Baseball Movies

The USA Weekend insert for the weekend of March 23-25 had a one-page piece "Best Baseball Movies Ever: Our Exclusive Panel Takes Its Turn At Bat". With the baseball season underway this past week, I thought I'd chime in on this fun topic as well.

The usual suspects are rated highly by this panel of course: Bull Durham, Major League, The Natural, Field of Dreams, Bad News Bears, and Pride of the Yankees amongst others. I definitely liked all of those, to be sure. But a few others that are rarely mentioned in such discussions deserve attention.

I have always liked Angels in the Outfield, not the 1994 or 2000 remakes mind you, but the original 1951 film that starred Paul Douglas and Janet Leigh. If you've never seen this one, then add it to your Netflix or Blockbuster queue and enjoy its charming story!

Another less-well known baseball movie is A Winner Never Quits (1986). This is a fact-based story of a young boy who lost his right arm in a childhood accident, but went on to fulfill his dreams of playing major-league baseball.

Although it often gets included in lists of great baseball movies, sometimes Eight Men Out is forgotten. This is easily one of my favorites, and is one of those movies that I have a hard time turning off the TV if I happen upon it (like another baseball film, The Natural, or a few films in other genres, such as The Princess Bride).

And I recently watched The Sandlot (1993) for the first time, and enjoyed it. This one is good for both kids and adults.

In Googling "best baseball movies", I discovered this great site: www.baseballmovies.com. Great info there, including the creator's own list of the top-25 baseball movies ever -- and I was delighted to see The Natural top the list. Another list is this one from epinions, posted in 2004. Also see this list of top 20 from ESPN's Page 2. To dig even deeper, I was amazed at this list of 20+ older films (1930-1969). And then there is also this annotated list of 100 baseball and baseball-related movies!

I plan to start a project to watch all the baseball movies I can over time... should be fun. If you know of any other good lists of them, please let me know.

As of now, my ranking of favorite baseball films (not including documentaries, like the Burns Baseball series), would be:

1. The Natural
2. Field of Dreams
3. Eight Men Out
4. Angels in the Outfield (1951 version)
5. A League of their Own
6. Pride of the Yankees
7. Bull Durham
8. Major League
9. The Sandlot
10. 61

The last few spots are tough ones, so I could easily change my mind in the future. There is the Babe Ruth Story, Cobb, Bad News Bears, A Winner Never Quits, and many others that are in contention for this top-10 listing.