And worst of all was when the outfielder had his glove out to catch a fly ball and the ball hit him square in the forehead. Good for laughs, but jeeeez, these guys are MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL PLAYERS. But the KID solves the problems of these major league players (more fantasy). Fun to watch anyway, but only got my 5/10.

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.