Plot
Based on Piersall's autobiography, the film traces Piersall's rise from the sandlots of Waterbury, Connecticut, to the Boston Red Sox professional baseball team. Karl Malden plays his domineering father who pushes him further and further.
Plagued by problems, Jim marries Mary, but they live with his parents. When he is eventually chosen for the Boston Red Sox it is in the infield position of shortstop for which he has little experience. He calls his father to apologise.
Daunted by the huge crowd and the pressure of his father watching his first time at-bat, the pressure nearly causes Jim to strike out. But on the final pitch, he hits a home run. Rather than celebrate in a normal way, he instead runs to the backstop fence where his father sits, shouting "Look Dad, I told you I could do it". His teammates try to restrain him as he climbs the fence. He swings his bat at them. Eventually the police subdue him, and he is taken to a mental institution.
After a long period of therapy, Jim realizes that he has excelled in baseball to please his father — not for his own gratification. [1]
He went on to play 17 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) for five teams, from 1950 through 1967.
1955 TV version
The film was based on the book by Piersall and Al Hirschberg which had been adapted for TV in 1955 for the show Climax! .
Rights to the book were bought in July 1955. [2] The television version starred Tab Hunter as Piersall, Mona Freeman as his wife, John Conte as a psychiatrist, and Robert Armstrong as his father. Herbert Swope directed and Martin Manulis prodyced.
The New York Times called the television play version "absorbing" and praised Tab Hunter's portrayal of Jimmy Piersall as "perceptive and believable." [3] Hunter tried to get his studio, Warner Bros, to buy the film rights but these were purchased by another studio, Paramount, for $50,000. Mel Goldberg, who wrote the TV version, was hired to do the screenplay. [4]
Hunter had a romantic relationship with Anthony Perkins. He says this relationship practically ended after Perkins took the role of Piersall in the film version without telling him beforehand, as Hunter had also been interested to portray the role of Piersall again in the film version. [5]
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James Anthony Piersall was an American baseball center fielder who played 17 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) for five teams, from 1950 through 1967. Piersall was best known for his well-publicized battle with bipolar disorder that became the subject of a book and a film, Fear Strikes Out.
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Albert Simon Hirshberg, was an American writer and sportswriter whose work was published primarily from the 1930s to the 1960s. He is best known as the co-author of Jimmy Piersall's 1955 autobiography titled Fear Strikes Out: The Jimmy Piersall Story, which was later made into the 1957 film Fear Strikes Out, starring Anthony Perkins.
