AllMovie

The popularity of MGM's Slide, Kelly, Slide led to a brief cycle of baseball pictures in 1927. Warner Bros.' contribution was The Bush Leaguer, starring Monte Blue as small-town garage owner and would-be inventor Specs White. Though he's the local ball team's star pitcher, Specs is more interested in puttering on his latest invention, a high-tech gas pump. When Lefty Murphy (William Wilson), a scout for the Los Angeles Angels, offers Specs a contract, our hero accepts, hoping to use his salary to finance his invention. Terrified of large crowds, Specs overcomes his phobia with the help of the Angels' pretty owner Alice Hobbs (Leila Hyams). Alice nearly drops Specs like a bad habit when she is led to believe that he's accepted a bribe to throw the Big Game, but Specs comes through with a winning homer in the last reel. The Bush Leaguer was unofficially remade in 1932 as the Joe E. Brown starrer Fireman Save My Child.