ESPN's sports Academy Awards

An OK list by some slack-jawed dot.com editor at the mother ship, but how do you leave off Hoops Dreams and put on Fever Pitch?!


* 1 "Baseball" By Ken Burns (1994)

This documentary was 19 hours long. Large portions of it had little or no action. Needless to say, no other film in history so perfectly captured what baseball is often like.
* 2 "Somebody Up There Likes Me" (1956)

Paul Newman played middleweight champion Rocky Graziano in this biopic that was before its time, as the title suggests. It wasn't until some 40 years later that we all finally came to realize that championships are not decided by talent or hard work, but by who God wants to win.
* 3 "Rudy" (1993)

"Rudy" was an inspirational tale that reminded us that dreams can come true, and that even a small, weak, unathletic person can play for the most prestigious college football team in the country. The film's impact is felt even today as a majority of Notre Dame football players have been small, weak and unathletic ever since "Rudy" came out 14 years ago.
* 4 "Bull Durham" (1988)

This film was so well done that the public was willing to endure 314 more baseball movies from Kevin Costner. Next up? "Waterworld 2," in which Costner fights to build his baseball team a dome in order to put an end to frequent rainouts.
* 5 "Jerry Maguire" (1996)

A great sports movie is not so much a movie about sports, but a movie that uses sport as a vehicle to impart truths about life. "Jerry Maguire" did that, as it taught us that love takes hard work and selflessness, but mainly it taught us that Cuba Gooding Jr. should have ended his career after this movie wrapped.
* 6 "The Natural" (1984)

An unparalleled power hitter using a special bat that was mysteriously created and is stored in a black case? Little did we know in 1984, but this movie was an Orwellian metaphor for the steroids era that was to come.
* 7 "Hoosiers" (1986)

Comedies tend not to be honored by the Academy, and that's what did in "Hoosiers." But this tale of an all-white basketball team winning a championship without the services of a single European player is absolutely hilarious and deserving of recognition.
* 8 "Fever Pitch" (2005)

This Jimmy Fallon vehicle flawlessly captured the misery of what it is like to be a Boston Red Sox fan, because not even 20 minutes into the film I wanted to murder Fallon and anyone who had anything to do with the film as a way to give myself some sort of outlet from the misery being inflicted upon me through watching it.

 

Jesus Effing Christ on a popsicle stick.

Do readers read these vapid lists and have the same reaction I do?

Here's the ESPN list formula. Have nine of the top 10 represented from the last 25 years to hit the sweet spot in the 18-to-35 demographic. Throw in a pre-1980 movie for "cred" to fool the dumb asses who don't know any better. Voila! Page 2 is half-done.

Christ almighty. Rudy? Fucking Fever Pitch? And the Baseball documentary was an east-coast-biased red-headed stepchild in Ken Burns' canon, complete with the flowery testimonials from intellectuals, et al, that make non-baseball fans hate baseball with a passion. Shit there was probably more minutes spent sucking off 50s Yankees like Moose Skowron than there was in entirety about Hank Aaron, Frank Robinson, etc.

Terrible list, but then, who would expect anything less from a medium that makes USA Today's lists look Talmudic in comparison.

 

An 8-year-old must have put this list together. A dumb 8-year-old.

Rocky, Heaven Can Wait, Field Of Dreams and Pride Of The Yankees are sports movies, right off the top of my head, that actually did earn Oscar nominations. Rocky won, for crying out loud.

Did this person compile the list solely by opening up this month's HBO guide? There are a hell of a lot more than one or two movies I would replace.

 

I'm going to go get the papers, get the papers.

 

I think the movies on this list were put there for comedy's sake. The writer was just trying to be funny, guys. You're worried that Fever Pitch is on the list when all he writes about is that he wants to murder everyone involved in "inflicting" the movie upon us. Do you really think he believes it's the eighth-best sports movie ever? Lighten up.

 

For the Worldwide Leader to include Fever Pitch to the exclusion of others is ridiculous.

That being said, your cure for all this is simple. Don't read page 2 or ESPN.com.

 

How dare he leave off the greatest baseball movie of the 1980s.

The Slugger's Wife.

 

Fixed.

 

BigPern is definitely right on this one. It's DJ Gallo, whose tongue is often in his cheek while trying to be Dan Shanoff. Come on, right the little summaries he does...they're clearly sarcastic. Nothing worth getting worked up over here.

 

Two words: Raging Bull

Third word: Idiot

EDIT: Actually read the capsules this time and I guess this person is trying to be funny. Which leads to the fourth word: Unfunny (is that even a word?).

 

Does espn.com not have a sarcasm font?

 

I'm an idiot. Once I saw Fever Pitch's inclusion, my eyes blurred, my brain shut off and I cut and pasted. Obviously this was in jest. I guess I expect too little nowadays.