Throwing away some trash in the garage, Robbie discovers Chip's baseball card collection, and then his little league uniform. He merely thinks his younger brother was careless, but we soon learn that he has decided to quit his team because in the last game he struck out in all four at bats.
Steve behaves, I think, like a typical father of the day. He doesn't just let him quit, but he doesn't give him a lecture about quitting in any way. He talks to Chip and asks him about his reasons. Chip reluctantly tells about his striking out and it is then that Steve mildly suggests he put his older brothers to use-we learn they both were very good in baseball when they were younger.
Mike and Robbie are happy to help and we get a few scenes of them eagerly trying to give him tips and practice with him. Chip is now willing to go back to the team, and when he shows up at practice, the coach sort-of forces him to say why he is there. I can only imagine a family TV comedy today, obviously it would be a soccer coach, who as soon as he sees Chip would smile and say, "I guess seeing you here can only mean you'd like to rejoin the team?" But in 1961, Chip's coach behaved the way most coaches would have.
He sort of acted like Chip was out of place, ignoring him as he stood there, while the coach directed the rest of the boys to take various spots on the field. When Chip finally suggested he'd like to return, coach asked, "Are you saying you want to come back?" Chip responded "I guess." The coach then said, "Well come back when you're sure about it." That got Chip to man-up and directly say he wanted back and that he was sorry. The coach then told him to be at Friday's game, but he wasn't going to guarantee him a chance to play-"We'll see."
The whole show took on a totally different direction at this point. The morning of that next game saw Steve getting a phone call pleading with him to fill in as umpire for that very game that afternoon. Today's young viewers might think this unrealistic, letting a man umpire a game where his son is playing, but that happened a lot in those days and years later. When I was a young youth baseball coach, we had no assigned umpires, not even teens. Before each game, we had to ask someone from the seating area to umpire for us. They'd have no uniform, and just stood behind the pitcher and did their best. Years later, we started hiring teenagers to umpire, with a set schedule for them, and the league paid them--$2 per game.
Chip was most excited when he learned his Dad was going to umpire, figuring he'd get all the close calls in his favor-forgetting that his coach had indicated he might well not even get in the game. Steve explained to Chip, "When I'm umpiring, I'm not your father."
Chip did get to play and had another disappointment, with another life lesson learned-about following the coaching of his base coach and this part may have been cliché, but it was all handled well, I thought.
This was an interesting show to me because of my love of the game. But it was another one in this series that mostly presented a learning event in a boy's life that didn't really try to make us laugh.
I do like the fact that we saw scenes depicting the actual game, and fairly realistic scenes too. I always hated it on Leave it to Beaver where they had Wally playing sports frequently. We saw him in the locker room a time or two, and going to practice, and going to events, including track meets. But we never saw one depiction of him actually playing anything-not even a single play. They couldn't even put in some film clip depicting a track meet to make us think we were getting a glimpse of the meet. He'd leave for his "game" and the next thing we'd see is him coming home talking about how it went.
There was an episode of The Lucy Show where despite knowing little about baseball, Lucy got involved with her son's baseball game. They had baseball scenes here but they were staged so poorly it was laughable. It looked like the pitchers were 15 feet from the batters for one thing. That series was filmed in front of an audience, which greatly reduces the chances of realistic staging. My Three Sons had no studio audience so they could do a better job. The only complaint is they directed Steve to raise his left arm up high whenever he called a pitch a ball. Anyone who's ever seen a single baseball game knows that the umpire raises his right arm for a strike (as Steve did) and does not raise either arm or make a visible movement when calling a ball.
I think they presented a great lesson for any kids watching without preaching in any way. They didn't take the whole show just to get Chip back to playing-they moved along to, really two follow-up plots to the opening one. I give it a decent score of 6. Give it a few laughs and it could easily have been an 8 in my book.
Steve behaves, I think, like a typical father of the day. He doesn't just let him quit, but he doesn't give him a lecture about quitting in any way. He talks to Chip and asks him about his reasons. Chip reluctantly tells about his striking out and it is then that Steve mildly suggests he put his older brothers to use-we learn they both were very good in baseball when they were younger.
Mike and Robbie are happy to help and we get a few scenes of them eagerly trying to give him tips and practice with him. Chip is now willing to go back to the team, and when he shows up at practice, the coach sort-of forces him to say why he is there. I can only imagine a family TV comedy today, obviously it would be a soccer coach, who as soon as he sees Chip would smile and say, "I guess seeing you here can only mean you'd like to rejoin the team?" But in 1961, Chip's coach behaved the way most coaches would have.
He sort of acted like Chip was out of place, ignoring him as he stood there, while the coach directed the rest of the boys to take various spots on the field. When Chip finally suggested he'd like to return, coach asked, "Are you saying you want to come back?" Chip responded "I guess." The coach then said, "Well come back when you're sure about it." That got Chip to man-up and directly say he wanted back and that he was sorry. The coach then told him to be at Friday's game, but he wasn't going to guarantee him a chance to play-"We'll see."
The whole show took on a totally different direction at this point. The morning of that next game saw Steve getting a phone call pleading with him to fill in as umpire for that very game that afternoon. Today's young viewers might think this unrealistic, letting a man umpire a game where his son is playing, but that happened a lot in those days and years later. When I was a young youth baseball coach, we had no assigned umpires, not even teens. Before each game, we had to ask someone from the seating area to umpire for us. They'd have no uniform, and just stood behind the pitcher and did their best. Years later, we started hiring teenagers to umpire, with a set schedule for them, and the league paid them--$2 per game.
Chip was most excited when he learned his Dad was going to umpire, figuring he'd get all the close calls in his favor-forgetting that his coach had indicated he might well not even get in the game. Steve explained to Chip, "When I'm umpiring, I'm not your father."
Chip did get to play and had another disappointment, with another life lesson learned-about following the coaching of his base coach and this part may have been cliché, but it was all handled well, I thought.
This was an interesting show to me because of my love of the game. But it was another one in this series that mostly presented a learning event in a boy's life that didn't really try to make us laugh.
I do like the fact that we saw scenes depicting the actual game, and fairly realistic scenes too. I always hated it on Leave it to Beaver where they had Wally playing sports frequently. We saw him in the locker room a time or two, and going to practice, and going to events, including track meets. But we never saw one depiction of him actually playing anything-not even a single play. They couldn't even put in some film clip depicting a track meet to make us think we were getting a glimpse of the meet. He'd leave for his "game" and the next thing we'd see is him coming home talking about how it went.
There was an episode of The Lucy Show where despite knowing little about baseball, Lucy got involved with her son's baseball game. They had baseball scenes here but they were staged so poorly it was laughable. It looked like the pitchers were 15 feet from the batters for one thing. That series was filmed in front of an audience, which greatly reduces the chances of realistic staging. My Three Sons had no studio audience so they could do a better job. The only complaint is they directed Steve to raise his left arm up high whenever he called a pitch a ball. Anyone who's ever seen a single baseball game knows that the umpire raises his right arm for a strike (as Steve did) and does not raise either arm or make a visible movement when calling a ball.
I think they presented a great lesson for any kids watching without preaching in any way. They didn't take the whole show just to get Chip back to playing-they moved along to, really two follow-up plots to the opening one. I give it a decent score of 6. Give it a few laughs and it could easily have been an 8 in my book.
