The Winning Team

With rumblings going on about when the baseball season is finally going to begin after all the state governors' cower in place orders, I recently watched The Winning Team, which was on the TCM schedule back in March when the baseball season was originally scheduled to begin.

The story is a biopic, more or less of Grover Cleveland Alexander, one of the great pitchers of the pre-All-Star Game era. Ronald Reagan plays the pitcher, who at the start of the movie is in his early 20s, working as a lineman out in his native Nebraska. But his baseball prowess is also well-known, as he's asked to pitch for the locals against a barnstorming team.

This produces all sorts of problems. Grover loves to pitch, and the team needs him, but he's also got a girlfriend Aimee Arrants (Doris Day) whom he's about to ask to marry him; the ultimate plan is to buy a farm and settle down. But having to go to town to pitch is going to make him miss his dinner with Aimee and really piss off her Dad. The game also brings Grover to the attention of professional baseball scouts.

Eventually, Grover is offered a tryout and a minor league contract, and he hopes to be able to make enough money to buy that farm and settle down. However, during one game he gets hit in the head by a batted ball, which it is feared will leave him blind. Instead, it "only" leaves him with double vision, which is still bad enough and clearly going to prevent him from pitching, until by miracle his pitching improves.

He starts his Major League career with the Philadelphia Phillies, taking time off to serve in World War I, which is another disaster when he suffers from a mustard gas attack and winds up with epilepsy (not actually called that in the movie). When he suffers an attack during a game, he turns to drink, which sends his career into a downward spiral, although he gets a chance to redeem himself when his old friend Rogers Hornsby (Frank Lovejoy) wants him on the St. Louis Cardinals, who are part of the 1926 pennant chase.

OK, some of what is portrayed in The Winning Team is what happened more or less, while some is badly moved around and some made up for dramatic effect. As I understand it, Alexander was already an alcoholic before World War I, although that wouldn't have made for as good a movie. His move to St. Louis is also handled differently (in reality, Alexander was sold on waivers and the barnstorming we see actually occurred in the 1930s). And the 1926 World Series ended differently in real life.

Still, Ronald Reagan is appealing enough, even if he's way to old for the part in the first half of the movie. (Alexander was 39 during the 1926 World Series and in his early 1920s during the beginning; Reagan was 41.) Doris Day shows she can handle drama, and the supporting actors all do a creditable job. Watch for a very young Russ Tamblyn (during his days credited as Rusty) as Grover's kid brother.

Even with its historical inaccuracies, The Winning Team is worth a watch as an example of the studio system's production of biopics. It's available on DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive.