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Batter Up: Scoping Out the Best Baseball Movies
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items Baseball is as American as apple pie: it's one of the oldest sports in the country (older than film!) with a long, lauded connection to the movies (I think it's our most cinematic sport). With opening day right around the corner, I'm celebrating all ...
This beloved minor league baseball movie is just a straight up well-written, well-acted, delightful, sexy, and silly little film. Kevin Costner is an aging catcher who signs on the Durham Bulls to help break in a new, flashy pitcher (Tim Robbins) hea...
Bull Durham (1988)
“There's no crying in baseball!” A tight, zippy script; incredible performances; and real stakes makes this one of the all time great sports films. Geena Davis stars as a housewife who becomes a baseball player in the All-American Girls Professional ...
A League of Their Own (1992)
This terrific recent release has already earned a spot in the baseball movie hall of fame: a Massachusetts amateur baseball game plays out over a soon-to-be demolished local field shortly before Halloween, haunted by the past and doomed in the future...
Eephus (2024)
For better or worse, it's a classic! If you watch this film as a cynical, squinty-eyed adult, as I am, you're forced to come to terms with the fact that this movie makes absolutely no sense, and uses the calming veneer of nostalgia to shield the fact...
Field of Dreams (1989)
Japanese comedian-turned-auteurist filmmaker Takeshi Kitano's sophomore feature film tells the story of two young men, members of a local baseball team, who decide to arm themselves after their coach is attacked and intimidated by local yakuza. As th...
Boiling Point (1990)
Named for the 1908 Tin Palley song of the same name, which became a standard at baseball games, this delightful musical comedy is set in the wild and weird world of early professional baseball, when players held multiple jobs (including, apparently, ... Betty Garrett (On the Town) and professional singing mermaid Esther Williams as a straitlaced baseball team owner who butts heads with Kelly.
Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949)
This baseball-based comedy (and era classic) stars a (never better) Wesley Snipes (in of his earliest film parts), Charlie Sheen, and Tom Berenger as rag-tag members of the Cleveland Indians, who a new owner deliberately sabotages in a scheme to move...
Major League (1989)
In this terrific arthouse baseball flick, beloved by many, Brad Pitt is the Oakland Athletics general manager, who takes a "sabermetric" approach to scouting, which is both a thing I understand! Director Bennett Miller adapts a script by Aaron Sorkin...
Moneyball (2011)
This delightful "spiritual sequel" to Dazed & Confused from Texas filmmaker / baseball enthusiast Richard Linklater depicts a group of college baseball players at a Texas university in the fall of 1980. The stakes are appealingly low, mostly cont...
Everybody Wants Some!! (2016)
The primary draw of this Abbott and Costello comedy is the inclusion of "Who's on First?" the duo's signature vaudeville routine, in which a character recounts a series of outlandish baseball player names, creating a hilarious web of comedic misdirec...
The Naughty Nineties (1945)
This terrific sports melodrama follows a pitcher / catcher team of two very different men: cocky and whip smart pitcher Michael Moriarty and socially awkward and dim catcher Robert De Niro, who play for the New York Mammoths against real-life setback...
Bang the Drum Slowly (1973)
Underrated indie filmmaker John Sayles helms this dramatization of the infamous "Black Sox Scandal" of 1919, in which eight Chicago White Sox players — including "Shoeless Joe Jackson" — conspired with professional gamblers (led by gangland fixture A...
Eight Men Out (1988)
This period comedy film from Berry Gordy's Motown Productions, set in the (completely underrepresented) Negro Leagues, which is quite good, boasting a stellar cast of 70s legends, including future Empire Strikes Back co-stars Billy Dee Williams and (...
The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings (1976)
I love any kind of movie where Troubled Adults are forced to coach a team of misfits, like this Tatum O'Neal classic, which tells the story of an alcoholic ex-minor-league baseball hopeful (Walter Matthau) who is forced by his friend to coach a ragta...
The Bad News Bears (1976)
My hometown team (the Texas Rangers) play the triumphant score from this film every time they score a home run, accompanied by some fireworks, which is a true spectacle and honestly makes me feel a little emotional. In this period piece, Robert Redfo...
The Natural (1984)
The devil conspires to thwart the Yankees in this kind of uneven adaptation of the hit 1955 baseball-themed musical of the same name, which made Gwen Verdon a household name, thanks to her role as seductress demon "Lola," which she originated in the ...
Damn Yankees (1958)
This beloved, deeply-entertaining period piece depicts the exploits of a group of childhood friends in 1962, who bond while playing baseball in a big sandlot. Their antics are mostly harmless, but they meet their match when they accidentally knock a ...
The Sandlot (1993)
This delightful Netflix documentary, narrated by Kurt Russell (and directed by his nephews), tells the story of his father, Bing Russell, and his purchase of the Portland Mavericks, a former minor league baseball team made notable for having no major...
The Battered Bastards of Baseball (2014)
In this lesser-known, terrific baseball indie, a Dominican baseball player is conscripted into the US minor leagues, forcing him to rely on the precarious employment of the league to pin all of his impoverished family's hopes and dreams on. A too-rar...
Sugar (2008)
Baseball is thought of as an inherently American sport, but it's also super popular in Japan and Korea, and, curiously, there's currently no rule banning women from playing on a professional baseball team in South Korea! This populist Korean film tak...
Baseball Girl (2019)