I really miss baseball. In the meantime, these great baseball flicks will have to tide us over.
Last Thursday would have been Opening Day and today would have been my favorite team, the St. Louis Cardinals', home opener. Opening day at Busch Stadium is magical. It is a unique St. Louis spectacle and I hope to witness it in person one day. The world famous Budweiser Clydesdale horses parade around the warning track with Cardinals Hall of Famers in tow. From Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, and Ozzie Smith to Chris Carpenter, Jim Edmonds, and Willie McGee, there's truly nothing like it. I miss seeing Stan Musial (big time RIP) reenact his sweet swing at home plate. I miss Yadi throwing out would be base runners. I miss the bat flips and the strike out struts. I miss walk off home runs and a sweet double play ball. I hope it is back soon.
But in the meantime, movies about baseball will have to do. This is always a hotly contested list, and in my opinion, baseball has the strongest list of movies top to bottom of any sport. I'm going to give you my top 5, some honorable mentions, and one that I just absolutely despise. As always with these, I'll clip in some of my favorite scenes and tell you where they can be streamed!
Let's just start with the baseball movie I despise the most and that is Rookie of the Year. As a kid, this movie MIGHT be fine to fantasize pitching in the major leagues as a 12 year old. But the kid is a closer and there is no possible way that a closing pitcher can have such an impact on a team that he turns them into the World Series champions. That's just not possible. And Gary Busey's starting pitcher was throwing like what, every day? I'm sorry, I'll suspend a lot of belief in some movies but a 12 year old closer is not turning the Cubs into champions. Ok now let's get into the good stuff.
Honorable Mention: 42, The Bad News Bears, Major League 2, A League of Their Own, Mr. Baseball
Major Leage 2 gets a bad rep for some reason but I still really enjoy it. 42 just misses the cut here. It is so great, Chadwick Boseman is phenomenal as Jackie Robinson and so is Harrison Ford as Branch Rickey. 42 doesn't get nearly enough love from the baseball movie community.
5. Field of Dreams (Watch now on Hulu!)
Kevin Costner has the baseball movies down to a science. Field of Dreams is a mix of fantasy and baseball and everything that makes old Hollywood magical. It's the best type of sentimental. When Iowa corn farmer Ray (played by Costner) starts hearing voices coming out of his corn field saying, "If you build it, he will come," he starts plowing up his corn so that Shoeless Joe Jackson can come and play baseball on the diamond he is going to build. Everyone thinks he's a nut and he's going broke, and no one except for Ray can see Shoeless Joe and the rest of the 1919 Black Sox. Ray had a contentious relationship with his late father, whom he quit playing catch with at the age of 14, but when he builds his cornfield baseball field, his father finds his way onto that magical diamond. This movie will 100% make you cry. MLB was supposed to play a Field of Dreams game this year in Iowa with the White Sox and Yankees but that may now be in jeopardy. I hope not!
4. The Sandlot (Amazon Prime)
Talk about nostalgia. The Sandlot is as all-American as a movie can get. Baseball, swimming pools, the 4th of July, tobacco, county fairs, Babe Ruth, bike rides, treehouses, big dogs, and s'mores. Kids love the movie and adults love to remember what it was like to be a kid. Nothing has ever been as accurate as the gang trying chewing tobacco before riding the Tilt-a-Whirl and getting sick to the point of vomiting. Every boy wanted to be Benny the Jet and every girl had a crush on him. James Earl Jones just loves being in baseball movies as this is his second appearance on this list. Everyone has seen The Sandlot so there's not much else I have to say about it, but it is just a good old fashioned American coming of age movie.
3. Bull Durham (Amazon Prime)
If you read my list of top rom coms that I posted for Valentine's Day, then you already have an idea of why I love Bull Durham so much. Tying James Earl Jones is Kevin Costner with his second appearance on the list as washed up AAA catcher Crash Davis. Crash tries his best to mentor the dim witted, but flame throwing Nuke Laloosh (played by Tim Robbins) while also finding himself mixed up in a love triangle with Nuke and Annie Savoy (played by Susan Sarandon). No movie gets minor league baseball as right as Bull Durham. A bunch of ballplayers just trying to get by and get a crack at the big leagues. There are so many great and hilarious quotes and the best is Crash's speech to Annie about what he believes in that leaves her speechless. But that's more on the romantic side so I clipped in a baseball scene of Nuke "announcing his presence with authority." I don't think enough people my age have seen Bull Durham and that needs to change!
2. Major League (Amazon Prime)
Who among us hasn't put ourselves into Rick "Wild Thing" Vaughn's shoes, as he tries to get the final out to send the game to the bottom of the ninth? Or imagined we were in a situation where a walk off would send your team home victorious just like Jake Taylor? We all have! Major League is so good, I wish I could clip the whole movie in here. Every line Bob Uecker delivers in the press box is golden. Charlie Sheen was so dedicated to this movie that he learned how to pitch effectively from the windup for it and was actually really good! The cast of characters put together in Major League is what makes it so great. The owner, Rachel Phelps, wants the team to do so badly that no one comes so she can move the team to Florida and replace all the players. Manager Lou Brown (RIP James Gammon) has to get his rag tag team to win the pennant so that won't happen. And what a team it is. Troubled young flamethrower from the "California penal league" Rick Vaughn (Sheen), aging catcher Jake Taylor (Tom Berenger), speedy Willy Mays Hayes who "plays like Mays, runs like Hayes" (Wesley Snipes), pretty boy third baseman Roger Dorn (Corbin Bernsen), and fastball masher/voodoo worshiper Pedro Cerrano (Dennis Haysbert) make up the roster. Major League is hilarious and I also enjoy Jake Taylor's subplot love story with Renee Russo's character. Bring back Chief Wahoo!
1. Moneyball (Hulu)
If you know me or you have spent any time on my blog website then this shouldn't come as a surprise. A picture of the movie is on the page and I am a big ole NERD. Moneyball is not only my favorite baseball movie, it is one of my favorite movies of all time. I love the analytical side of baseball and Oakland Athletic's General Manager, Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt) is one of the leading innovators of thinking against conventional baseball wisdom. Brad Pitt is so freaking good, as is Jonah Hill who plays economics major Peter Brand in the movie. The character's real life name is Paul DePodesta and he is currently the chief strategy officer for the Cleveland Browns. A job in an MLB front office like this is exactly what I wanted to do with my business degree. People also forget that this movie helped launch Chris Pratt into stardom. Before this he was just the funny fat guy on Parks and Recreation. He got shredded for the part of first baseman Scott Hatteberg and never looked back and now he's a Guardian of the Galaxy. Philip Seymour Hoffman (major RIP) was so good as manager Art Howe, and Brent Jennings had my favorite small role in this movie as Ron Washington. His lines to Hatteberg about learning to play first base are so dang funny. But Brad Pitt is at his absolute best in this movie. The scenes where he rips into all the scouts that are analyzing players based on how ugly their girlfriends are while they try to replace Giambi, Damon, and Isringhausen are priceless. Baseball is a sport yes, but like every other sport, it is a business and a cut throat one at that. Innovation, change, and creative thinking are essential for small market teams like the Athletics to survive and compete. Now, nearly every major league team has an analytics department if they want to be successful, but there are still old heads (whom I occasionally fight with on twitter) that hate the new wave, just like the scouts in Moneyball that butt heads with Billy Beane. Moneyball makes me cry, there's no real reason it should, but it does when Billy is trying to decide if he wants to leave Oakland for Boston in 2003. (Boston would use the sabermetric approach in 2004 when they swept the Cardinals in the World Series. Maybe that's why I cry.) But he stayed in Oakland and is still trying to win the World Series. I truly hope he does one day!
So there you have my top 5 favorite baseball movies. These are MY favorites, yours may be different and that's ok! That's what makes talking about movies fun! Let me know what your favorite baseball movies are in the comments.I'll get back to the Throwback Thursday Netflix Reviews next week because Hot Rod has been requested! Be sure to like and subscribe to Drive in Double!
How can you not be romantic about baseball?
- BH
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