Film Review: The Kid from Cleveland. (1949). [film] Directed by Herbert Kline.

This is not a baseball movie.

It is instead a moralizing post-war film about juvenile delinquency among the white, urban working-class as told through the story of freckle-faced Johnny, who rebels against his step-father through acts of petty larceny but is saved by a kindly radio broadcaster who provides Johnny the opportunity to experience wholesome male relationships as the batboy of the 1948 World Series champion Cleveland Indians. In the end, Johnny’s delinquency is entirely down to the mother for holding on too dearly to the memory of Johnny’s deceased father (a martyr to the American Way of Life on an unnamed battlefield of the 1940s), which engenders Johnny’s feelings of jealousy and disdain for the interloping step-father. 

The producers perhaps used baseball as a hook to draw an audience that might not otherwise be interested in Johnny or juvenile delinquency.  The appearance of many of the players from the World Series team suggests just this. In a world without internet and only the beginnings of television, the film offered a rare opportunity to see and hear star athletes.  But could it also be that the producers saw baseball as not just a game but as a countervailing moral force embodied in a fraternity of men pledged to and enacting a code of conduct for engaging in healthy and respectful competition?   Though rather a hard sell in today’s highly commercialized game, such idealizations have been part of the sport since the 19^th century (as described in John Thorn’s history) and persist in Japan and Taiwan, where the practice of the game (most especially at the youth level) inhabits a sphere of physical endeavor similar to martial arts (see Robert Whiting and Yun Wei).

The Kid depicts a world free from cynicism or exploitation in which baseball players are exemplars of decorum.  They do not spit or swear.  When filmed with beverages, there is no alcohol.  While they tease one another about their baseball abilities, they speak among themselves respectfully and never threateningly nor disparagingly. They make time for fans and even allow them to engage in the decision-making process, such as insisting Johnny pick the starting pitcher. Players dress appropriately in slacks, shirts, and jackets when off the field. When on, their uniforms are clean and properly worn.  The players are even engaged with the cause of integration, as seen by the appearance during pitching practice of Satchel Paige, who shares with Johnny some of the secrets of his pitching techniques.  It’s as if the Mormons had taken over baseball (and somehow gotten over their antipathy to people of color) and driven from its ranks any of the foul-mouthed ruffians that had once so shocked baseball executives (and that still inhabit dugouts today), or that had only the year before greeted integration with such naked hostility.

Perhaps the best thing that came from time spent watching this film was adding a couple of books to my reading list:  Baseball and Rhetorics of Purity and Contesting the Myths of Samurai Baseball.