Top 10 Baseball Movies of All-Time (pt 4)

4. Major League (1989)

"JUUUSSSTTT a bit outside"

Now this list gets serious.  Major League came out in '89, and if you went to a little league game around that time, you wouldn't need to see the movie to quote the entire script.  We start the movie learning that the owner of the Cleveland Indians has died and left it to his Vegas showgirl wife Rachel Phelps (Margaret Whitton) who hates the city and plans to move the team to Florida.  She goes about hiring the worst players she can find; Jake Taylor (Tom Berenger) is an aging, washed-up catcher playing in the Mexican League; Roger Dorn (Corben Bernsen), an arrogant half-asser is the loan remainder from the previous season at third base; Willie Mays Hayes (Wesley Snipes) is a speedy centerfielder who wasn't even invited to training camp; and Ricky "Wild Thing" Vaughn (Charlie Sheen) is a ex-con pitcher with a nasty uncontrollable fastball.  Bob Uecker is a quote machine as Harry Doyle, the Indians radio announcer.  The loser team rallies around their hatred for Phelps in their quest to win the pennant and make us laugh.  This movie spawned two unwatchable sequels (Major League 2, and Major League: Back to the Minors) which pretty much followed the same script, minus the laughter.

3. The Natural (1984)

"It took me 16 years to get here. You play me, and I'll give ya the best I got"

I don't know if Bernard Malamud spent billions on a secret lab full of scientists and sportswriters to come up with the perfect baseball name, but "Roy Hobbs" just sounds like a ballplayer.  The Natural is based on Malamud's 1952 book of the same name, and follows 19 year old Hobbs (played by 48 year-old Robert Redford) as he leaves the family farm to pitch in the majors.  After striking out The Whammer (a Babe Ruth clone) in a carnival exhibition, he is shot by a mysterious woman for mysterious reasons.  He disappears from baseball before ever arriving, only to reappear 16 years later as a 35 rookie outfielder for the lowly New York Knights.  The story evokes themes from both the Aurhurian Myths of Sir Percival, Homer's Odyssey, and good old fashioned baseball.  It sounds a little high-brow for a baseball movie, but is saved by the fact Wilford Brimley plays coach Pop Fisher.