The Stratton Story

Monty Stratton, raised on a Texas farm, joins the Chicago White Sox and becomes a major league pitcher. Then he loses a leg in a hunting accident, and the question becomes whether he will leave the game. The film is not interested in the drama of disability. It is interested in the detail of relearning: standing, turning and rebuilding a pitching motion on a prosthetic leg. Its best passages are the dull, repetitive attempts in the yard. The form is MGM's measured melodrama. There are crowded game scenes, but the film mostly takes place at home and in the fields. The real story in brief: Stratton put together a record of 37 wins and 19 losses over three seasons in the thirties; on 27 November 1938, hunting rabbits on his mother's farm in Texas, his pistol went off by accident, the bullet severed an artery in his leg, and the leg was amputated. He came back years later, in 1946, and won eighteen games in the East Texas League. He served as technical advisor on the film and coached James Stewart on pitching. Sam Wood directed. Douglas Morrow won an Oscar for the film's story, and it was among the biggest hits of 1949. June Allyson plays his wife Ethel. Who it is for: viewers who like classic sports biographies and James Stewart. Who it is not for: anyone unfamiliar with baseball who will tire of the game scenes. The film is also emotionally cautious and never presses hard anywhere.