Safe at Home! (1962)

There were a number of sweet family films made in the early 1960s and Safe at Home! is one of them. It was released by Columbia Pictures in 1962. The film was publicized as a light-hearted comedy but there really is very little comedy about it, it is just a simple story of a little boy who wants to see his heroes Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris so he can ask them to visit his little league baseball team. This little boy "Hutch" was admirably played by Bryan Russell (the Bye,Bye, Birdie boy) who was making his film debut. Hutch's father (Don Collier) runs a charter boat business in Florida and has very little time to watch his son play baseball. When another boy teases Hutch that his father knows nothing at all about baseball, Hutch tells a whopper of a lie: that his father knows everything about baseball and his best friends are Yankees players Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris. The entire little league and their coach hear about this and ask Hutch to bring the all-stars to see one of their…