Top 50 Baseball Films of All Time: #50-46

Here we go...

I haven’t seen every baseball movie ever made, but I’ve definitely seen more than you. In the process of researching and writing my book, Baseball: The Movie (preorder link), I watched 87 baseball films. Many of them are quite bad. The thing about a baseball movie, however, is that it can be bad for 90 minutes, but if it nails the “big game” ending, what came before doesn’t matter much. I watch baseball movies for that feel-good ending, and if that’s the only bar it has to clear, there are more good baseball movies than you think.  

From now until my pub date of May 14, I’ll be counting down my Top 50 Baseball Films. Let’s get started.

50. The Perfect Game (2009)

This little-seen film from 2009 falls into a category I call the “faith-based” baseball movie. There have been tons of these in the last two decades, with very few of them meriting theatrical releases, instead ending up in bins at Wal-Mart and Target, or showing on PureFlix, the Christian streaming site. This one is the true story of a ramshackle team of kids from Monterrey, Mexico who somehow made it to America to participate in the Little League World Series, and then somehow won the whole damn thing. 

As far as modern faith-based baseball movies go, it’s a solid entry. The kids are Catholic, and they travel to America with a priest played by Cheech Marin, but the film is not built around their faith or their Christian values the way so many lesser faith-based films are. It’s a real movie, not a sermon. Directed by William Dear (who also helmed the Angels in the Outfield remake and the absolutely awful A Mile in HIs Shoes), The Perfect Game a competently made baseball film for kids with a rousing ending, a terrific performance by Clifton Collins, Jr. as the team’s coach, and a delightful surprise appearance by Louis Gossett, Jr. playing Negro Leagues great Cool Papa Bell. You could do worse. I have.

49. The Bad News Bears (2005)

When I interviewed director Richard Linklater for the book, he explained his reasoning for remaking the untouchable 1976 classic The Bad News Bears. For starters, he wasn’t a fan of the original because he was the wrong age when it came out. He was a serious high school athlete, and he had no interest in watching a film about a bunch of kids who play badly. He came around to the film later in life, but he never shared the reverence for it that viewers slightly younger than him did. He also pointed out that it has the highest percentage of actual baseball in it of any baseball film. I haven’t crunched the numbers, but he’s probably right. The baseball in The Bad News Bears really drives the action, which is fun.

But this is an entry about Linklater’s remake, not the original, so what can I say about it? It’s fine. If you hadn’t seen the original film, you might rank it higher. It certainly lacks the subversive, countercultural energy of its predecessor, and it feels a bit cobbled together from the previous films of its director and star. Linklater had just made School of Rock, and Billy Bob Thornton, who plays the film’s drinking, cussing, and womanizing coach, had just scored a hit with Bad Santa. It all feels pretty calculated, but what can I say? It’s a formula because the formula works.

48. The Fan (1996)

The late director Tony Scott was not the right person to make a baseball film. He is known for his bombastic, MTV-style editing, while the sport is built on moments of stillness and contemplation. The good news is that The Fan barely is a baseball film at all. The bad news is it's still not very good. The Fan follows Gil (Robert De Niro), a deranged, divorced knife salesman who is so obsessed with his team’s new free agent acquisition, Bobby Rayburn (Wesley Snipes), that he kills a rival player for him and then kidnaps Rayburn’s son to try to get him to play better. Not a great plan, but that’s not the problem. The issue is that Gil is such a lunatic from the start that there’s nowhere to go—unlike, say, the more propulsive Taxi Driver, which this film very much wants to be—but the film finds its footing in Rayburn’s standoffish attitude towards the fans. In a key scene, Rayburn explains to Gil how the fans don’t stand by him when he’s struggling, so why should he stand by them? Gil is horrified. Rayburn is clearly modeled after Barry Bonds—he plays for the Giants—but the film actually predates the steroid era and the soured relationship between players and fans that followed. In a sense, The Fan predicted all of that, making it a noteworthy entry in the canon, although not a particularly good one.

47. Rookie of the Year (1993)

I loved this film as a kid. Anyone who was playing baseball around the time it came out did. It’s a fantasy about a kid who absolutely stinks at baseball, but his arm breaks, and when it heals, he miraculously can throw a 100 MPH fastball. The Chicago Cubs, looking to put butts in the seats during a disastrous year for the team, sign him up and send him right to the majors. 

Loosely based on 1954’s Roogie’s Bump, Rookie of the Year is the first and only film to date directed by actor Daniel Stern, who also plays the spasmodic pitching coach. It’s not surprising he hasn’t directed again. The film is all over the place. There is no consistent approach among the actors, some of whom give broad, cartoonish performances, with others aiming for quiet naturalism. Gary Busey, of all people, gives the most restrained performance in the film as the veteran pitcher who takes the youngster under his wing. And while there’s obviously something irresistible about its concept—getting called up to the majors as a child is a universal fantasy—the film just doesn’t make enough hay out of it.  I’m partial to the moment when the kid gives up a mammoth home run and, instead of glowering and kicking dirt, he watches it sail away and exclaims, “Wow!” There should have been more stuff like this.

I also can’t ignore the film’s numerous inaccuracies. I detail them in the book, but I’ll share one here because it’s embedded in the film’s premise. The Chicago Cubs are having trouble selling tickets? Never. Their fan base famously shows up to games, win or lose. They literally picked the worst franchise for that plot. Rookie of the Year a loss, but if you’ve ever been a kid who loved baseball, it’s probably still one worth showing up for.

46. Trouble with the Curve (2012)

Trouble with the Curve is not exactly a good movie, but it has a strong point to make, and I appreciate that. Essentially, it’s a response to “moneyball”—not the film, which came out just a year prior, but more likely the book or maybe the idea of moneyball that was sweeping through the major leagues at the time. Clint Eastwood plays a grizzled Atlanta Braves scout, who is on the verge of being pushed out by a new, young, data-driven general manager (Mathew Lillard). Even worse, he’s got glaucoma, which means he can’t even rely on his eyes anymore. He’s in a tough spot, so his semi-estranged daughter (Amy Adams) travels with him to North Carolina to scout a high school player who could be the first overall pick in the draft.

The film is riddled with inaccuracies and improbabilities (they’re sending one scout to look at this kid a week before the draft?!), but I like how it fits neatly into Eastwood’s late-career filmography. From Unforgiven on, he has been playing variations of the same part: a man of the past trying to find out where he fits into a modern world, and baseball, which was going through the analytics revolution at this time, is a logical place for that archetype. Moneyball mocked its scouts; Eastwood valorizes them. I obviously don’t agree with his character’s assertion that “anybody who uses a computer doesn’t know a damn thing about this game,” but he surely believes it, and his fear that the skills he accrued in his life are now useless is a universal, poignant part of growing old. As a baseball film, it strikes out. As an Eastwood film, it’s a solid double.