Cinema: Play Ball!

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As the baseball season comes to a climax, Hollywood is ready with a couple of exhibitions to catch the overflow at the ballparks.

Big Leaguer (MGM) is a small tribute to the rookie farm that the New York Giants open in Florida every spring. Everything builds up steadily to the big final game with the Brooklyn rookies. The Giants win, that nice young third baseman gets the girl and the minor-league contract, and Edward G. Robinson (as Hans Lobert, the farm's manager) has a chance to say a few words that may reconcile baseball fans to some of the fielding they will see in the picture. "Baseball," he explains, "builds character."

The moral of The Kid from Left Field (20th Century-Fox) would seem to be that nobody in baseball has the brains of a nine-year-old child. In this picture, a nine-year-old boy (Billy Chapin) is made manager of a last-place club, and calmly proceeds to win a major-league pennant. He does get a little help, of course, from his daddy (Dan Dailey), a peanut vendor in the stands, but to balance that, he gets into some real trouble with the truant officer. Best shot: the boy wonder placidly popping bubble gum with the bases loaded and two out in the last inning of a crucial series.