Adaptation of Jim Piersall's memoir about growing up with an insensitive father, a tirelessly ambitious man with baseball dreams for his talented son--and impossible to please even after his kid is recruited as shortstop for the Boston Red Sox. Piersall's eventual nervous breakdown is mounted in careful yet somehow manufactured terms (when the pressured kid decides to go ice-skating instead of returning home, one can almost comically sense the clouds of doom forming for the next scene), and the "meet cute" with his future wife (possibly the most patient woman alive) is also by-the-numbers. Anthony Perkins does very well as Piersall, although the ludicrousness of Jimmy's behavior--defending his father while resting at "State Hospital"--isn't presented with any irony, and Perkins is too keyed-up to make a success of his showier scenes. As the pushy father, Karl Malden is also good but has a different problem: the character, completely stubborn and unsympathetic, doesn't seem to learn anything, even by the finale (this is partly the director's fault, who hastens to show the father's progress). This tasteful treatment plays very much like a padded "Playhouse 90" TV melodrama (one with baseball park stock-shots), and Jimmy's psychoanalysis is laid out in such generic terms that he may as well have been suffering from migraines. Still, some good dramatic moments ultimately make the picture a worthwhile one, even though it's too workman-like and without any quirky or personal touches. **1/2 from ****