There are few good movies about baseball, perhaps because baseball is more an immediate kind of thing and perhaps, as disastrously poor television broadcasts show, there is a difficult tension between the individuals and the team and their relationship with each other. This makes for a wonderful sport but not great television or movies.
Two of the best movies about baseball, The Big Leaguer and Kill the Umpire (1949) are successful because they are about the fringe elements of baseball: the minor leaguers and the umpires. The Big Leaguer was Robert Aldrich's first film as a director, after being assistant to Chaplin and Jean Renoir and then directing TV. He makes the most of the low budget and was lucky to get the intense Edward G. Robinson (then being greylisted for his liberal views and having trouble getting work) for the tough-but-fair coach of the two-week tryout camp for the New York Giants. He also had the dancer Vera-Ellen as the one woman in the cast, reminding one that baseball and ballet both require beauty of movement. Unfortunately there are no African-Americans among the tryouts though the Giants had their first African-American player in 1949, Monte Irvin.
Aldrich was eventually known for his corrosive views of America (Kiss Me Deadly in 1955 and Ulzana's Raid in 1972, along with many other films) but even The Big Leaguer captures the sink-or-swim attitude of many in the 50's (not to mention today!). Those who don't make it in the camp go back to their home towns to work in mines or factories. Those who do make it go into the minor leagues for a salary of $150 a month; few will actually make it to the majors and even there probably won't be paid too well in an era when the team owners had the reserve clause and all the power.
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