Take Me Out to the Ball Game [VHS]
"From the moment you picked up that grounder and threw it to third, I  knew it was love." Baseball and romance make a nifty double play inTake Me  Out to the Ball Game, a bright bauble from the golden age of MGM musicals.  The premise is a stretch: two members of a turn-of-the-century baseball team  (Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra) are vaudeville performers in the off-season.  Their ballclub is inherited by Esther Williams, causing much consternation among  the boys and anticipating the plot line ofMajor Leagueby 40 years.Since swimming star Williams was always seen to best advantage dripping wet, the  movie finds a way to get her into a hotel pool. Kelly, mugging mercilessly,  executes an extended Irish solo dance (take that,Riverdance), and  Sinatra, whose skinny frame is the source of many jokes in the script, is  pursued by the irrepressible Betty Garrett and croons the ballad "The Right Girl  for Me."None of this is remotely plausible, and the Comden-Green songs don't stand the  test of time, but the film is buoyant--and the period costumes and dazzling  Technicolor are eye-popping. This was a reunion for Sinatra and Kelly afterAnchors Aweigh(1945), and they would quickly team up again in the  superiorOn the Town(1949), alongsideTake Me Outcostars Garrett  and looming Jules Munshin. As in those films, Sinatra and Kelly dancing side-by- side are a delightful spectacle: Kelly effortlessly hitting his marks while  Sinatra gamely tries to keep up.Take Me Out to the Ball Gamewas the  last film directed by the legendary director-choreographer Busby Berkeley, who  gets just one shot at a huge production number, a pseudo-Rodgers and Hammerstein  tune, "Strictly U.S.A." Peanuts and Cracker Jack not included.--Robert  Horton