Robert J. Maxwell I haven't followed baseball since I was a child. The only sport that's ever interested me is trying to get out of bed in the morning. But this is a movie that convulsed me as a youth and that I still enjoy watching, along with "The Natural" and "Damn Yankees" (except for Tab Hunter, a black hole in any production).Ray Milland is quite good as a slightly aged-in-the-wood chemistry graduate student and professor. He loves his work; he loves his girl, Jean Peters. The only problem is that through the Spring and Summer he's distracted by baseball, which he monitors religiously.One of those lab accidents takes place that produces an unidentifiable mixture of some white fluid -- about a quart -- that is repelled by wood. Scientist that he is, Milland discovers that rolling a baseball around in the stuff makes it impossible for a wooden bat to hit the ball. The ball leaps like a rabbit before returning to its original trajectory. Milland forces his way onto a major league team, leaving everyone to wonder if he's been kidnapped or become a gangster.It's a raw but engaging comedy. Milland pass off the little bottle of fluid as hair tonic and when anyone borrows it and tries to brush his hair, the hair crackles and tries to escape the brush. Paul Douglas is the catcher who first tries Milland out -- "He ain't got a prayer" -- and then is assigned to keep an eye on him because Milland reads books with titles like "The Atom, The Stars, And The Universe", and "Fundamentals of Ballistics," so he's an odd ball, though a valuable odd ball.Don't expect subtlety or sophistication and you'll enjoy yourself.

dougdoepke Forget all those great spitball artists of baseball's past. Chemistry professor Simpson (Milland) has come up with a lab substance that guarantees batters will never connect. So what does he do with it. He does what all us baseball fantasists would do—he becomes a major league superstar and gets the girl (Peters) at the same time. Okay, at least we can dream, can't we.Mildly amusing little entry from TCF that qualifies as modern-day Disney fare. Good special effects—I'm still wondering how they got the dipsy-do ball effect in digitally-deprived 1949. Milland has pretty good pitching form for a supposed major-leaguer. Still, It's a bit of a stretch when 42-year old catcher Paul Douglas calls 44-year old Milland "kid". I'm guessing TCF producers went for the over-age actor for his marquee value 3 years after the Oscar for Lost Weekend.Good supporting cast. Douglas supplies the comedy as the lovable roughneck, as good at fracturing English grammar as he is at catching the ball. Then there's the un-lovable roughneck Ted de Corsia as the tough-talking team manager, along with the omnipresent Ray Collins who seems to have been in every-other movie made during this period. And, of course, there's the winsome Jean Peters. In real life, she even got the notoriously elusive billionaire Howard Hughes to actually slip a ring on her finger. Seeing her here, I can understand why.No, this minor exercise in baseball fantasy was not going to win an Oscar for anyone. Charming as it is in an old-fashioned way, the movie lacks director Bacon's usual snappy way with comedy material—he may not have been comfortable with the sports theme. Nonetheless, it remains a pleasant two-base hit for those of us overloaded on today's hard- swinging movie fare that too often pops out.

hr2 This movie disappointed me even when I saw it as a very young kid, in a movie theater, in the late 50s. The older I got, the more I disliked the way it glorified cheating and the more I became disgusted with the way critics glorified the movie. I wonder how many kids watching that movie grew up to be cheaters in their work.The only real saving grace of this movie is at the end, when the cheater actually wins a game on his own. Even then, he shows no remorse for his having gotten to the "big" game by cheating. The win seems only to justify his earlier cheating.In short, this movie does nothing more than sell the notion that the end, in this case winning the world series, justifies the means used to reach that end, cheating.I'm sorry that old Ray Milland, a great actor, stooped to the level required to star in this loser of a movie.

MiserblOF This is one of my favorite films from my childhood. I love to watch it in March, just before the baseball season begins. Milland is outstanding as the quiet, studious college instructor who has a slight case of "spring fever", except it "lasts all summer." If this film were made today there'd be a lot of pseudo-moral outrage about the message that cheating is OK, etc. etc. Probably there would also be grumbling about a college teacher having a romance with a student, but this movie is innocent and funny. Paul Douglas was outstanding, as always, playing the catcher/roommate.This film should be on DVD. It's outrageous that it it isn't.