Friars On Base Ranks Their Favorite Baseball Movies

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Mandatory Credit: cinedb.avcesar.com

Editor’s Note: Since Spring Training for the 2015 season is right around the corner, many of us here at Friars On Base, have differing views on baseball and things relating to baseball, such as our favorite baseball movies. I recently approached several of the staff members and asked them to talk about their favorite baseball movie. Each member summed up what the movie means to them, and why it should be considered a top-10 baseball movie all-time.

Once the ten movies were determined, we had one extra writer submit an eleventh movie for consideration. I then asked the staff to rank these eleven movies, 11 to 1, and these rankings are based upon the averages totaled from the eleven writers involved, including myself. We hope you enjoy this two-part series, as we bring officially bring the winter off-season to a close, and focus upon the spring training camp coming in a few weeks. This is our gift to you, our loyal readers and followers. Thank you! ~Billy Brost, Co-Editor

Mandatory Credit: movieswithmitch.squarespace.com

Ryan Pedersen discusses #11 Honorable Mention-Little Big League:

No matter what time this movie is on, which most of the time it’s on MLB Network, I always watch this all-time baseball classic, 1994’s Little Big League staring some actual MLB players from the 1990’s.

The film is about a young boy, Billy Haywood, who’s grandfather owns the Minnesota Twins and who suddenly passes away and hands over the baseball operations to his grandson, Billy. Billy decides to fire their un-popular manager and declares himself manager of the Minnesota Twins. Players first off hate the move, but over time they learn to play just like little leaguers and have fun.

The team winds up going on a run during the season after a terrible start, but eventually run into Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey Jr. and the Seattle Mariners in a one-game playoff and lose on an over-the-fence catch by Ken Griffey Jr.

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This movie includes cameos from great ninties players like Rafael Palmeiro, Wally Joyner, Lou Piniella, Mickey Tettleton, Ivan Rodriguez, Sandy Alomar Jr, Eric Anthony, Carlos Baerga, Alex Fernandez, Dave Magadan, Tim Raines, Dean Palmer, Lenny Webster, Paul O’Neill and ESPN personality Chris Berman.

A huge star-studded cast that includes actual MLB players is what set me to love this movie so much as a kid and still love watching it today. “Little Big League” brings back a nostalgic time to when I didn’t know the game that well but was so star-struck by the likes of seeing intimidating pitcher Randy Johnson and all-star Ken Griffey Jr. Just too bad they didn’t include Tony Gwynn, who was my favorite player growing up.

Mandatory Credit: tsminteractive.com

Nick Lee discusses #10-The Rookie:

The Rookie highlights a high school science teacher and baseball coach who had all but given up his dream to play in the major leagues. Jimmy Morris taught at Big Lake High School and was 35-years old. He had a promising young career before getting injured, derailing his career. He was the baseball coach for the school and the team was flat out bad. The team made a deal with their coach, that if they had a successful season and won district, he would try out for the major leagues again. He thought it was crazy since he was 35 and hadn’t pitched competitively in years. What he didn’t realize was that when his team watched him throw, it was just as fast, if not faster, than the pitchers they were facing in their varsity high school league. They saw the potential in their coach.

The story goes that he had to hold up his end of the deal due to his team’s success and ended up dropping the jaws of scouts at his tryout. A 35 year old can throw 98 mph. Not only that, he was also a lefty. One of my favorite quotes from the movie came from a scout who watched him: “Now, if I call the office and tell ’em I got a guy here almost twice these kids’ age, I’m gonna get laughed at. But, if I don’t call in a 98-mile-an-hour fastball, I’m gonna get fired! I’m just saying there’s a chance you might get a call on this.” He did get a call. After battling through the minor leagues, he got his shot on September 18, 1999.

He made his debut in his home state of Texas no less, against the Rangers. In front of his home crowd, he gets to pitch in the major leagues and the moment is spectacular. In his brief two-year career, he appeared in 21 games for the big league club, notching 13 strikeouts in 15 innings. This movie is a fantastic example of working hard for your dream and making it come true. The movie just goes beyond realizing a baseball dream. It is a display of his core values as a family man and his desire to be a good husband and father. This is one of the most family-oriented baseball movies out there.

Mandatory Credit: movieclips.com

Devin Sparks discusses #9-For Love of the Game:

For Love of the Game has long been one of my favorite baseball movies, and it easily ranks in my baseball top ten.

The movie stars Kevin Costner as Billy Chapel of the Detroit Tigers, a 40 year old pitcher playing in his of 19^th major league season. The movie opens with transcendent Vin Scully calling the game, setting the stage for the story. We learn that Chapel, a former baseball great has been struggling up to this point in the season with an 8-11 record and 3.55 ERA, and could very well ride off into the sunset after this game.

The game takes place on the road at Yankees stadium where Chapel must block out an unruly Yankees crowd once he takes the mound. As he pitches, the movie cuts back in time as he reflects on his career and his love life up until that time. We learn that a few years earlier, Chapel suffered from a near career-ending hand injury that he recovered from and that his long-time girlfriend broke up with him to take a job in London just before the start of the game.

As the movie weaves through Chapel’s life, we catch glimpses of what is transpiring in the game. A knowing smile from his teammates. Chapel icing his arm on the bench, with his teammates sitting ten feet away. And then in the bottom of the eighth, Billy looks up at the score board and realizes that he is throwing a perfect game.

While the love story drags on, it ultimately culminates with Billy’s realization of what he’s done and works as a plot mechanism to explain why he is having such a hard time focusing on the game.

The baseball cinematography is excellent, and the viewer feels like they are witnessing history as the game unfolds. Vin Scully on commentary helps to cement this movie as one of my favorite baseball films of all time.

Mandatory Credit: yahoo.com

Daryll Dorman discusses #8-42:

The 2013 movie 42, directed by Brian Helgeland and released by Warner Bros. Pictures is not a perfect movie about Jackie Robinson, but it does a pretty good job. Covering Jackie Robinson breaking into professional baseball and therefore baseball’s color line, the movie is inserting itself into a pivotal time in American history.

Which is where it gets tricky making a movie like this, where you try and balance out legend with fact, comedy with brevity, and not to make characters into stereotypes. I enjoyed 42 for at least trying to modernize the story a little bit and taking a few chances. Harrison Ford plays Branch Rickey well enough once you get past his accent and realize how old he is looking these days. Chadwick Boseman does a great job in giving personality to Jackie throughout the movie, despite being a relatively unknown actor before this movie.

The Jackie Robinson story has always been intriguing to me, especially when you consider it took place in 1947 and the Civil Rights Act, Martin Luther King Jr., and Rosa Parks didn’t come along until the 1960’s. Jackie Robinson didn’t have Jesse Jackson backing him, and the movie certainly shows how Robinson had to face the discrimination with a small support system of family and Branch Rickey supporting him from Brooklyn.

The impact of what Robinson did of course, is still felt throughout Major League Baseball today, and his number is rightfully retired by all major league ballparks. 42 is a good movie to help remind us of the sacrifice made by Jackie, and how baseball played its own role in ending segregation in America.

Mandatory Credit: pinterest.com

Mark Whelan discusses #7-A League of Their Own:

Girls can’t play baseball.

The hell they can’t.

In the only movie on this list that is about women playing baseball, Geena Davis, Lori Petty, Madonna, and a host of others portray women who can hit, run, field, and pitch well enough to play professional ball in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. But A League of Their Own is not just a movie about a group of women who can play ball. It is a well-rounded film, both charming and funny, that deals with gender roles, life during wartime, adult sibling rivalry, and the business of sports, all viewed through the lens of the nation’s pastime, baseball.

And ultimately, we see that it is not the gender of the player that matters on the diamond. It is the heart, the talent, the passion of the ballplayer that makes all the difference.

The all-star cast is led by Tom Hanks as Jimmy Dugan, the drunken ex-ballplayer manager of the Rockford Peaches, and Davis, who plays the best player in the league, catcher Dottie Hinson. But the talent is spread throughout the expansive cast, with some spectacular performances in smaller roles. Perhaps the most notable is Jon Lovitz, who completely takes over the screen in his early-scene cameo as a scout looking for women to play ball. Lovitz is smarmy, rude, and yet somehow loveable in this small but hilarious role.

League has some of the most memorable movie lines of all time:

May our feet be swift; may our bats be mighty; may our balls… be plentiful.
(On a baseball signed for a young fan): “Avoid the clap. Jimmy Dugan.” Then he calls after him “Hey, that’s good advice!”
You ever been married? Yeah, twice? Any children? Yeah, one of them was.
Anybody ever tell you you look like a p***s with a little hat on?
And of course: “There’s no crying in baseball.”

I love this movie. I have watched it about 20 times, and each time, I catch some nuance that previously escaped me. It is extremely well-written and wildly funny. And it is a movie filled with great moments. Remember when Davis catches the fastball with her bare hand? When the attractive blonde second baseman nails the idiot on the dugout by knocking him over with a well-placed ball in his chest? Hanks and Davis side-by-side giving contradictory signals to the baserunner? Or Hanks’ struggle to use polite language when scolding, or rather, teaching his ballplayers? Every well-crafted scene makes us care more deeply about the cast of characters.

But what makes A League of Their Own special is how the movie treats baseball, the sport that we love so dearly. Clearly, the people who put this movie together care as deeply about the game as we do. And it’s not that the actors are particularly skilled at hitting or fielding. They just capture the emotional side of the game exquisitely well. And our love of baseball is nothing if not emotional. Perhaps the movie’s treatment of our favorite sport is best exemplified by an exchange between Hanks and Davis near the film’s end:

Jimmy: Baseball is what gets inside you. It’s what lights you up, you can’t deny that.
Dottie: It just got too hard.
Jimmy: It’s supposed to be hard! If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard… is what makes it great.

Mandatory Credit: flix66.com

James Clark discusses #6-The Natural:

When I hear the Academy Award-winning score from The Natural, goose bumps come over my body. The movie was made in 1984 and has an excellent cast led by Robert Redford and Robert Duvall. Director Barry Levinson brought humor and drama together in this 138-minute classic. The iconic scene where Robert Redford’s character Roy Hobbs steps up to the plate, hurt and bleeding. Coming to the realization that his son was there watching him for the first time. He’s hurt and bleeding, beaten down by life, past his prime.

Hobbs promptly gets behind in the count and on a 0-2 pitch, blasts a majestic shot deep into the rainy night. The home run is so far it hits a transformer in the light tower and a showering of sparks fall upon the field as Roy Hobbs, “The Natural” circles the bases.

The music blares as he circles and I cannot help but to get that emotional feeling that I can do anything. That is truly movie magic at it’s finest, and that why I choose The Natural as my favorite baseball movie.

Editor’s Note: So, what do you think so far? There’s been a little bit of everything on this list, ranking 11 to 6. Be sure to check back in with us on Saturday, as we conclude the Friars On Base staff rankings of our favorite baseball movies of all-time, and unveil numbers five through one! ~B.B.

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