The Winning Team is a 1952 film directed by Lewis Sailer, starring Ronald Reagan and Doris Day. It is a heavily fictionalized biopic of Hall of Fame Major League Baseball pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander
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The film opens with "Alex" (Reagan) as a young man in rural Nebraska, working as a telephone lineman and in love with girl next door Aimee (Day). While he talks about buying a farm and settling down with Aimee, his true passion is — you guessed it — baseball. He eventually gets a job pitching for a minor league team, which soon brings him to the attention of the Philadelphia Phillies, who call him up for his big-league debut in 1911.
Alexander's career is interrupted by a freak accident when he is hit in the head by a throw while running the bases. He is afflicted with double vision, which threatens to end his baseball career, but he recovers and returns to the game. His medical problems worsen when, after serving in World War I, he starts to suffer from fainting spells (in Real Life, it was epilepsy). His epilepsy leads Alexander to self-medicate with alcohol, which leads to alcoholism that threatens to drive him from the game for good. It falls to Aimee to bring her husband back from the brink.
Tropes:
- Amusement Park: Luna Park in Coney Island, where Aimee finally tracks Grover down, working as a sideshow attraction.
- Answer Cut: Glasheen, the minor-league manager trying to get Alexander to join his team, says "Make up your mind, boy!" The film cuts to Alexander in uniform, pitching.
- Artistic License – History: Very heavily fictionalized.
- A loudspeaker has Alexander facing off in a game against Christy Mathewson after Alexander gets back from the war. Mathewson's last game was in 1916.
- A radio announcer says the St. Louis Cardinals finished "at the bottom of the second division" in 1925. In actuality the Cardinals went 77-76 and finished 4th in an eight-team league.
- The movie has the Cardinals acquiring Alexander before the 1926 season began, after Aimee asks Cardinal manager Rogers Hornsby for a favor. In reality, Alexander started the 1926 season with the Cubs and was sold to the Cardinals in June.
- The movie has Alexander ending the 1926 World Series with a strikeout. In Real Life, the series had quite a different ending, maybe the weirdest World Series end of all time: with the Yankees trailing by a run, Babe Ruth drew a walk with two out in the 9th, only to get thrown out attempting to steal second base.
- In real life, all the depressing things that happen to Alexander in the movie—having to take a job pitching with the House of David barnstorming team, living in poverty, having to appear as a carnival sideshow attraction—actually happened after his major league career ended in 1930. (And Aimee divorced him.)
- Based on a True Story: An opening title card says "This is the true story of Grover Cleveland Alexander", even though it really isn't.
- Big Game: A winner-take-all Game 7 of the 1926 World Series. Alexander is sent to the mound in the 7th to close it out.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Alexander first starts drinking after getting the bad news about his fainting spells and how they are endangering his career.
- Fallen-on-Hard-Times Job: Alexander hits bottom when he's a sideshow attraction at a carnival, answering questions from the audience, occasionally getting into fights over offensive questions.
- Impairment Shot: Many, first double vision effects after Alexander is beaned by a throw, then a shimmering effect on the screen when he's battling dizzy spells.
- It Will Never Catch On: As Alexander and Aimee climb into the back of a coughing, sputtering old jalopy on their wedding day, one old farmer says "Them automobiles is just a fad!"
- Sleeping Single: Played with. In the scene where Grover wakes up at night and realizes that his double vision has gone, it's clear that he and Aimee are in the same bed, but the film is carefully shot so that we can't see them in the same bed. As Grover is looking out the window at the moon, the shot is blocked so that his body obscures Aimee's. As he gets up, the camera sweeps across so fast that we can barely see Doris Day. Only after he's gone from the room does the camera show Aimee on the other side of the bed.
- Spinning Paper: Many newspapers fly at the screen to narrate Alexander's career. Near the end when he's signed with the Cardinals, one of them actually spins.
- Time-Passes Montage: Much of Alexander's career with the Phillies is covered by Aimee pasting clippings in a scrapbook.
