(Some Spoilers) Nice follow up to his previous baseball flick "Elmer the Great" Joe E. Brown is the Chicago Cub's new pitching sensation Frank X. Farrell the man with the golden arm and lighting quick swing. What Frank's only drawback in his playing ability has nothing to do with playing baseball: His inability to tell the truth! This lead to him being nicknamed by his teammates and the newspapers as "Alibi Ike".
As soon as the Cubs started spring training their manager Cap, William Frawley, knew he had a pennant winning team as long as Frank's pitching arm stayed healthy. But on the very first game Cap almost whacked it by shaking Frank's hand so hard and almost breaking it! Still Frank came back strong as his pitched the Cubs into 1st place with a string of shut-out victories. It was when Frank was introduced to Cap's sister in law Dolly Stevens, Olivia De Havillan, his mind started to forget the reason he was on the Chicago Cub baseball team in the first place. To help the team win the both National League Pennant and World Series: Or "World Serious" as Frank pronounced it.
If Dolly wasn't enough to keep Frank's mind off on winning the World Series a group of gangsters headed by Lefty Crawford, Paul Harvey, were! Trying to get Frank to throw the two games he's to pitch against the NY Giants in the World Series Frank ends up getting kidnapped by Lefty's hoods after he got the word from one of his flunkies-Jimmy the Newsboy-that Frank, with Dolly's urging, is out to win not throw the final game.
Escaping from his hoodlum captors Frank makes it to the ballpark, in his pajamas, by hijacking an ambulance and then replacing the Cub pitcher who just let the Giants score the tying run. Taking the mound Frank's will-mill like pitching still wasn't enough to win it for the Cubs. Going into extra innings it was Frank's batting and running as well as jumping talents that finally made the Chicago Cubs the World Baseball Champions. By far the best scene in the movie was Frank running out an inside the park home run and preventing himself from being tagged out at the plate by flying, some six feet, over the giant's catcher instead, in what you would usually expect in situations like that, sliding away from him!
P.S Even though it wasn't the first movie that she made "Alibi Ike" was the first film released with Olivia De Havilland in it. There was also in the film the World Series between the Cubs and Giants, who incidentally are both in the same National League, playing the deciding game of the series at night! This predated the first World Series night game by some 36 years which was played on October 13, 1971 between the Baltimore Orioles and Pittsburgh Pirates at the Pirates new ballpark Three River Stadium.
As soon as the Cubs started spring training their manager Cap, William Frawley, knew he had a pennant winning team as long as Frank's pitching arm stayed healthy. But on the very first game Cap almost whacked it by shaking Frank's hand so hard and almost breaking it! Still Frank came back strong as his pitched the Cubs into 1st place with a string of shut-out victories. It was when Frank was introduced to Cap's sister in law Dolly Stevens, Olivia De Havillan, his mind started to forget the reason he was on the Chicago Cub baseball team in the first place. To help the team win the both National League Pennant and World Series: Or "World Serious" as Frank pronounced it.
If Dolly wasn't enough to keep Frank's mind off on winning the World Series a group of gangsters headed by Lefty Crawford, Paul Harvey, were! Trying to get Frank to throw the two games he's to pitch against the NY Giants in the World Series Frank ends up getting kidnapped by Lefty's hoods after he got the word from one of his flunkies-Jimmy the Newsboy-that Frank, with Dolly's urging, is out to win not throw the final game.
Escaping from his hoodlum captors Frank makes it to the ballpark, in his pajamas, by hijacking an ambulance and then replacing the Cub pitcher who just let the Giants score the tying run. Taking the mound Frank's will-mill like pitching still wasn't enough to win it for the Cubs. Going into extra innings it was Frank's batting and running as well as jumping talents that finally made the Chicago Cubs the World Baseball Champions. By far the best scene in the movie was Frank running out an inside the park home run and preventing himself from being tagged out at the plate by flying, some six feet, over the giant's catcher instead, in what you would usually expect in situations like that, sliding away from him!
P.S Even though it wasn't the first movie that she made "Alibi Ike" was the first film released with Olivia De Havilland in it. There was also in the film the World Series between the Cubs and Giants, who incidentally are both in the same National League, playing the deciding game of the series at night! This predated the first World Series night game by some 36 years which was played on October 13, 1971 between the Baltimore Orioles and Pittsburgh Pirates at the Pirates new ballpark Three River Stadium.