Top 10 Baseball Flicks

Randy Newman's score saved The Natural for me, even though what it does to Malamud's novel is damned near criminal.

 

WP Kinsella wrote a fabulous short story called "Shoeless Joe Jackson Comes to Iowa", published by a small literary press here in Canada.

An editor at Houghton Mifflin read it, couldn't leave well enough alone, and talked Kinsella into turning the short story into a novel called "Shoeless Joe"

As charming as the short story was, the novel was what you'd expect when someone (an editor no less) decides a novel is just a longer version of a short story. Overbloated piece of crap.

Sorry, I don't HATE the movie as much as FB but Amy Madigan's performance alone makes it almost impossible to watch.

1) Eight Men Out
2) The Natural
3) Bull Durham
4) Bad News Bears
5) The Sandlot

None of them quite capture the spirit of the thing, however.

 

If I watched each of these movies today without knowing anything about the plot or the endings, I am pretty darn sure my list would look like this...

1. Bad News Bears - A near perfect ending and its message regarding children and parents is still spot on 30 years later.

2. Bull Durham - Probably the funniest of them all.

3. The Natural - I would love the symbolism and a hokeyness.

4. Eight Men Out - To see something without CGI is very, very nice.

5. Major Leagues - Funny enough, plus the baseball drama is very good.

 

Bob Uecker is what made Major League such a terrific movie.

 

I've never seen Bang the Drum Slowly and have wanted to. I'll drop it in a 1A category due to anticipation.

1. Major League. Just damn funny.
2. The Babe
3. The Rookie
4. The Natural
5. League of Their Own
6. Bad News Bears (No. 1 must be required viewing of every little league parent, though I think the parents in a remake should be far more brutal, as they are)
7. Field Dreams
8. Sandlot.
9. Jackie Robinson Story
10. When "Bang" slides everyone else down...

 

Not a baseball movie per se, but I'll throw in an honorable mention nod for the last 30 minutes of The Naked Gun. Funny as hell, and some of the quick parodies of baseball culture (Drebin's inspection of the pitcher; the vaccuuming of home plate; his strike calls; the coaches using semaphore and signal lights to relay signs) are spot-on.

 

I'm assuming the Bad News Bears we are speaking about is the original.

 

The Fan kicks ass, FTW.

 

You want a list of fail? Here are the baseball movies I've seen:

The Natural
Major League
Bad News Bears
A League of Their Own
For The Love of the Game
Brewsters Millions
61*

I may have left off one that hasn't been discussed here, but as you can see, I've missed the majority of the "classics".

 

Am I alone in thinking that "Bull Durham" is great and funny for the first hour or so, then turns completely sappy and lame? It has always seemed to me like it's two different movies. Or maybe it was intended to be a four-part sitcom, with two funny parts to start off and then two "very special" episodes to follow?

 

"Eight Men Out" is a great movie. But does anybody really think "Greg Medavoy" (Gordon Clapp) and "major-league catcher" should be used in the same sentence?

Moonlight Graham lived in Chisholm, Minn., up on da Range, not in Moorhead.

 

That one gets as much hatred as Field of Dreams on here, but it's always been a favorite of mine.

Finally got to read the book a while ago, and the book is much better than the movie. But it's still a good one.