Coming between Anchors Aweigh and On the Town, Take Me Out to the Ball Game is the least accomplished of the three Frank Sinatra-Gene Kelly pictures, but it's still fun And the setting, at least, is fairly unique for a musical. It also boasts one of the busier plots of any 1940s musical -- and yet it really all adds up to just a series of connected incidents rather than a real story. This is driven home when the picture abruptly (and oddly) ends with a lyric telling the audience "the love scene must be played out/before the final fade-out" and referring to the actors by their real names rather than their character names. Still, it's mostly a fast-paced affair, and the musical sequences pack in plenty of entertainment. There's only one trademark Busby Berkeley production number, "Strictly USA," but "O'Brien to Ryan to Goldberg," "It's Fate, Baby, It's Fate" and "The Right Girl for Me" are all nicely done. Kelly is cocky and acrobatic, and Sinatra has his reluctant lover routine down pat. Betty Garrett bats home her one-liners like the pro she is, and even Esther Williams comes off well here. The movie also has that great, sometimes-gaudy visual sheen that one expects from an MGM musical. Although he would continue to work sporadically as a choreographer, Berkeley would direct only one more musical.