Well, the MLB playoffs are heating up so this week here at Rob's Big Ideas we will be featuring a list of the best baseball movies ever made (as voted by me.) I've only included movies I've seen, as there are maybe 2 baseball movies ever made that I have not seen, so this is not an all-inclusive list. Let's see how well I, and you, remember these movies about the great american pastime.
10. Bang the Drum Slowly (1973)
"Skip the facts, just give me the details."
Released in 1973, and based on the 1956 Mark Harris novel, this film starred Michael Moriarty as Henry "Author" Wiggen, a veteran pitcher for the fictional New York Mammoths, and his friendship with his dim-witted catcher Bruce Pearson (an unkown actor named Robert De Niro) who has been diagnosed with Hodgkin's Disease. The movie works a little sad, but really seems to capture the life of ball players back in the days before free agency, agents, and out-of-the-world salaries. For instance, because of their low pay, the ball players have come up with a card game called tegwar (The Exciting Game Without Any Rules) that they play in hotel lobbies to scam other patrons out of money, and Henry is often seen trying to sell insurance to his teammates (his offseason job). A touching tear-jerker-for-the-fellas, I consider this the "
Brian's Song" of baseball movies.
9. The Bad News Bears (1976)
"All we got on this team are a buncha' jews, spics, niggers, pansies and a booger-eatin' moron"
The original Bad News Bears starred Walter Matthau as Morris Buttermaker, a former minor league player and current alcoholic, who has been hired to coach a little league team that has been added due to lawsuits charging that underskilled children are not being allowed to join teams in the league. Morris inherits a team of misfits and outcasts that lose their first game 26-0 without getting an out. He recruits an ex-girlfriend's daughter, Amanda Hurlitzer (Tatum O'Neal) as his star pitcher. He then finds the best athlete in the area, 12 year old Kelly Leach (Jackie Earle Haley, or
Rorschach) who rides a Harley, smokes cigarettes, and hangs out around the ballpark because "there's a lot of nice ass at the field". It was written by Burt Lancaster's son Bill Lancaster and spawned 2 more movies, Bad News Bears in Breaking Training (1977), Bad News Bears Go to Japan (1978), a CBS television series from '79 to '80, and a decent 2005 remake starring Billy Bob Thorton.
8. A League of Their Own (1992)
"Are you crying? There's no crying in baseball!"
This star packed feature directed by
Laverne, tells the story of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) that was formed in 1943 while most MLB stars were fighting in WWII. It follows Dottie Henson (Geena Davis) as she and her kid sis Kit Keller (Lori Petty) join the Rockford Peaches and manager Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks) for the first season of the fledgling league. Rosie O'Donnell as Doris Murphy and Madonna as "All the Way" Mae Mordabito round out the cast of lady ballplayers. Most of the comedy comes from the changing perception of the stereotypical female in the 40's set against the masculine backdrop of baseball. There's something immediately funny thinking about your grandmother's clubhouse etiquette.
7. Eight Men Out (1988)
"Say it ain't so, Joe"
In 1919, 8 Chicago White Sox players took money from gangsters to throw the World Series. This is their story. This movie really centers around Buck Weaver (John Cusack) and his story that he never took any money, and never attempted to throw any games. Of the other 7 players, we have Eddie Cicotte (David Straitharn), "Shoeless" Joe Jackson (D.B. Sweeney) and "Hap" Felsch (Charlie Sheen). The other players play mostly incidental spots in this version. The entire incident is commonly known as the "Black Sox Scandal." This term is quite ironic, as the label "Black Sox" had been used for years before the scandal due to owner/cheap-ass Charlie Comisky's policy of making the players wash their own uniforms because he did not want to pay the laundry bill, resulting in stained uniforms. This was before free-agency, and baseball had an anti-trust agreement with the U.S. government, so players were basically slaves. They had to take the meager pay, or not have a job. I think I'd have taken the money, too.
6. 61* (2001)
"He hit 40 homeruns last year, a lot of players would kill for that kind of "off" season"
This HBO movies was directed by Billy Crystal and starred Barry Pepper as Roger Maris, Thomas Jayne as Mickey Mantle, and Anthony Michael Hall as Whitey Ford. It followed the story of the "M&M Boy's" 1961 chase to beat Babe Ruth's single season record of 60 home runs. The Mick was everybody's favorite ballplayer, while Maris was a quiet newcomer to New York. Despite being the league MVP in '60, the New York media buried Maris for his quiet demeanor and strict non-MickeyMantleness. This movie showed an unflattering, and honest look at the "all-american" Mickey Mantle as a womanizing drunk with a mouth like a sailor, which plays an "Odd Couple" theme in contrast to Maris's ah-shucks, family-centric sense of morals. Maris comes off as sweet and tragic while Mickey comes off as awesome and tragic.
"Anyone who wants to be a can't-hack-it pantywaist who wears their mama's bra, raise your hand"
This movie would have been almost as awesome as "The Goonies" had it come out 7 years earlier. Taking place in 1962, it follows 12 year-old Scotty Smalls as he moves to a new neighborhood in L.A. and befriends a group of kids who play small-ball in an empty lot. They don't hit homeruns because over the outfield fence is a ferocious dog named Hercules, and they have only one ball. One day Benny "The Jet" Rodriguez knocks the cover off the ball, so Scotty runs home and grabs his stepfather's ball that is autographed by "some girl" (Babe Ruth), which he promptly hits over the fence, into the dog's territory. Fiascos ensue, and James Earl Jones appears as a former Negro League player, and tells us why baseball is good.
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.
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.