Top 10 Baseball Movies

This is one of my favorite times of the year – the start of the baseball season. Of course, being a fan of the Pittsburgh Pirates (yes, I freely admit that), it’s also a time to ask that question that is quickly becoming an annual tradition for the Pirates faithful (all 29 of us, lol)… “How bad will they be this year?” Truth be told, it’s a shame they aren’t better, because PNC Park is by far one of the most beautiful places to watch a baseball game in the country. Of course, having only ever watched a game from 4 other stadiums, one of them being a minor league stadium, my opinion is thoroughly biased.

So, as I prepare for keeping track of another season of potential futility, my mind begins to wander…and I start compiling a list of my favorite baseball-themed movies of all time (of at least the ones I’ve seen).

So here’s my list. Feel free to comment and add to it.

1) “The Natural” – Of course you can’t knock the cover off a baseball, but it was cool to watch!
2) “Bull Durham” – okay, a bit irreverent, but some of the most memorable baseball characters of all time came from this movie: Crash Davis (Kevin Costner) and Nuke LaLoosh (Tim Robbins)
3) “A League of Their Own” – A close friend of my grandparents played in the AAGPBL, so I have some ties to this movie and the historical aspect of it.
4) “Field of Dreams” – Yeah, it’s a bit hokey, and a little over-the-top, but let’s face it, everyone knows that ‘If you build it, he will come.’
5) “The Scout” – little known movie starring Albert Brooks and Brendan Fraser. Brooks plays a scout who is on his last legs professionally. He discovers Fraser, a pitching phenom playing in Mexico with more quirks than all of John Cusack’s characters put together. It’s not a laugh-a-minute riot, but still a movie worth checking out sometime.
6) “Angels In The Outfield” – the original version about the Pittsburgh Pirates. Really, for no other reason than it’s about the Pirates. Although, they did start quite a run in real life a few years after the movie came out.
7) “Major League” – Again, a caricature of baseball players, with no real redeeming qualities other than how a rag-tag group of has-beens and wanna-be’s can come together and form a team, and together accomplish something that is truly greater than themselves. Plus, some more memorable characters in Ricky “Wild Thing” Vaughn (Charlie Sheen), Willie Mays Hayes (Wesley Snipes), Pedro Cerrano (Dennis Haysbert), and the wonderfully obnoxious fan in the outfield stands played by Randy Quaid.
8) “Eight Men Out” – A fictionalized telling of the 1918 Black Sox scandal, which has kept “Shoeless” Joe Jackson out of the HOF to this day, even though it’s all but been proven he never participated in throwing the World Series that year.
9) “The Rookie” – Another ‘based on a true story’ tale of a high school pitching coach, Jimmy Morris, who decides to try out for the major leagues after his team miraculously wins the Texas state championship. Morris did pitch in the bigs for two seasons as a reliever.
10) “The Sandlot” – The movie is more about the bonding of a group of kids growing up, but the fact that it takes place around a makeshift baseball field makes it all the more enjoyable. And, let’s be honest, how many of us have lost a ball or two to the scary neighbor’s backyard?

So there it is, my 10 favorite baseball movies. There are so many more to choose from, but these are the ones that I will stop and watch anytime I flip by them on the TV.