Top 50 Baseball Movies: #15-11

A Koshien, a maverick, a relentless scout, a Sawx fan, and a Beane

In the run-up to publication of my book Baseball: The Movie, we’re counting down the top 50 baseball movies of all time. Yes, 50.

The book comes out on Tuesday. I’ll be on the road a lot over these next couple months, doing events all over the country. You can find a full list of events here. Come on out. It’d be great to see you and be seen by you. Now on the with the countdown.

15. Kano (2014)

I can’t help being an American. We don’t know much about what goes on outside our borders, even in the arenas we claim to care about. So I admit to never having heard of Koshien, the annual Japanese high school baseball tournament that is, according to reports, akin to our March Madness. I didn’t know about it until I saw Kano, an epic, three-hour chronicling of a rural Taiwanese team that won the tournament in 1931. It’s a classic underdog baseball story imbued with the character of Asian cinema. The team couldn’t be more of a long shot; the first hour of the film shows the team literally learning how to play baseball. They don’t know the rules. There are baseball montages. There’s a big game, which is impeccably filmed. But I also appreciated how this film takes its time. Kano is over three hours long, a length typically reserved for historical epics and superhero movies, and its stately pace reminds me of the films of some of the great Asian masters, from Yasujirō Ozo to Edward Yang. 

14. The Battered Bastards of Baseball (2014)

In the 1970s, Hollywood actor Bing Russell bought an independent baseball team called the Portland Mavericks, hired a roster of has-beens and never-will-bes (including his son Kurt), and improbably turned them into a winner. The guys drank, smoked, had long sideburns and mustaches, and generally didn’t give a damn what anyone thought of them. How is this not a Richard Linklater movie? Because it’s a true story, and The Battered Bastards of Baseball is the best baseball documentary ever made by someone not named Ken Burns. It was supposed to be a proper film, too; director Todd Field (Tar, in the Bedroom) was the batboy on this team when he was a kid, and was slated to direct an adaptation before the financing fell apart. That would have been cool, but, honestly, the Bastards are cool enough on their own.

13. I Will Buy You (1956)

I had never heard of this film until I spoke with Ellen Adair and Eric Gilde, hosts of the tremendous baseball movie podcast Take Me in to the Ball Game, mentioned it offhandedly in a conversation we had for my book. It didn’t make it into Baseball: The Movie because it’s a Japanese film and my book focuses on American baseball cinema. But it needs to be seen. It follows the relentless efforts of a scout to sign a young phenom. It’s a dark, cynical inquisition into the ethics of baseball front offices, and a scorching inquisition into the dehumanizing effect of American-style capitalism. I’d pair it with another film on this list (#11) that sidesteps the same moral questions that I Will Buy You embraces. (Watch it on the Criterion Channel right now).

12. Fever Pitch (2004)

Despite starring two of the most annoying talk show hosts of the 2020s, I will always stick up for Fever Pitch because it made me a better fan. It’s about a young man (Jimmy Fallon) who lost his parents as a child and decided to build his life around a losing baseball team. He grew up (or did he?) living and dying with every pitch. Finally, he meets a woman (Drew Barrymore) who thinks she can handle his superfandom—until she can’t. They break up because he chooses the Sox over her. I relate generally not specifically. I’ve spent years thinking about how all the painful Mets losses I’ve consumed over the years have affected my life. Every fan of a perpetually losing franchise has surely done the same. “I am the Red Sox, I am the Red Sox,” Fallon’s character mutters to himself at a low point. I’ve long wondered if I am the Mets, full of potential but unable to get out of my own way.  Fever Pitch suggests a path out of this quagmire. I’ll never forget the scene in which Ben is drowning his sorrows at a bar after a particularly rough loss when he sees three players from the Sox dining at a nearby table, laughing and enjoying each other’s company. If they don’t take it so hard, why should he? “It’s official,” he says. “I’m an idiot.” That moment legitimately changed my life, and I’ve been a better fan ever since. Yes, I’ll always stick up for Fever Pitch.

11. Moneyball (2011)

Ah, Moneyball, the film that ballplayers hate, casual fans love, and hardcore fans have mixed feelings about. Major leaguers hate the film for focusing too much on the front office’s marginal moves, and ignoring the fact that this A’s team had three of the best starting pitchers in the league (Mulder, Hudson, Zito) and the American League MVP (Miguel Tejada), none of whom get more than a few seconds of screen time. They hate how the film celebrates an executive who figured out how to pay players less than they were worth (and how his philosophy has permeated the game). They hate that manager Art Howe, played with simmering rage by Philip Seymour Hoffman, is made out to be a villain who only cares about his contract, whereas Howe was actually one of the nicest guys in baseball who fully bought into Billy Beane’s ideas.

Casual fans love it because it’s a classic underdog story with fresh, thoughtful details laid on top. Also because Brad Pitt. Hardcore fans like myself wrestle with it. We value accuracy and authenticity in baseball movies, and Moneyball takes so many dramatic liberties. But we do love a good montage, and Moneyball has one of the best, a 20-game winning streak that culminates in a big home run set to “The Mighty Rio Grande,” a rousing anthem by post-rock band This Will Destroy You. Every year, fans recreate this moment by putting the song underneath a real-life home run. In this way, Moneyball is the film real baseball aspires to.

We also love a good baseball man, and Pitt’s portrayal of Billy Beane passes every authenticity test. People who know Beane remain amazed at Pitt’s ability to capture the real life executive’s mannerisms without devolving into pure imitation. It’s one of the great performances in Pitt’s career, capturing the way athletes sublimate their defeats into their victories, on and off the field. It also measures the cost of that approach in Beane’s inability to enjoy the fruits of his labor. Ballplayers may not like it, but how many of us can watch a movie about our profession without getting hung up on the inaccuracies? A rarity for a 20th century baseball film, Moneyball somehow manages to please almost everyone most of the time.