Top 10 baseball movies of all time

From the Cheap Seats

By Mike Hackworth

(Updated: Friday, March 28, 2008, 4:22 PM)

The movies that portray the magic and mythology of baseball

As often happens when there is a light load of local sports scheduled, I try to be creative and write about something that is both appropriate to the season AND has a decent fan following.

So what would be better suited for a sports page than baseball movies? In researching the best baseball movies I have learned some obscure baseball movie trivia.

For instance, did you know that baseball movies have been made for the past 109 years?

Naturally, the first ever baseball movie made was produced by Thomas Edison in 1898, and the first feature baseball movie "Right Off the Bat," was released in 1915.

Since then, there have been more than 250 baseball movies produced on celluloid, and that doesn't count any made outside the country (i.e. Japan, Mexico or Cuba for example).

Many of these movies are enjoyed by die hard baseball fans, who would agree to disagree with my selections. But most real baseball fans are emotionally predisposed to enjoy any film about the game.

When I think of baseball movies, there are several films that leap to mind, both the great and the obscure.

I've put together a list of my favorite baseball films of all time, ranking them from 10 to one, and I'm going to share them here.

10. "The Rookie" (2002)

Based on the true story of Jim Morris, played by actor Dennis Quaid as the 38-year old science teacher who made the Tampa Bay Devil Rays baseball team as a walk-on.

"The Rookie" is an inspirational fairy tale that it would probably be considered lame, if it weren't true.

9. "A League of Their Own" (1992)

A movie also based on a true story. The film takes place in 1943 when professional baseball, America's pastime, lost many of its players to the war and a group of businessmen filled the void by forming the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League and kept baseball alive for the nation.

The movie is about the first season. Geena Davis plays Dottie Hinson, the team's best player, and Tom Hanks portrays Jimmy Dugan, the drunken ex-player and manager (based on Hall of Famer Jimmy Foxx) who eventually takes the team to the World Series.

The actresses in the movie are all believable as baseball players. The reason it's a great movie is that baseball is a game that you fall in love with and that has little to do with whether you're a man or a woman.

8. (Tie) "For the Love of the Game" (1999)

A film based on the novel by Michael Shaara, that depicts the final season of baseball great Billy Chapel, 37, a pitcher for the Detroit Tigers. Chapel is played by Kevin Costner, who discovers that he will be traded upon the conclusion of the season.

He decides that last game of the season, against the New York Yankees, will be his swan song. He pitches a perfect game and retires from baseball with dignity.

8. (Tie) "Soul of the Game" (1996) HBO

Set in 1944, it is the story of the Negro League All-Stars Satchel Paige (Delroy Lindo), Josh Gibson (Mykelti Williamson) and Jackie Robinson (Blair Underwood), who are black players trying to break the color barrier in major league baseball.

Gibson and Paige both assume it will be one of them, if not both at the same time. Branch Rickey, owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, is focused on Robinson.

The film has plenty of good baseball scenes and is carried by Lindo's portrayal of Paige.

7. "Eight Men Out" (1988)

It is a gritty movie about one of baseball's darkest hours in history, the 1919 Black Sox scandal.

It is a gripping story about the 1919 Chicago White Sox, aka the Black Sox, who were accused of accepting bribes to deliberately lose the 1919 World Series.

This is the story is about "Shoeless" Joe Jackson and his teammates and what led to their lifetime ban from the game of baseball.

The film was written and directed by John Sayles and is based on the award-winning book by Eliot Asinof. It features a cast that includes John Cusack, David Strathairn and John Mahoney.

6. "Field of Dreams" (1989)

This is another baseball movie based on a best-selling novel, W. P. Kinsella's "Shoeless Joe." "Field of Dreams" tells the story of Iowa farmer Ray Kinsella, portrayed by Kevin Costner, who repeatedly hears the ghostly voice of the discredited "Shoeless" Joe Jackson (played by Ray Liotta) a member of the 1919 Chicago White Sox baseball team that threw the World Series.

There are hardly any baseball action scenes in the movie, and yet it has managed to become one of the great baseball movies ever made.

The "voice" tells Kinsella to build a baseball diamond in the middle of his corn field and then says, "If you build it, he will come."

With this crazy vision, he builds a baseball field with bleachers and floodlights right in the middle of his cornfield. Ray's wife Annie, played by Amy Madigan, is semi-supportive, but worried about losing the now unproductive farm.

None of the nonbelievers can see the ghostly ballplayers who begin to appear. The ghosts of Jackson and other "Black Sox" players, return from the dead and appear for a few games with Kinsella to be forgiven.

Kinsella enlists the help of Terence Mann (James Earl Jones) to understand what the voices mean and want.

Mann tells him how baseball once reflected the best about America: "The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers." Mann said.

"It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time.

"This field, this game, is a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and that could be again. Oh people will come, Ray. People will most definitely come."

The film climaxes with Ray's reconciliation scene with his dead father. "Is this heaven?" the ghost of Ray's father asks. "No, it's Iowa," Ray answers.

5. "Bang the Drum Slowly" (1973)

This emotionally charged movie is the story of simple-minded catcher Bruce Pearson, played by Robert DeNiro, who learns he has Hodgkin's disease just as a new season is about to begin.

Star pitcher Henry "Author" Wiggen is portrayed by Michael Moriarty and provides emotional support and friendship to Pearson when no one else on the team will.

As the season and Pearson's life slowly come to an end, the team rallies behind him. The tear-jerker ends with his death.

4. "61*" (2001) HBO

Billy Crystal directed this made-for-HBO movie about the 1961 New York Yankees and the quest to break Babe Ruth's home-run record of 60 by Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle.

It's a great movie about the race and what it was like for Maris to feel the fans' fury becaise je was chasing the beloved record set by the Babe.

Maris is portrayed by Barry Pepper and Thomas Janes plays Mickey Mantle. The actors are aided by their physical resemblance of the two Yankee greats.

3. "Sandlot" (1993)

This movie reminds us of our childhoods and how baseball is for kids when adults aren't around to screw things up. It is full of great one-liners and comedic situations.

Sandlot is set in the 1960s, but it just as well could've been set at Any Where, USA after the turn of the century.

It's a story about kids getting a game of baseball together at a local empty lot, with "no uniforms, no coaches, no umpires," just a bunch of kids playing ball, all day long, nearly every day of the summer.

2. "Pride of the Yankees" (1942)

One of the greatest baseball players of all time is portrayed by acting legend Gary Cooper in this tear-jerker about Lou Gehrig's life and impending death by ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), now named after the Hall of Fame Yankee.

Cooper's speech of Gehrig's "Luckiest Man Alive" while baseball's greatest players of that era are gathered in Yankee Stadium makes the film more special.

This early classic was nominated for 11 Academy Awards. Gehrig epitomized all that is good about baseball, sportsmanship, professionalism, courage and pure-heartedness.

1. "The Natural" (1984)

Another baseball story based on a novel, this one by Bernard Malamud. With the aid of a bat cut from a lightning struck tree, Roy Hobbs lives the fame he should have had earlier as a rising pitcher and arguably the greatest baseball movie of all time.

The film follows the career of an amazing young pitcher who mysteriously disappears after he is inexplicably shot by a young woman.

Years later as an unknown middle-aged batter named Roy Hobbs, he appears out of nowhere to take a losing 1930s baseball team to the top of the league despite the flawed economic and gambling systems that were rampant and corrupted the game.

Robert Redford stars as Hobbs, the quintessential American hero. It features a strong supporting cast led by Glenn Close, Kim Basinger, Robert Duvall, Michael Madsen and the late Darrin McGavin.

It even has a bat made from an oak tree which was struck by lightning. The climax of the movie has to be seen to appreciate it. Hobbs hits a tremendous ... maybe it's best if you just rent or buy the movie and make your own conclusions.

Honorable Mention.

"Take Me Out to the Ballgame" (1949), starring Frank Sinatra, Esther Williams and Gene Kelly.

"Damn Yankees" (1958) about a long-suffering, middle-aged fan of the Washington Senators baseball team, who meets a salesman, Mr. Applegate, who is in reality, the devil.

Joe sells his soul to the devil, becoming a young slugger named Joe Hardy, the "long ball hitter" the Senators need that he'd sold his soul for.

There are some that just couldn't round the curve for whatever reason, but I will mention their titles anyway.

"Major League" (1989), "Rookie of the Year" (1993), "Little Big League" (1994), the original "Bad News Bears" (1976), and both the new "Angels in the Outfield" (1994) and the 1951 version.

"Cobb" (1994), "Bull Durham" (1988) and the documentaries, "When It Was a Game" (1991) HBO and "Baseball: A Film by Ken Burns" (1994), is a nine-part series that originally aired on PBS.

This is getting to be a bigger post than I had intended, so I'll wrap it up by simply saying all of the above-mentioned are quality films populated with likable, dramatic characters that every American loves in a baseball movie.

All have decent story lines or are the depiction of the all-American game, making it rather pointless to really criticize many of these movies.

Until next time.