The Pride of the Yankees (1942)

Directed by Sam Wood

It’s October, and my favorite team, the Saint Louis Cardinals, is preparing for another run at the World Series. If we’re lucky, the most storied club in the National League (well, Dodger fans, I do think we edge you out) will meet the most storied club in the American League, the Yankees. They last did so in 1964, when I was a little boy, before I knew anything about baseball. The Cardinals, behind the arm of Bob Gibson, won that series, 4 games to 3. To this day, the Cardinals are the only team that has played the Yankees in the World Series more than once and that have a winning record against them, taking the Series in 1926, 1942, and 1964, and losing to them in 1928 and 1943.
This week’s film is the story of one of the finest men ever to walk on a baseball diamond, Lou Gehrig. It comes from a time when baseball was everywhere: schools, factories, neighborhoods, farms, every small town, every big city. And the story of Lou Gehrig, told pretty straightforwardly in th…