Tailor-made material for director John Ford, "Flashing Spikes" presented in 1962 on TV's "Alcoa Premiere" is pure Americana, a heartwarming and dramatic story about the national pastime, Baseball. The script even manages to integrate a subplot about the Korean War, also right up Ford's alley considering his World War II fiction and documentary films.
James Stewart, starring in Ford's classic "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" the same year as this show, is great casting as the disgraced major leaguer who was banned after being accused of taking a bribe, who ends up becoming an arm's-length sort of mentor for a new hot prospect played by Patrick Wayne. The story concerns an evil sportscaster (flamboyantly and hissably played by Carleton Young), who accuses Wayne many decades later of the same crime leading to a government hearing presided over by Jack Warden to get to the bottom of the matter.
Ford elicits lively performances from a very fine cast and directs the show with verve, pacing and spirit reminiscent of some 1930s movie, in a way more Capra-esque than Ford, befitting the material.
Watching the show for the first time over 60 years after broadcast, I was thrilled by the overdose of pure nostalgia. Young back then, Vin Scully on screen as the baseball announcer during the show, now has a career that is part of history just as the careers of Ford and Stewart are. And who better to host the show than Fred Astaire, in the status of a fan, but a fan who brings with him a legacy in many ways even greater than his colleagues.
