Synopsis: Seven year old George is put in a catholic boarding school by his father, because of his unruly behavior. Already as a boy he displays enormous baseball skills. One day a baseball manager sees him play and offers to adopt him in exchange for his release from the boarding school. He almost instantly becomes America's most successful and famous baseball player. He meets an aspiring actress who seems to like him. He develops an infatuation for a waitress who is fond of animals; he proposes to her. His lifestyle is excessive and undisciplined, and that causes him a series of troubles.
Appraisal: This film belongs to two categories which rarely stand very high in my esteem: the biopic and the sports movie. When a film manages to escape the reverential tone of the former and the dullness of the latter, it has gone as far as it can for me in those genres; this film does both. It manages to build a believable character, to whom we are sympathetic and whose fortunes and misfortunes never get tedious. The real events on which it is based were previously dramatized in The Babe Ruth Story (1948), which I haven't seen.
Rating: 57
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