A based-on-fact story of Jimmy Piersall, a major league player of the 1950s who suffered what looks like a major depression with some paranoid ideas. Not much could be done with major league mental illnesses at the time, before the French accidentally discovered anti-psychotic meds. The movie ends, as all such movies do whenever possible, on an up-beat note with Piersall (Tony Perkins) returning to the Red Sox after defeating his demons.

I have no idea how closely the movie sticks to the real facts of Piersall's life, but it certainly hews close to the formula line. Basically, everything is blamed on Piersall's father (Karl Malden),who pushed the kid too hard, brutally sometimes, to excel. Nothing would do but that Piersall not only play for the Sox but that he play the OUTFIELD. Shortstop wasn't good enough. Poor kid. While still in the minors, in Scranton, he brags to his pop that he's the third highest hitter in the league. Malden smiles and says, "Well, that's not first." Think about that, next time your kid comes home with a B plus on his report card. You want to drive him nuts? I don't doubt that Piersall's father was pushy about his son's training and career. For all we know there may be as many sports fathers as there are stage mothers. But it seems a bit unfair to make him the sole heavy. It's not easy to drive someone crazy, not as easy as it seems in the movies anyway. It helps a lot, especially with major affective disorders, if you bring something genetic to the party, as numerous studies have shown. Not that genetics explains everything, because one identical twin may "get it" while the other doesn't.

Anyway, the movie isn't very satisfying, as a movie. The director, Robert Mulligan, has done better work elsewhere. And Tony Perkins gives a by-the-numbers performance as a madman, with his facial muscles trembling and his eyes bulging. How primitive can you get? He was a much better (if entirely different) kind of psychotic in "Psycho." An improved script might have helped him. Malden is okay as the well-meaning but destructive father whom Perkins finally tells off at the cathartic climax. Perkins' wife's role is underwritten and doesn't contribute much as Malden's potential rival.

It would have been nice too if we'd seen a little more about baseball, the sport and the career ladder, and less of the formulaic material on having a breakdown. At least your performance on the baseball diamond is something you can do something about. In the grip of mental illness like Piersall's, you're practically helpless, and that's not too dramatic.

My favorite series of baseball cards as a kid was the 1958 Topps set, and I remember having a Jim Piersall in the mix. So that was two years after this film came out, and I never knew about Piersall's struggle with mental illness until a little while ago, prompting me to seek out this picture. Once the story gets under way, it reveals a rather simplistic yet very real trauma in the life of young Piersall, a domineering father vicariously living his dreams through the efforts and success of his son. Karl Malden and Anthony Perkins effectively portray their respective characters, and the story pretty much see-saws it's way between Jimmy's attempts to live up to his father's expectations and generally failing to meet them. When Jimmy proudly declares he's third in the minor leagues in hitting, Dad's response is "Well, that isn't first". There's only so much of that you can take.

Interestingly, there were understated references to the idea that mom Piersall (Perry Wilson) was also troubled with bouts of depression and mental illness. Her frequent absences from home and family was mentioned a couple times, and I took that as a subtle hint that young Piersall might have been prone to his condition by virtue of heredity and reinforced by the demands of the father. Another reviewer mentions this, and though I haven't verified it myself, it was something that crossed my mind while watching the film.

One thing that could have been handled better by the film makers would have been to put the story into a historical time line. As I mentioned earlier, I can place Piersall in context playing baseball during my own youth, but it would have been helpful if the movie offered places and dates with on screen graphics. For example, Piersall reached the Majors in 1950 after signing on with the Red Sox organization a couple of years earlier. No mention of teammates or well known opposing players was ever mentioned, thereby missing an opportunity to depict how others around him were reacting to his behavior. We did get that one fight near the dugout and the climb up the fencing to set up his hospitalization but a little more context would have been helpful.

I thought Anthony Perkins was pretty effective in his portrayal here; he gets those spooky eyes every now and then like the time he found himself alone at night in the empty stadium. I could see how it was the sort of thing that would recommend him for the role of stuffing birds in Hitchcock's "Psycho". As for the real life Jimmy Piersall who's still alive, he went on to a fairly successful big league career encompassing seventeen seasons. It was with a bit of whimsical insight that he wrote in his autobiography - "Probably the best thing that ever happened to me was going nuts. Who ever heard of Jimmy Piersall, until that happened?"

As a previous reviewer said Anthony Perkins did not exactly look like Frank Merriwell out on the field during the baseball scenes, but the film is about the true story of Boston Red Sox centerfielder Jimmy Piersall who sustained a nervous breakdown and then came back to have a pretty respectable major league career.

Showing the personal road Piersall took towards that breakdown is where Anthony Perkins gives one of his great film performances. This film is a lot like I'll Cry Tomorrow where Jo Van Fleet was pushing the career of her daughter Susan Hayward as Lillian Roth so she could have the success that her daughter had vicariously.

That's where the other great performance in the film comes in. Karl Malden is the baseball father, someone with the same dreams, that his son become a major league ballplayer. Malden's success involved being on his factory team, he wanted more and when he couldn't have it drove his son relentlessly to learn the skills and make the grade. But it was some price for Piersall to pay.

I remember Jimmy Piersall as a player when I was a lad. He played for the Red Sox in the years of the Casey Stengel Yankee juggernaut. He was a good contact hitter, didn't hit much for power, but played a flawless centerfield. The Red Sox in the Fifties had little to cheer about. There was a pitching staff of Mel Parnell and a bunch of nobodies. There infield was from hunger with the exception of third baseman Frank Malzone who came up in 1956 the last year Parnell played. But the outfield gave New England something to cheer about with Piersall in center, Jackie Jensen in right, and Ted Williams playing with his back to the Green Monster in left. Piersall covered so much ground in center field he made it real easy on both Williams and Jensen. The Red Sox let him go to the expansion Los Angeles Angels in 1961 where he finished his career. Still he's a Red Sox legend.

The story had been previously done on TV's Climax Theater with Tab Hunter as Piersall. In his recent memoirs Tab said that he had hoped to do the screen version. At the time he was involved in a relationship with Anthony Perkins. Unbeknownst to Hunter, Perkins lobbied and got the part in the film. That sort of put a damper on the relationship.

I also echo other reviewers in wishing that some of Piersall's teammates and others in the Red Sox organization had been portrayed. Only Joe Cronin who was the General Manager at the time is shown on the screen. Legendary owner Tom Yawkey is not portrayed and that is a pity.

Interestingly enough Piersall may have gotten his chance with the Red Sox because of Joe Cronin's racist policies. The Red Sox were the last team in the major leagues to integrate. I remember that very well when Pumpsie Green became their first black player two years after Fear Strikes Out was released.

Fear Strikes Out is unfortunately a two person show with Perkins and Malden the only really developed characters in the film. But those are two very talented persons indeed.