So here’s what we are doing — we are counting down the greatest (and not-so-greatest) baseball movies ever made. I sent out a massive email to several dozen of my friends and asked them to rank as many baseball movies as they would like. Some sent in just one. Our beloved Ellen Adair sent in 64, because, of course, she did.
In any case, we put together a massive list of the movies … we have seventy-five of them in all, and we’re going to count them down all the way up to No. 1. If I pull off the timing (unlikely), then we will announce the greatest baseball movie ever made on August 20, which is the day Mike Schur and I will be at the Aero Theater in Los Angeles to introduce and talk about “A League of Their Own” (tickets here).
It really is amazing looking back — they used to make baseball movies ALL THE TIME. In 1949 alone, you had It Happens Every Spring, The Stratton Story, Take Me Out to the Ballgame and The Kid from Cleveland. Just about every year in the 1950s, at least one — and usually more than one — baseball movie came out every year.
Then in the 1960s, baseball movies just stopped cold. I believe the only baseball movie made in the entire decade was the awesomely terrible Safe at home, starring a thoroughly unconvincing Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle as themselves.
Things picked up a bit in the 1970s, thanks in large part to The Bad News Bears.
And then you know the mid-to-late 1980s were the glory years. The Natural! Bull Durham! Eight Men Out! Field of Dreams! Stealing Home! OK, maybe not exclamation point after Stealing Home, but still, it’s a movie, and not long after that A League of Their Own came out.
And maybe the baseball movie is making a comeback. As Noah Gittell — author of “Baseball: The Movie” writes: “It’s starting to feel like the baseball movie is back! There was just a big announcement that Richard Linklater and Glen Powell (who previously collaborated on Everybody Wants Some!) are making a new movie about Lou Gehrig.* There’s also The Catch, starring Emma Stone and written by her Mets fan husband Dave McCary, and The Comebacker, with Tom Hanks as a coach working with a pitcher who gets hit in the head by a line drive and has to work his way back to the majors.”
*This is based on “The Luckiest Man” by our great pal Jonathan Eig, who I believe (and certainly hope) will have some influence on the script. So exciting!
A quick word about our countdown: I generally honored the committee’s selections. That is to say that this list is mostly presented in the order of the votes. I will admit, I did move the order around just a little bit when I felt that my friends had lost their minds. But mostly, I am being faithful to their wishes.
We have a bit of time before get there, but I’ll tell you right now that No. 1 was a SQUEAKER.
I have not seen ALL of these movies — the ones I have not seen I will rely on comments from the committee, particulaly Ellen Adair who has made it her life’s mission to see as many baseball movies as possible.
But I have seen most these movies; in some cases to my detriment.
No. 75: The Winning Team
From “The Baseball 100:”
The Winning Team is a spectacularly bad movie. No, seriously, as bad as you think it might be, it is so much worse than that. Even if you are a devotee of bad old movies — and I like to think of myself as one of those — The Winning Team will break your spirit.
It shouldn’t be this bad. The movie stars Ronald Reagan as pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander. This is such a wonderful confluence of American history; it makes Alexander the only player in sports history to be named for one president and to have another president play him in a movie.
The Winning Team also features Doris Day, who would become Hollywood’s biggest female star. There are also a few ballplayers in there, including Hall of Famer Bob Lemon.
Put all of that together, and it’s hard to believe that “The Winning Team” doesn’t at least make for some fun kitsch watching.
But let me be clear again: It does not. Watch The Winning Team for even 10 minutes, and you realize it’s not just a bad movie. It’s a Dementor from Harry Potter. “They drain peace, hope and happiness out of the air around them,” J.K Rowling wrote of them — the Dementors, I mean — and while I’m not sure that watching The Winning Team is what inspired her to develop the characters, I’m also not sure it wasn’t.
The biggest trouble with the movie — other than the writing, acting, direction and such — is that it begins with these words: “This is The True Story of GROVER CLEVELAND ALEXANDER.”
Spoiler alert: It is not.
No. 74: Benchwarmers
From Wikipedia: “It tells the story of three nerds and a billionaire forming a titular baseball team to take on Little League teams.”
I believe this was also the original concept of Othello.
No. 73: Inglourious Basterds.
A fine nomination by Canadian comedian Ryan George because The Bear Jew bashes in Nazis’ brains with a baseball bat. My personal feeling, however, is that The Untouchables is actually a better baseball movie — DeNiro’s baseball speech before he bashes in some brains with a baseball bat is choice. Sadly, no one nominated The Untouchables.
No. 72: Murder at the World Series
A truly terrible television movie about somebody who fails to make the Houston Astros, so he goes on a kidnapping spree, which, you know, is a pretty typical reaction.
Hey, the guy who played the mayor in Jaws is in it!
No. 71: The Slugger’s Wife
It’s so bad — “I wanted to die,” is Ellen Adair’s succinct review — and yet I’ve probably seen The Slugger’s Wife a half dozen times because it was ALWAYS on television in the 1980s. Like non-stop. I think I watched it so many times because I kept thinking that I must have missed something — I mean, it’s a baseball romantic comedy written by Neil Simon, and it was directed by Hal Ashby, who directed Being There, for crying out loud. But no, it never made me laugh even once. It just made me sad.
No. 70: The Babe
I just don’t understand why this movie was made. I don’t understand why you make a movie about Babe Ruth that portrays him as entirely unlikable and without a single redeeming quality. Look, the Babe had his imperfections for sure, but he was also a big ol’ goofball who hit titanic home runs and thrilled a nation. I mean, that could make for a rollicking, fun movie.
Why wouldn’t you make THAT movie?
No. 69: Reverse the Curse
I couldn’t even make it through this one. There are others who like it, I think, so this ranking could be low. But I guess I couldn’t get over the fact that it was a movie exploring Red Sox fandom written and directed by David Duchovny, a lifelong Yankees fan.
“I philosophically and spiritually and emotionally related way more to a Red Sox fan than I did as a prototypical Yankee fan,” Duchovny told a reporter.
Blech. That’s all. Just blech. You can’t write a Red Sox movie as a Yankees fan. You just can’t.
No. 68: Ed
I’m sad to say that I’ve never seen this movie about a baseball-playing chimpanzee and Joey from “Friends.” But I’ve read the plot, so I can tell you what it’s about … ok, actually, no I still have absolutely no idea what this movie is about. I’ve been trying to decode these two sentences:
But after the owners sell Ed to make a buck, Deuce takes matters into his own hands and goes to find Ed only to see him being tortured by a pair of goons. Deuce saves Ed but Ed escapes and finds a truck of frosted bananas and does not realize he is stuck inside.
No. 67: Summer Catch
This was really, really bad — BUT it has a great ending. Freddie Prinze Jr., who plays a lefty pitcher trying to make it to the big leagues, does make it to the big leagues. And the movie ends with him on the mound pitching to Ken Griffey Jr., his glorious moment. He grooves a pitch, and Junior whacks it into the seats for a home run.
That’s how all unfunny baseball comedies should end.
Actually, it’s how all unfunny comedied should end whether they’re about baseball or not.
No. 66: Tiger Town
Roy Scheider is an aging baseball player. Justin Henry — who was nominated for an Academy Award for Kramer vs. Kramer — is a kid who goes to every game and wishes for Scheider to hit a home run so the Tigers can go to the World Series. This could have been called Thornton Town and told the story of me going to every Cleveland game and wishing for Andre Thornton to hit a home run.
Speaking of Andre — he was just elected to the Negro Leagues Museum “Hall of Game,” along with Ralph Garr, Gary Matthews Sr. and Reggie Smith. The induction is going to be on September 26; I might have to get back to KC for that one.
No. 65: Aunt Mary
Another Ellen Adair nomination, this television movie is about Mary Dobkin, who was born in Russia, moved to America to live with her aunt and uncle, and fell in love with baseball when listening to Baltimore Orioles games while in the hospital. When she got older, she started the Dobkin Dynamites, a baseball team for kids, and in time she created the Mary Dobkin Athletic Club which coached tens of thousands of kids in baseball and softball, as well as other sports. She was so beloved in Baltimore she threw out a first pitch in the 1979 World Series.
Ellen’s review: “Mary Dobkin deserved a better movie.”
No. 64: Air Bud: Seventh-Inning Fetch
It gets ranked this high only because of the movie title. Seventh-Inning Fetch!
No. 63: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
The great writer Dave Fleming (not to be confused with the great announcer Dave Flemming) insists that this is a baseball movie, and I can see the point. Jonathan Hock* and I even used the “Hey batter, hey batter” scene in our Hall of Fame movie “Generations of the Game.”
It’s not a baseball movie, though, is it?
*Alas, nobody nominated Jon’s excellent movie “Fastball.” Well, Jon nominated it, but that doesn’t count. It’s much, much better than almost every movie on this list.
No. 62: The Princess Bride
Singer/songwriter Matt the Electrician makes the argument that this is a baseball movie because “it contains the appropriate amount of true love, teamwork, and an underdog story, against mighty odds, plus, the fire swamp may be a metaphor for the universal DH.” It’s one heck of an argument.
It’s not a baseball movie, though, is it?
No. 61: It’s Good to be Alive
I somehow missed this 1974 television movie about the great Roy Campanella, but I have now watched enough of it to know that I never, ever want to see it again.
There’s a scene where a fly buzzes into his hospital room at night, and he hears it, and it wakes him up, and there’s a closeup of Roy’s face, and then the camera pans the room, and then there’s another closeup of Roy’s face, and all along you hear the fly buzzing, and then there’s a closeup of the fly on Roy’s face, and then a closeup of his eye as he tries to follow the fly around the room, and then more panning of the room, and then a closeup of his eye blinking, and he starts breathing heavily, and then fly is back on his face, and he starts screaming and screaming, and a nurse comes into the room and he starts crying and shouting “A fly! A fly!” It’s like a horror movie.
And the nurse then crushes the fly with a newspaper.
That’s entertainment!
No. 60: Twelve (2019)
There have been a couple of “Twelve” movies made — one is about a drug dealer. I haven’t seen that one. This is about a 12-year-old boy who, with the help of his dad, “stops at nothing to make it to the Little League World Series.” I mean this with all the respect in the world, but I kind of wonder if the drug dealer in that “Twelve” is more likable than the kid in this one.
No. 59: The Kid From Cleveland
Nominated by author Luke Epplin, who writes: “The movie itself is atrocious, but what a wonderful time capsule of the first integrated team to have won the World Series. Worth seeing Satchel Paige in his middle-aged prime. Bonus points for watching Lou Boudreau and Bill Veeck trying and failing to act.”
No. 58: The Battery
This is the only zombie apocalypse baseball movie on the list — unless you consider “Field of Dreams” to really be a zombie movie. I haven’t seen this one and won’t — I don’t do zombies — but Ellen liked it: “A fantastic indie zombie film about a pitcher and catcher. Upsetting but good.”
No. 57: The Kid from Left Field (1953)
No. 56: The Kid from Left Field (1979)
Weirdly, I’ve never seen the original, but I have vivid memories of seeing the version with Gary Coleman when it was shown on NBC on September 30, 1979. I absolutely. loved it. I was 12 years old — almost the same age as Gary Coleman — and Coleman managed the San Diego Padres to the World Series, which seemed like science fiction to me. Actually, it still seems like science fiction.
But here is my favorite fact about the 1979 Kid from Left Field — one day after the movie aired, the San Diego Padres shocked everybody by hiring JERRY COLEMAN, the team’s announcer, to manage the team. I mean, seriously, how great is that? Jerry Coleman is actually in “The Kid from Left Field,” and everybody mocked the Padres for hiring the wrong Coleman. And apparently they did hire the wrong Coleman. Jerry did go 73-89 as manager — taking the Padres out of last place — but he was fired for his failure to communicate with his players.
Jerry Coleman gave this wonderful quote after he was canned:
“I played for a manager who rarely communicated with his players. He didn’t know some of their names, was disliked by many of them, if not most, and publicly embarrassed some of them by taking them out in the middle of an inning. He once slapped the ball out of a pitcher’s hand so hard when he took him out of the game, it nearly rolled to second base. That manager’s name is Casey Stengel, and he’s in the Hall of Fame. So when you ask me what managing is all about, I’m not so sure I know.”
As a veteran of The Baseball 100 process, I was CERTAIN that No. 61 was gonna be 61*.
My favorite baseball movie is "Bang the Drum Slowly." "Eight Men Out" is number 2 for me.