I Will Buy You (1956) review

Baseball scout Kishimoto (Keiji Sada) is trying to recruit talented college player Kurita (Minoru Ōki) to play for the team he works for, the Toyo Flowers, but it isn't even close to easy: rival teams want him too and there are people to bribe, gifts to give, lies to tell and so on.  Any point it wanted to make about behind-the-scenes corruption is more or less brought up in the first act, which means the rest of it is kind of a drag - it doesn't even take much time to look into the sport itself, instead reveling in its own disdain ... which is no doubt common even today.  The implication that this is all "America's fault" because we introduced them to our "National Pastime" is fair, I suppose, but human nature is what it is and there's no altering that....