Why the ‘5 Best Baseball Movies’ Are Actually Terrible

pjmedia.com ^ | April 20, 2015 | James Jay Carafano

[PROCON]

$212.46. That is what the average family of four spent at a major league ballgame last year. For the budget-conscious, that price tag makes it mighty tempting to stay home and enjoy the boys of summer on TV—either a live game or a classic baseball movie.

But watching some of the most fondly remembered films about the national passtime suggest that maybe both the game’s time and what made America great are passing. Here are five films that make the case.

5. Moneyball (2011)

Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill take the Oakland Athletics from a mediocre, going-broke franchise to a cash-cow winner by using analytical, evidence-based “sabermetrics.” The film garnered six Oscar nominations, critical acclaim, and box-office success. That’s terrible. Celebrating the “corporatization” of baseball is not a good thing. Sure, making money is a good thing. “Last season,” Forbes reports, “MLB saw gross revenues of over $8 billion, and the expectation is it will reach $10 billion within a year or two.”

But where is the gut, the intuition, the love of sport for sport’s sake that we learned from movies like The Pride of the Yankees (1942), Gary Cooper’s epic portrayal of the greatest star of baseball’s finest hour?

[desertsolitaire]

No ‘Cobb’?!!

[stevem]

I didn’t like any of these really. The one with tom hanks rosie and madonna i did like. That was before i hated them.

"There's no crying in baseball!"

A great movie line if ever there was one.

[PROCON]

Doris Day and Ronnie

{{{SIGH}}}

[Flag_This]

[windcliff]

ping

[fatnotlazy]

LOL. I read somewhere that the Zucker brothers and Jim Abraham, the men behind the Naked Gun movies (and I believe the Airplane movies too) likened their film making style to throwing spaghetti against a wall and seeing what sticks. Sometimes I'd have to watch one of their movies 2 or 3 times before I'd notice something absurdly funny that I didn't see before. None of their movies would be Oscar worthy, but I would rather see an absurd, laugh out loud, silly movie than some of the serious nonsense that passes for Oscar caliber.

[dfwgator]

And then there’s BASEketball, one of those totally guilty pleasure movies for me....it’s stupid, but I laugh out loud just the same.

[hecticskeptic]

The Sandlot.

I agree....it is definitely the best of the bunch. We watched it so many times in our house that we had all the lines memorized and even today, it gets quoted on all kinds of occasions...."YOU PLAY BALL LIKE A GIRL!"

[stanne]

Perfect game is an indie came out a few yrs ago. True story re poor Mexican kids making it big. Formula but well done

Not like the Kevin Costner cross country movie same theme with the invariable insulting you are bad because you are not Mexican schtock

[stanne]

Oh ‘bad news bears’ with Matthau has some great gags

[dfwgator]

"Teddy ----n' Williams knocks it out of the park! Fenway Park on its feet for Teddy ------n' Ballgame! He went yardo on that one, out to -----n' Lansdowne Street!"

[stanne]

That’s the one.

Matthau

[yarddog]

I wonder if anyone else can name a movie I saw maybe 10 years ago. I saw it one time and it was very good but I never heard of it before or after.

It was clearly about the class D, Alabama Florida League tho they called it something else. Teams included such small towns as Crestview, Florida, and Dothan, Alabama. Dothan was the big time wealthy team.

I have tried to find it doing Google searches but no luck.

Anyone know what it was called?

[Intolerant in NJ]

The virtue of baseball is that it teaches our young how to fight as a team and what it takes to win...so then what better baseball movie that Bang the Drum Slowly - about a guy who starts out as the object of his team members' jokes and through the kindness and guidance of his more talented and smarter room mate, and the tragedy of his own fatal illness, helps the team find itself and win the World Series - some fine dialogue and narrative - "From here on in, I rag nobody".....

The Natural by the way was not simply a cynical vehicle for Robert Redford to try to look manly and heroic, but was actually supposedly based on the story of Eddie Waitkus, first baseman for the Philadelphia Phillies in 1949 when he was shot and almost killed by a deranged frustrated lover in Chicago. His struggle to make a comeback was followed by fans all over the country - he never quite reached his previous level of competence - he had been a smooth fielder and strong hitter - but it did inspire the "Whiz Kids" Phils to win the NL pennant in 1950 - maybe they need another player or two to be shot to help them this year - just kiddin;', censors.....

[Bodleian_Girl]

I’m with you on The Sandlot.

[free_life]

My favorite was The Rookie with Dennis Quaid

[PROCON]

I don't know the one you're asking about, but I forgot another great movie that my son and I enjoyed:

The story of Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris of the '61 Yankees, as both were competing to break Babe Ruth's record-setting homerun record.

A great Baseball movie!

[Hugin]

I agree. And Moneyball is really just the opposite of the writer’s take. It doesn’t celebrate big money in baseball, it celebrates the true story of how the Oakland As took a bunch of unknowns and past their prime players, who they could get cheap, and formed a winning team. Moneyball refers to the system a back office guy comes up with to figure out how to get the most bang for the buck by not hiring big contract stars.

[stylecouncilor]

[jjotto]

Long Gone?

Very fetching Virginia Madsen!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093433/