Rookie of the Year (1955)

Directed by

John Ford

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A sportswriter discovers that a promising young baseball player is the son of a former major leaguer who was banned from the sport for his involvement in a historic betting scandal. The writer tries to help the rookie while keeping the secret.

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What happens

"Rookie of the Year" is a 1955 half-hour baseball drama directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne, Vera Miles, Ward Bond, and Patrick Wayne, all of whom Ford would direct in The Searchers the following year. This film was an installment of the television anthology series Screen Director's Playhouse. A sportswriter (John Wayne) realizes that a talented young rookie (Patrick Wayne) is the son of a former Chicago White Sox player (Ward Bond), who was banned from playing Major League Baseball for life because of his participation in the 1919 World Series scandal, a.k.a. the Black Sox Scandal. All the characters in this story are fictional, but the character played by Ward Bond is strongly suggestive of the real Shoeless Joe Jackson. Patrick Wayne would later play a similar role in a 1962 television drama, also directed by John Ford, called Flashing Spikes, starring James Stewart and featuring John Wayne in a lengthy surprise appearance for which he was billed as "Michael Morris." (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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