Film Review: The Winning Team starring Ronald Reagon and Doris Day

Baseball and the movies have had a long and successful love affair.

During the 1940s and 1950s, filmmakers produced several baseball films. Some were instant classics like The Pride of the Yankees and The Stratton Story, while others were stinkers like The Babe Ruth Story.

Actor Dan Daily portrayed Cardinal great Dizzy Dean in The Pride of St. Louis. The film was neither good nor bad, sitting comfortably in the middle of the pack.

That same year, The Winning Team, starring Ronald Reagan and Doris Day, opened. The movie is an improvement over the Dean story.

The Winning Team stars future-president Reagan as Hall of Fame pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander. Doris Day plays his wife, Aimee.

The film combines fact and fiction to tell Alexander’s life story.

The flesh and blood Alexander was one of the greatest pitchers who ever threw a baseball. The kid from Nebraska won 28 games in his first full season in the majors and was a 30-game winner for three successive seasons.

Ronald Reagan-Doris Day “The Winning Team”

His fastball was explosive, while his slider could be impossible to hit. As great as he was on the mound, Alexander’s life was a rollercoaster.

He suffered a beaning (shown in the film) early in his baseball career, causing double vision and other problems. A stint in the war compounded and complicated Alexander’s injuries, eventually leading to epilepsy.

As always, there’s much more to the story. The focus of much of the drama (though it contains plenty of baseball action and some of those wonderful old films of the great Cardinal and Yankee teams) is on Alexander’s problems, which inhibited his career and his relationship with his loyal wife, Aimee, played sweetly by Day.

The title is a tribute to the couple as they navigate Alexander’s alcoholism and epilepsy. Strangely, the film never refers to Alexander’s epileptic seizures, preferring to show him passing out at bars and speakeasies.
After the completion of the movie, Reagan was disappointed that the producers omitted mention of Alexander’s epilepsy.

The Winning Team – Original Theatrical Trailer

Reagan, forty-one years old when filming commenced, conveys the youthfulness of the Nebraska kid, his phenomenal success, and later, the lost soul seeking retribution.

As the film progresses, Alexander’s problems get worse. His inconsistent pitching forced the Cubs to trade him to the Cardinals mid-way through the 1926 season. They thought Alexander’s career was over.

Even Alexander himself had doubts about his ability to pitch. Cardinal Manager Rogers Hornsby (played very well by Frank Lovejoy) believes Alexander can still hurl effectively. He has faith, and that faith rubs off on Alex.

On the mound and gaining inner strength from Aimee, Alexander, and his teammates, play well, eventually reaching the World Series to face the mighty and hugely favored Yankees.

Alexander, now 39, beats the Yankees twice. With the series tied at three games each, Manager Hornsby summoned Alexander from the bullpen to replace starter Jesse Haines in game seven. Aimee is shocked when she hears her husband is coming into the game(it’s only been one day since his last appearance)

Can Alexander fight off one of those “things” (as he calls them) and hold on until she arrives? The Yankees have loaded the bases. Future Hall of Famer Tony Lazzeri is at the plate. Will Alexander find that magic one more time?

Ronald Reagan and Doris Day are quite good as the loving couple. Three writers (Ted Sherdeman, Seeleg Lester, and Merwin Gerad) penned the script, which never quite takes off.

Still, there’s enough baseball, Americana, and good old-fashioned entertainment to make viewing the film enjoyable.