Since we’re at the All-Star break, it’s time to take another look at my list of 10 Best Baseball Movies.
The Natural
Movies to See Right Now
The Must See film right now is The Adjustment Bureau, a first rate love story embedded in the action thriller genre. The Music Never Stopped is a crowd pleaser that opens this weekend.
Cedar Rapids is a fun and unpretentious comedy. Nora’s Will is a wry family dramedy, which is also now playing on HBO Signature as Cinco Dias Sin Nora (Five Days Without Nora). The Illusionist is the wistful and charming animated story of a small time magician who drifts through an ever bleaker array of gigs while helping a waif blossom.
Oscar winners True Grit, The King’s Speech and The Fighter are on my Best Movies of 2010 and are still kicking around in some theaters, as is Oscar nominee 127 Hours.
For trailers and other choices, see Movies to See Right Now.
You can see trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.
My DVD pick is Hereafter. For my recent DVD choices (including trailers), see DVDs of the Week.
Movies on TV this week include Sleeper, The Natural and Shock Corridor on TCM.
Ten Best Baseball Movies
We’re at the All-Star Break, so let’s talk baseball. Here are the Ten Best Baseball Movies.
1. Bull Durham (1988): This comedy is the ultimate baseball film, depicting the minor leagues and players on the way up and on the way down. The very smart screenplay celebrates all of the little customs, superstitions, traditions, idioms, etc., that make up the culture of baseball. Plus there is the all-time funniest conference on the mound.
2. Eight Men Out (1988): Director John Sayles tells the true story of the Black Sox Scandal – the Chicago White Sox players who fixed the 1919 World Series. Sayles used actors, not baseball players, but the baseball scenes are totally authentic. The characters of star players Eddie Cicotte, Buck Weaver and Shoeless Joe Jackson and owner Charles Comiskey vividly come alive.
3. A League of Their Own (1992): This film is set during the man shortage of WW II, when there was a professional baseball league of women players; grizzled manager Tom Hanks is not enthusiastic about managing the girls, but finds that they really do play baseball – real baseball. “There’s no crying in baseball.”
4. Baseball (1994): This is Ken Burns’ history of baseball, told in nine “innings”. The first inning probes the hazy origins of the game, and the ninth inning explores modern corporate baseball. In between, we see the one-base-at-a-time game of the 1910s, the Black Sox scandal, Babe Ruth and the new power game, the Negro Leagues, Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey, the move of MLB into California, expansion, and so much more. Burns uses a delightful array of talking heads (players and observers), the most compelling of whom are Buck O’Neil, Stephen Jay Gould and Bob Costas.
5. The Natural (1984): This is the beautifully shot fable of an promising player whose career is aborted by violence, but who, with a magic bat, reappears in middle age under a different identity as a once-in-a-lifetime slugging star.
6. Bang the Drum Slowly (1973): Michael Moriarty plays the hotshot pitcher and Robert DeNiro plays the simple-minded catcher on a minor league team. Roommates, they share the secret of the catcher’s alarmingly progressive disease. This is the best sports tear jerker.
7. The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings (1976): This film is the story of the Negro Leaguers who barnstormed the countryside. It’s also a rowdy and earthy vehicle for Billy Dee Williams, James Earl Jones and Richard Pryor. But the baseball scenes are really, really good by themselves.
8. Field of Dreams (1989): This is the lyrical fable of a dreamer who builds a baseball field in his cornfield to connect with players of yesteryear, including his own father. “Build it, and he will come”.
9. The Pride of the Yankees (1942): This classic tells the true story of the taciturn superstar Lou Gehrig (the taciturn Gary Cooper) who is stricken by a debilitating illness. Co-stars Babe Ruth as himself.
10. (tie) Major League (1989), Angels in the Outfield (1994) and Damn Yankees! (1958): Major League is the crass joke-a-minute baseball comedy – the Airplane! of baseball. Angels in the Outfield is the sweet fable about a boy who sees angels, and enlists them to help his favorite ball club. Damn Yankees! is the musical on our list, and asks what baseball fan wouldn’t sell his soul to have his cellar-dwelling heroes win the Series? Gwen Verdon has a show stopping rendition of “What Lola Wants”.
The Golden Age of Baseball Movies
More excellent baseball movies were made between 1984 and 1994 than in any other period: The Natural, Bull Durham, Eight Men Out, Field of Dreams, Major League, A League of their Own, Angels in the Outfield, The Scout, Cobb and Ken Burns’ Baseball.
Why didn’t this trend continue? My guess is that Major League Baseball lost the hearts of Americans during the MLB Strike of 1994-95. That Strike even forced cancellation of the entire postseason, including the 1994 World Series.
Before the Strike, my kitchen and auto radios were always tuned to the station that broadcast my favorite baseball team; those radios are tuned to NPR now. I was familiar with every regular player, starting pitcher and key reliever in the National League; I’m not any more. The Strike made me go cold turkey and killed my baseball habit.
By the measures of revenue and attendance, MLB has been even more successful since the strike, but I don’t believe that it is loved as much as before.
It was also a key time in American sports culture – as baseball was being eclipsed by soccer as a youth sport and by the NBA and NFL as a spectator sport. Baseball did not understand how vulnerable its place in American culture was.
Americans have been burned once – and severely burned – by baseball. We will go the ballpark as an entertainment event, but no longer from devotion to the sport and our favorite teams. That devotion – which so warmly received the baseball movies of 1984-1994 – is no longer there.
