Top 10 Baseball Movies of All-Time (pt 5)

2. Field of Dreams (1989)

"It's okay, honey.  I... I was just talking to the cornfield."

You thought the quote would be "If you build it, he will come" didn't you. This movie about an Iowa farmer with daddy issues having a midlife crisis is based on W.P. Kinsella's novel "Shoeless Joe."  The studio actually refused to use the book title as the movie title because they were afraid the movie-going public would think it was about a homeless guy.  All the homeless guys I know have shoes, silly studios.  Not so much about baseball as it is about life (as stated on the VHS tape jacket), it stars Kevin Costner as Ray Kinsella, Ray Liotta as Shoeless Joe Jackson, and James Earl Jones as Terry Mann (an author that was J.D. Salinger in the book version.)  A voice tells Ray to build a ballfield on his Iowa farm so that Shoeless Joe can return.  The ghosts of the 1919 White Sox (rember Eight Men Out from earlier?) walk out of the cornfield to play baseball, something apparently not offered in heaven. Ray keeps hearing the voice and doing it's bidding, until the final scene, where he asks "what's in it for me?," and Joe points to the catcher, some words are said, and everyone cries.

1. Bull Durham (1988)

"This a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains."

Here comes Kevin Costner again, as Crash Davis, journeyman minor league catcher who hands out wisdom like some sort of life-experience dispensing ATM machine.  Susan Surandon  plays Annie Savoy, an aging groupie, who hands out sex like some sort of sex dispensing ATM machine.  She is however, in the pretext of the baseball season, monogamous.   Every season she picks one of the ball players on the Durham Bulls minor league team, has a relationship with them, and then they move on.  She is considered a good-luck charm, as not a ballplayer yet has not had their finest season when he is with her.  This year it is young hard-throwing pitcher Ebby Calvin "Nuke" LaLoosh (Tim Robbins).  Crash happens to be brought in to tudor young Nuke.  The sexual tension between Crash and Annie is played out through their mutual control over Nuke.  This film makes you want to spend a summer on a bus in the Carolina Leagues.  It looks like baseball, feels like baseball, and smells like pinetar.