Best Baseball Movies of All Time

If you’ve ever sat with us in the 108, you know that we don’t limit our talk to just baseball.  Whether it be booze or music or movies, we try to keep ourselves entertained especially when the product on the field is not all that entertaining.  When we talk about movies, we inevitably end up talking sports movies, which turns into baseball movies, which turns into me expressing my distaste for Field of Dreams.  I regularly tout it as James Earl Jones’s 3rd best baseball movie (behind Sandlot and The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings).  Now I know trying to ruin your family’s life because you have daddy issues is a common thing, but I prefer to let that play out at Pink Monkey instead of through the course of a long, boring baseball movie.  But that’s enough about Field of Dreams. The point of this is that there are varying, strong opinions on baseball movies, so I wanted to try to figure out what the best baseball movie is.

It’s March Madness time, so why not have a tournament.   And none of us are athletic enough to physically play anything, so let’s do it on Twitter.  Starting Thursday, I’ll put up polls so you can vote for your favorites.

Qualifications

I probably could have filled this with all straight up baseball movies, but honestly, there is no way people have seen all the movies I have listed already.  Instead, I added some almost baseball movies to the mix so we have some dark horses that might pull off an early upset or two.  For example Naked Gun or Parenthood.  Now, they’re not technically baseball movies, so I gave them low seeds.  To sum up, the only real qualification is that I have to consider it a baseball movie.

Costner Region

Kevin Costner is in quite a few baseball movies and even more because I gave him Untouchables just based on the one scene where Capone talks about baseball and then ballbats a guy’s head.  But unfortunately or maybe fortunately, there are not enough to fill a region.  So I added some movies in there that he could have been in, like Moneyball or The Rookie.  I also added Mr Destiny because I had to think of a way I could dislike that movie even more.

I ended up giving Field of Dreams a 2 seed because I know how much people love the whole ‘have a catch’ thing even though nobody ever says that.  Bull Durham got the 1 seed because it’s a far superior movie and they didn’t fuck up which side of the plate Shoeless Joe should bat from.  In the end, I realized I don’t really care for Costner.  Though I probably like him more than this guy does.

1. Bull Durham
2. Field of Dreams
3. For the Love of the Game
4. Moneyball
5. The Rookie
6. Trouble with the Curve
7. Mr Destiny
8. Million Dollar Arm
9. The Slugger’s Wife
10. Mr Baseball
11. Long Gone
12. Fever Pitch
13. Upside of Anger
14. My Blue Heaven
15. Untouchables
16. Summer Catch

Kids Region

I think this region really splits people into two camps: Sandlot vs Bad News Bears.  And yes, I put the original Bad News Bears, not the shit with Billy Bob Thornton.  I ended up giving Sandlot the 1 seed over Bad News Bears mainly because of Benny The Jet’s sweet stache at the end of the film.  I also have Parenthood in this one because the little league scene is fantastic, but also because “You made me play second base!” always makes me laugh. Honestly in this region, there are some really good family flicks, some garbage I didn’t know existed like the Air Bud baseball movie, and then a few that just should not have been made like Benchwarmers.  Yes, someone (Adam Sandler) actually thought putting David Spade, Jon Heder, Rob Schneider, and Nick Swardson in a baseball movie together would have good results.

1. Sandlot
2. Bad News Bears (1976)
3. Little Big League
4. Rookie of the Year
5. Angels in the Outfield  (1994)
6. The Man From Left Field
7. The Perfect Game
8. The Final Season
9. Hardball
10. Mickey
11. Everyone’s Hero
12. Air Bud: Seventh Inning Fetch
13. Benchwarmers
14. Parenthood
15. Bad News Bears Go To Japan
16. Sandlot 2

Major League Region

I’m calling this the Major League Region, because I put all 3 Major League movies in it.  It’s definitely not because the movies are “major league” caliber.  This was my dumping ground for the weirder movies.  So much so, I had to pull The Natural in from the Costner Bracket just so there was a reasonable 2 seed.  Other than that, I’ve got some gems here like Battlefield Baseball and the Fan.  The Fan is such a weird movie and by weird I mean terrible, but there is still something great about DeNiro playing a crazy guy.  I also have a Joe Mantegna vehicle about Russian baseball, which just has to be awesome.  Major League takes the 1 seed and is probably my favorite baseball movie.  And yeah, I gave my favorite movie the weakest region.

1. Major League
2. The Natural
3. Major League 2
4. Mr 3000
5. Baseketball
6. Sugar
7. Game 6
8. The Scout
9. Talent for the Game
10. The Fan
11. Battlefield Baseball
12. The Comrades of Summer
13. Ed
14. Naked Gun
15. Brewster’s Millions
16. Major League: Back to the Minors

Historic Region

I ended up giving A League of Their Own the 1 seed as it is a great flick, but more importantly Jon Lovitz is probably the greatest scout portrayed in a movie.  This region, to me, is the toughest.  My personal favorite here is Bingo Long, but there are a ton of great movies in this region.  If you haven’t seen a lot of these movies, I urge you to check ’em out.  Well at least the high seeds.  Nobody really needs to see The Babe, Ed, or Blue Skies Again which is apparently Just One of the Guys – baseball version.  And to be clear, Life is the Eddie Murphy movie not the crap with Ryan Reynolds that I keep seeing commercials for.  I’m talking about the one with Can’t Get Right and his glorious bat (she knows what I mean).

1. A League of Their Own
2. Eight Men Out
3. The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings
4. Cobb
5. 61*
6. 42
7. Pride of the Yankees
8. Bang The Drum Slowly
9. No No: A Dockumentary
10. The Pride of St Louis
11. Soul of the Game
12. The Babe
13. Fear Strikes Out
14. Damn Yankees!
15. Life
16. Blue Skies Again

Here’s the bracket.  Make sure to follow us on Twitter @fromthe108 to vote for your favorites.

-Chorizy-E