A-List: Top Five Baseball Movies
By J. Don Birnam
May 14, 2015
BoxOfficeProphets.com
When it first came to me, this project was entitled “Five Best Sports Movies.” I had, in the past, found frustration with trying to settle upon, say, five best musicals of all time, or five best New York movies. But all of that angst paled in comparison with the task of trying to list the five best sports movies of all time.
First, what counts as sports? Is The Hustler, the Paul Newman pool classic, a sports movie? What about 127 Hours, a movie about hiking? Second, even if we can agree that a movie is about a sport, what counts as a movie about that sport? Is Adam Sandler’s The Waterboy a movie about sports? What about Warren Beatty’s Heaven Can Wait? Is that a movie about football or is it really about…something else? Is Jaws a movie about boating?
And, even if we could somehow agree on what counts as a bona fide sports movie (by the way, do amateur sports or college sports count?), the list would be interminable. In boxing alone one would have an obvious candidate for the best sports movie ever - Raging Bull. And Million Dollar Baby and Rocky, two Best Picture winners (boxing being the only sport with a Best Picture winner, as far as I can tell), would demand their own recognition. The basketball classic, Hoosiers, may also lay claim to the title, but few other basketball movies would share a list with that film. And from Seabiscuit to Chariots of Fire, one-offs of several particular sports would be worthy additions to an already long list.
It only made sense, therefore, to turn this into a list about the sport I know best, and the one that has been front in center of American culture from its inception - baseball. Indeed, if American movies are the sine-qua-non of the culture we export, baseball is front and center when it comes to the sports we take to other societies. More important, it became immediately obvious in researching this article that movies about baseball abound in numbers twice as large as movies about all other sports combined, no matter how loosely you define the sport.
Baseball and movies, it seems, share a connection that is unchallenged (other than, perhaps, by courtroom dramas and, today, superhero movies) in the history of both genres.
So the rules are simple: if baseball features prominently, the movie is eligible. A movie like The Town doesn’t count. Although a pivotal scene occurs at Fenway Park, the movie is not about baseball in any way. On the other hand, Fever Pitch, really a romantic comedy, counts because baseball furthers the plot each step of the way.
The honorable mentions are too long to list, but the recent Jackie Robinson biopic, 42, was solid and informative. I’m also partial to The Sandlot and Angels in the Outfield, both about the deep connection that one can build to the game as a child. The innocence with which one can approach the game of baseball as a young kid is reflected and purified in both movies, timeless pieces in their own right.
This is where it got hard. I have a list of six movies and eliminating one from the final five has been challenging. I keep waiting for a sign, a miracle of sorts, from the Kansas vs. Detroit contest playing in the background as I write this. None has come, so after much finagling I had to give Field of Dreams, the Kevin Costner classic, the last spot on the honorable mentions list. If you build it, they will come, is perhaps as misquoted as Sally Field’s “you like me, you really like” me Oscar speech. In fact, Shoeless Joe Jackson of the Black Sox Scandal told Costner “if you build it, he will come,” prophesizing that Costner’s father would appear as a ghost if he constructed a baseball field. Full of kitsch, baseball lore, and heartstring pulls, the 1989 Best Picture nominee will live in the pantheon of classic baseball movies forever.
Alas, in my opinion, there are five better baseball movies (and Kevin Costner may have his day, yet).
5. A League of Their Own
Tom Hanks, Geena Davis, Madonna, and Rosie O’Donnell - on a baseball field. This has to be the wet dream of…some demographic I can’t quite pin. But, in honesty, this movie has always brought a smile to my face. It’s World War II and many baseball players are off to war. A magnate convinces other MLB team owners to sponsor a women’s only league at this time. The themes of optimism, hope, and despair, should therefore be immediately apparent.
Yeah, the movie has all the kitsch one may expect from an early 1990s fairy tal - —the troubled hero (the alcoholic, washed-up coach played by Hanks), the recalcitrant misfit (both Madonna and Rosie’s characters), and the adorable lead facing obstacle after obstacle (Davis in one of her best performances).
The denouement, however, is anti-climatic and unexpected enough to earn this movie a mention here. The whole point, of course, was that no one was really winning in these troubled times - self-discovery and close personal bonds were the point of the whole endeavor. Simply and subtly, but also effectively, the movie conveys these emotions.
Of the ones on the list, it is the only one to have been selected for preservation in the National Film Registry, a witness to its timeless and emotional value.
4. Bull Durham
If Field of Dreams and A League of Their Own blended interpersonal drama/kitsch into the game, Bull Durham does so 10 times over and unapologetically.
Before he was the timeless Iowa farmer Ray Kinsella in Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner single-handedly reinvented the baseball movie in the late 1980s with the soft-edged quasi-rom-com, Bull Durham. A mostly washed-up catcher in the minor leagues, Costner is tasked with preparing a young Tim Robbins, a stellar pitching prospect for an unnamed team (playing with its minor league affiliate, the Durham Bulls), Costner mostly dazzles as he explores the ups and downs of the brutality of making a successful career in baseball.
Not to be forgotten, of course, is Susan Sarandon’s turn as the baseball groupie whose sexual lessons are as integral to minor leaguers’ developments as are Costner’s tough-love words. This movie, of course, gave us Sarandon and Robbins as a thing. And while Robbins is purposefully forgettable, Sarandon showed from early on why she always is so memorable as a performer.
Predictably, of course, the troubled hero gets the girl, and the young newbie goes on into the ruthless world of the media, the fans, and the seemingly random results. It’s almost as if life off the field is better, in some ways, but one really can’t stop wishing to be on it.
3. The Natural
Perhaps the most bizarre of the movies listed here, The Natural is nevertheless worthy of a mention for the on-the-field dramatics that have since become staples in sports movie.
Starring Robert Redford, Glenn Close, and Kim Basinger (in one of her earliest roles), The Natural tells the story of an aging star with a troubled past that stands in the way of his athletic glory (sound familiar?). Before it’s all said and done, The Natural lays forth themes inherent in baseball that will reverberate in future movies (the father/son exploration that appears in, say, Field of Dreams, comes to mind), all while actually making us care about the outcome of the games themselves.
And if one were looking for a truly American icon to play a part in America’s pastime, who better, then, than Robert Redford in his prime? Step aside, Mr. Costner.
2. Moneyball
Speaking of cinematic heartthrobs, Brad Pitt headlines my second favorite baseball movie of all-time. Like in other lists, I resisted making this my number one only out of the obvious derision that picking such a recent movie could cause. But, make no mistake about it, Moneyball will be hailed as a timeless movie, not just about baseball, in years to come.
Consider, first, the aspects of the movie that relate to the game itself. Whatever else you may think of sabermetrics, their appearance revolutionized the game of baseball for all time. To be able to capture their concept in an audience-friendly way like Michael Lewis did in his masterpiece book was nothing short of extraordinary. But to go from book to the big screen is a huge leap. Moneyball the movie however, succeeded brilliantly in capturing the essence of Lewis’ explanation of sabermetrics, while intertwining itself with a real-life story of human wit and wiliness.
Bennett Miller, of Foxcatcher and Capote fame, put together a solid, fast-paced and deliberate cut. But it is the brilliance of Aaron Sorkin’s script that really seals this one as a baseball great. Fresh off his experience in penning the hopeless-nature-of-life script in The Social Network, Sorkin was ready to deliver a brilliant, enthralling, yet despairing view into the world of obsession with a single, mostly hopeless goal. Moneyball, then, became a movie about so much more than just the game of baseball. It was, in a way, Sorkin’s companion piece to The Social Network - the same troubled hero, but this one actually good, if fated to the same destiny: solitary, destitute defeat. Indeed, Billy Beane’s defeat was more absolute than Zuckeberg’s, who at least had his riches. Beane, by contrast, faced the same exit from the playoffs he was doomed to when the movie began, despite his embrace of new methods, which later gave others success.
If there was a moment in movies to which “Never an Absolution” was a proper phrase, it is the iconic scene in which Brad Pitt sits in the empty Oakland As Coliseum. The saving irony of it all is the last scene, when he drives and listens to his daughter (who is singing the song she recorded for him, calling him a loser) and smiles. The Absolution, then, must come from within.
1. The Pride of the Yankees
Forgive me, however, if my homeboy fandom for the New York Yankees makes me pick the 1942 Lou Gehrig biopic classic as my favorite baseball movie of all time.
Many icons have graced the game of baseball. Lou Gehrig stands out, of course, for the real life tragedy of the disease that bears his name and took his life. The phrase “Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth” is endless in the game and also iconic in movies, if you ask a cinephile anyway.
Gary Cooper, in a brilliant turn, astutely depicts the troubles of the Iron Horse as he faces the debilitating and life-ending illness that is forever associated with him. The ubiquitous Teresa Wright (Mrs. Miniver), plays his eventual wife, and several iconic Yankees, from Babe Ruth to Bill Dickey, appear as themselves.
It was also remarkable that the movie was made just a couple of years after the events it portrayed. Today, most topics are considered off-limits (or uninteresting in the wake of their over-saturation on social media) to moviemakers, for years. Movies, to be successful today, have to provide escape. Back then, however, they depicted real life, and it is no coincidence that my top two picks in today's list depict real life baseball dramas.
In any case, The Pride of the Yankees received a then record-breaking 11 Academy Award nominations (the most by any sports movie, by far), and was widely acclaimed as faithful to the exact way in which Gehrig delivered the timeless words at Yankee Stadium. I would have to really think about it if I had to decide whether Pride is the best sports movie of all-time but, without a doubt, it is to me the best baseball movie ever to touch the silver screen.