The Top 10 Baseball Movies
The Natural and Bull Durham Top the List of Great Baseball Films
That's right. Baseball movies have been made for the past 109 years. In order to avoid getting stuck with John Goodman's portrayal of the Babe, here are the ten best.
The first baseball movie ever made was produced by Thomas Edison in 1898, and featured two amateur New Jersey ballclubs playing their hearts out in a nine inning game. The first "real" feature baseball movie was "Right off the Bat," which was released in 1915. Since then, America has produced over 250 baseball movies. So you won't have to watch all 250, here is a nice, compact list of the Ten Best Baseball Movies ever.
10. Bang the Drum Slowly
This film is the baseball version of "Brian's Song." It focuses on the friendship between a star major league pitcher and his journeyman catcher, who is dying from cancer. It started a period of great modern baseball movies and is still regarded by many as one of the best. The movie stars a very young Michael Moriarty as the star pitcher and an even younger Robert DeNiro as the dying catcher. It's a truly touching film. That's why it makes the Top Ten Baseball Movie list.
9. A League of Their Own
The movie is more about women fighting for their rights than the game on the field, but the film is funny, heartfelt, and all of the women are very good ballplayers, epecially Geena Davis. Tom Hanks' turn as Manager Jimmy Dugan is one of the funniest performances of all time and it gave us the now famous line "There's no crying in baseball!" That little outburst became a pricelss addition to the American vernacular and the Top Ten Baseball Movies.
8. *61
Because it was a movie that was made for HBO and not the silver screen, this film never got the credit that it deserves. The movie focuses on the 1961 Home Run Race between the "M&M Boys," Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle, as the teammates approach Babe Ruth's sacred single season home run record. Director Billy Crystal injects the baseball scenes with a realism and an excitement not found in many baseball flicks. He also handles Mantle's alcoholism and infidelities with great deft and tact. It's a great movie.
7. Bad News Bears
The best pure baseball comedy, this movie reminded everyone what Little League was really like. Walter Matthau and Tatum O'Neal were perfect in their roles, and all of the foul-mouthed kids fit together beautifully. Especially the Great Tanner Boyle. Don't hold it against this movie that it gave birth to such disasters as "The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training" and "The Bad News Bears Go to Japan," which somehow starred Tony Curtis.
6. Eight Men Out
A thoroughly modern look back at a simpler time, this movie does not romanticize baseball's history and captures the time of the 1919 Black Sox scandal in an authentic way. John Sayles wrote and directed the movie, based on a the award-winning book by Eliot Asinof, and does a great job of bringing the complexity of the story to the screen. A great cast (including John Cusack, David Strathairn and John Mahoney) helps as well.
5. Field of Dreams
Only the hopelessly cynical aren't sucked in by this movie, which captures the mystical hold that baseball can have over people. Kevin Costner, Ray Liotta and the rest of the cast are great in this adaptation of W.P. Kinsella's novel "Shoeless Joe." It seems that everyone latches on to something different as their favorite part or as the message of the film. Like baseball itself, it's a simple movie that also proves to be wonderfully complex.
4. Pride of the Yankees
Much is made about Gary Cooper (as Lou Gehrig) not really being lefthanded, but in this movie it hardly matters. Yes, it's a hopelessly sentimental movie, but it was made in a different age and is easily the best and most respected of the baseball melodramas. And at the end, when Cooper gives Gehrig's famous "luckiest man on the face of the earth" speech, you'll weep like a little girl who just stubbed her toe.
3. Long Gone
When this tiny movie was made over twenty years ago, Virginia Madsen, William Petersen, and Dermot Mulroney were relatively unkown. Today, Madsen is a former Academy Award Nominee, Petersen just left the biggest show on television in years, and Mulroney has become a fine comedy and character actor. "Long Gone" is the most authentic snapshot ever taken about the Minor Leagues. It follows the up-and-comers who dream of making the show, and it also looks into the heart of Petersen's character, Stud Cantrell, who was headed for a great Major League career until he took a blast of shrapnel to his knee in World War II. Watch it. It is the third Best Baseball Movie ever.
2. Bull Durham
"Bull Durham" is the most authentic portrayal of the game, both on and off the field. Baseball is revered, but it is also kept in perspective. One of the messages seems to be that baseball is a great game, and we love it, but it is still just a game. Costner is at his best as veteran catcher and amateur philosopher Crash Davis. Tim Robbins delivers his funniest performance ever, and Susan Sarandon portrays Annie Savoy with a knowledge of baseball and a smoldering sensuality that make her irresistible. The movie was written and directed by former minor league baseball player Ron Shelton, who does all of the little things right (like the time Costner floods the field with the sprinklers to get a "rainout" for his slumping team.)
1. The Natural
This movie tends to divide people's opinions. It's a sentimental view of a flawed slugger and the even more flawed economic and gambling systems that often conspire to corrupt the game. "The Natural" is based on a novel by Bernard Malamud and features a strong cast led by Robert Redford, Kim Basinger, Robert Duvall, Michael Madsen and the late Darrin McGavin. Many baseball romantics love it and see it as a great fable. The more jaded fans say that the movie is pollyanic and simplistic. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, even if that opinion is wrong.
There they are: the Ten Best Baseball Movies of all time.
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