2024 Summer Movie Talk – Part 11

Baseball Movies

I started out with sports movies but that’s a lot of territory.  Football, basketball, boxing, horse racing and all kinds of other stuff.  Baseball by itself is plenty for a list.

Every kid of my generation loved baseball as much for playing as for watching the pros.  We played some version of baseball on parish fields, sandlots, school yard asphalt or around the cars on our city streets.  Baseball, stickball, punchball, slapball or softball.  Wherever we could find the space and whoever was around we could always get together some kind of game.

And of course we were rabid fans.  Being from New York City we had to choose between the Yankees and the Mets.  But even though I was a die-hard Yankees fan I went to the 7^th game of the 1969 World Series and dutifully ripped up a square of turf when the Mets won it all for the first time and planted it in my backyard.  A year later that chunk of grass died.  It figured.

“The Sandlot” is a cheat because it’s more of a comedy about kids but it has a few things that broaden the appeal.

“Field of Dreams” and “A League of Their Own” both have cultural aspects that annoy me but both contain enough entertainment to allow me to include them on the list with only a grimace or two.  “The Natural” is overly sentimental but I consider it the best attempt to capture the mythological aspect of baseball in the American psyche; at least as it was before America was lobotomized in our era.  “61*” is a more realistic look at the business of baseball legends.  “Eight Men Out” is another movie to look at the reality behind the legends.  It’s the story of the Black Sox Scandal.  Excellently made.

I’m sure opinions will differ.  Have at it.

1. The Pride of the Yankees (1942)
2. It Happens Every Spring (1949) ₁
3. Angels in the Outfield (1951) ₁
4. The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings (1976)
5. The Natural (1984)
6. Bull Durham (1988)
7. Eight Men Out (1988)
8. Field of Dreams (1989)
9. A League of Their Own (1992)
10. The Babe (1992) 2
11. The Sandlot (1993)
12. Cobb (1994)
13. For Love of the Game (1999)
14. 61* (2001)

₁ Master Diver

₂ War Pig