Opening day of the 2011-12 Major League Baseball season is tomorrow and while I’m not exactly a big baseball fan, that is unless someone has tickets to the Mariners, baseball tends to be one of the few sports that translates well to the big screen. I assume this is because it moves in short bursts and isn’t action packed such as basketball or football. Plus when it comes to depicting baseball strategy on the big screen they are most often able to boil it down to a strike out, home run or a stolen base. It’s a bit easier to dramatize something when you don’t have to worry about explaining zone defense or what it means when a team puts in a nickel package.
As such, there are far more great baseball movies than there are for most any other sport. Boxing may be the one sport to hold the overall edge, and probably because it doesn’t need balls, strikes or home runs… just a knockout. But that’s not really important right now. Inspired by Kevin’s Weekly Alternatives post yesterday, I was looking back through the baseball films I’ve seen and wondered which ones bubbled to the top.
As far as I’m concerned there are really two baseball films that immediately come to mind any time the sport and movies are brought up in the same sentence: The Natural (1984) and Major League (1989). I’m not saying these two are the best, but just that they are probably my two most favorite.
Back when HBO ran what seemed like only three films a month I think I watched The Natural damn near every day, loving it every time Roy Hobbs hit that final homer somehow causing every light in the stadium to explode into a dramatic sea of sparks. It made no sense, but damn it was good drama. Major League came out when I was twelve, but I think it was about four years later that I recorded it off HBO and watched it every night for almost a month straight. I could recite every line in the film and still enjoy it today.
Field of Dreams (1989) and A League Of Their Own (1992) are also a couple favorites, but I was never a huge fan, like everyone else, of Bull Durham (1988). I’d put it in the “good not great” category.
The Sandlot (1993) is good for a kid flick, but I won’t be returning to it and Eight Men Out (1988), which Kevin mentioned yesterday is one I don’t even remember. I do know I saw it when I was 11 or 12-years-old, but haven’t seen it since. Also, the original Bad News Bears (1976) wasn’t too bad, but the 2005 remake was no good.
I was looking around the Internet at some of the top ten baseball movie lists others have written up and there are a couple I haven’t yet seen such as The Pride of The Yankees (1942) with Gary Cooper and Bang the Drum Slowly (1973) with Robert De Niro, both of which seem to be agreed upon good ones.
I have intentionally stayed clear of films such as the Matt LeBlanc monkey movie Ed (1996) and I’ve heard nothing but bad things about the Farrelly brothers’ Fever Pitch (2005), that is until Kevin said it was one of his favorites yesterday.
I also haven’t seen The Rookie (2002), Rookie of the Year (1993) or For Love of the Game (1999) despite actually owning two of them.
We’ll get a new entry in the baseball category later this year as Bennett Miller (Capote) will bring Moneyball to the big screen with Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Robin Wright telling the story of Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane’s (Pitt) successful attempt to put together a baseball club on a budget by employing computer-generated analysis to draft his players. I haven’t read the Michael Lewis (“The Blind Side”) book from which it’s based, but I’ve been told it could work really well as a big screen feature.
So what about you? What baseball films stand at the top of your list?
