Baseball Movie Box Score: 15 Movies To Revisit This Season
by Brian Tallerico

It's that time of year again. As you shake off your completely busted March Madness bracket and finally stop wearing black to mark the retirement of Brett Favre, your mind starts to wander to the sport of summer days. A cold Old Style beer sounds better than it does in the winter months. You start to crave hot dogs and peanuts. (Well, more than usual.) You're not only willing but eager to spend three-plus hours sitting on a tin bleacher bench that smells like stale Pepsi and dish out a small fortune to watch a game where a player who hits the ball only one-third of the time is a superstar. And if it ends 1-0 without any home runs, you'll still be happy. If any of this sounds familiar, that’s right - you're a baseball fan. And, odds are, if you're a fan of the all-American sport, then you're also a fan of the hundred-plus movies made about it.

To celebrate the start of the '08 baseball season, we've gone through the dozens of movies that tried to capture the power of the game on celluloid and picked the definitive 15 baseball films, the all-stars of the baseball movie world, that you NEED watch this season. Plus to make the whole affair extra-jargony - a plus for any true fan - we’ve categorized the movies by baseball levels of success. (For comparison in the world of non-baseball movies, The Departed was a home run and License to Wed struck out swinging.)

First, we then went through and weeded out the strike outs. There are a shocking number of bad baseball flicks that go down swinging, including sequels nobody asked for like Bad News Bears Go to Japan and Major League 3: Back to the Minors - not to mention general junk like The Benchwarmers and Hardball. Then there are the movies that should have been scratched before they even got a chance to strike out like Pitcher and the Pin-Up, The Slugger's Wife, and Summer Catch. And the less said about "A Chimp With More Charisma Than a TV Star", we mean Ed, the better.

15. HIT BY PITCH

Cobb (1994)
Starring: Tommy Lee Jones, Robert Wuhl, and Lolita Davidovich
Written and Directed by: Ron Shelton

No, Cobb is not about Randall 'Tex' Cobb, the former boxer and scene-stealer best known as Leonard Smalls, the warthog from Hell biker in Raising Arizona (but we're first in line the day someone makes a biopic about his surely-awesome life). The title character's full name was Tyrus Raymond Cobb, better known to his many fans (and his many detractors) as Ty. There's a sub-genre of baseball movies about the sport’s total a-holes, and Cobb features one of the biggest in its controversial title character, a man who set dozens of records and pissed off nearly everyone that crossed his path. If you think A-Rod is a jerk or have some problems with Barry Bonds, you should do a little research on Mr. Cobb, a man who was reportedly over-the-top in every way, on the base paths and in his own life. Strangely, the one big movie about the bigger-than-life Cobb is only so-so. Writer/director Ron Shelton (who will make another appearance in this box score) knows a thing or two about baseball history, but Cobb just isn't that interesting a drama. Yeah, as history has stated, Ty Cobb was an apparent prick. But the movie doesn't warrant categorization in the strike outs for one reason - Tommy Lee Jones. He's simply great as the title character in one of the best performances of his illustrious career. As he had done many times before and would do many times after, Jones was the best thing about the movie. Like Craig Biggio diving in front of yet another pitch (the Astro was hit by more pitches than any other modern player - 267 times in his career), Jones sacrificed his body to save Cobb, so let's give the movie a free pass to first.

14. SACRIFICE FLY

A League of Their Own (1992)
Starring: Geena Davis, Tom Hanks, Madonna, Lori Petty, and Rosie O'Donnell
Written by: Lowell Ganz & Babaloo Mandel
Directed by: Penny Marshall

There's something about A League of Their Own that really grinds our gears, but it's so insanely popular. Despite our sugar-shock response, it was so well made that it deserves mention, even if we're not giving it a "hit." Telling the story of the first female baseball league is definitely an admirable goal, but Lori Petty, Rosie O'Donnell and Madonna in one movie? In 1992 it might have been cute, but now it sounds a little like a circle of Hell. And if we hear one more person say, "There's no crying in....ANYTHING," we're going to give them something to cry about. So, why not call League of Their Own a strikeout besides the fact that our grandmas love it? (As if that wouldn't be enough. Grandma, we love you.) There's still enough to like here from Tom Hanks' typically great performance to a fun supporting cast that can make us overlook the actresses at the middle of the lineup that give us nightmares and the incredibly sappy ending. A sacrifice fly seems appropriate - it keeps the game going but won't make any highlight reels.

13. WALK

Angels in the Outfield (1951)
Starring: Paul Douglas and Janet Leigh
Written by: George Wells
Directed by: Clarence Brown

As any feature about baseball movies is prone to do, we're going to get a little sappy at times (although we will not include Tiger Town). It starts here with Angels in the Outfield, a movie so sappy that they had to make it twice. This movie is so cute that, when it gets to the plate, you just can't throw it a strike. The Tony Danza and Danny Glover version in the '90s was in regular rotation on the Disney Channel for a decade, but the original gets the pick for one simple reason - it has legendary stars in its lineup. Janet Leigh is one of the best actresses ever but, as far as we know, she couldn't push a bunt to third. No, we mean all-stars like Joe DiMaggio and the one and only Ty Cobb. The story of a team who wins if they put their swearing and fighting aside is a pretty cute one, too. Orphans, angels, and pennant races - it's enough to make even a Pittsburgh Pirates fan believe in miracles.

12. SINGLE

Fever Pitch (2005)
Starring: Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore
Written by: Lowell Ganz
Directed by: Farrelly Brothers

What happened to Jimmy Fallon? One day he was the next Ben Stiller and the next he was Steve Guttenberg (mark our words - Fallon wins Dancing With the Stars in 2015). The best movie he's ever played the lead in came just three years ago in Fever Pitch, a charming romantic comedy about some of the most cursed people in the world of sports... until they made this movie, that is. The story of Fever Pitch, about a man who had to choose between his obsessive devotion to the Boston Red Sox and the new love in his life, literally changed as they were filming the movie since the historic losers actually won the World Series. Any hardcore sports fan out there who has had to deal with juggling a love for his team with the love for his partner could see a little bit of himself in Fever Pitch. The chemistry between Fallon and Drew Barrymore doesn't quite work, and some of the Red Sox adoration is a little overplayed, but we'll admit that when Fever Pitch airs on cable, we don't change the channel as quickly as we do for, say, Air Bud: Seventh Inning Fetch. Consider it one of those tough ground balls to third that the runner barely legs out into a single. And then someone replaces Jimmy Fallon with a pinch runner.

11. SINGLE UP THE MIDDLE

The Sandlot (1993)
Starring: Tom Guiry, Mike Vitar, and James Earl Jones
Written by: David M. Evans and Robert Gunter
Directed by: David M. Evans

When the phrase "cute kids movie" comes up, one of the first that pops to mind is The Sandlot. Is it cheesy? No doubt, but, deep down, so is the core of most baseball fans. We believe in not changing your socks when you're on a streak, in players getting a hit for bed-ridden children, and on the magic that can happen in the seventh game of the World Series. And all of that "magic" is even more pronounced when you're a child. Show me a baseball fan who never pounded his own mitt or bounced a bat off his shoe and dreamt of playing in the big game, and I'll show you a baseball fan who's just there for the beer and hot dogs. The Sandlot taps into so many common themes of childhood from the new kid struggling to fit in to the scary neighborhood dog. It takes the unifying game of baseball - something that brings people together around the world - and makes it the centerpiece of a surprisingly well-made film about what all kids are looking for - friendship.

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