My top 10 baseball movies

By Richard K. Barry

I happened to catch The Rookie the other night. It's a very sentimental baseball movie about a former minor league pitcher who is teaching high school, coaching the team there and then discovers he's developed a 98 mile-an-hour fastball, and makes it back to the big leagues at 38 years old. It's based on the true story of Jim Morris, who did in fact play for a couple of years with Tampa Bay Devil Rays as a relief pitcher.

The emphasis here is on "sentimental," so that should tell you what you need to know about my favourite baseball movies. It's not number one on my list, not really close, but it's up there.

Here's my top ten (if you are unfamiliar with any of them, follow the links):

1. Bull Durham
2. Field of Dreams
3. Eight Men Out
4. Bang the Drum Slowly
5. A League of Their Own
6. Pride of the Yankees
7. 61*
8. The Natural
9. The Rookie
10. Major League

As far as #1 goes, it's not even close for me. I love Bull Durham. A lot of people think the best part of the movie is "the speech" by Crash Davis about what he "believes in." My favourite is the very last scene when Davis returns from having played with another team other than the Bulls in order to break a minor league record. It's raining when he walks up to Annie's house to greet her and tell her that he's finished as a player. The cold rain, autumn in the air, the end a season, the end of one part of a person's life and the beginning of another - it's a great scene.

The only movie I really had a problem putting on the list is Major League because it's a pretty goofy movie and there are some older classics that probably belong, like Damn Yankees or The Stratton Story. What can I say, I like the film.

By the way, didn't love Money Ball. Didn't hate it. Didn't love it. And the Ken Burns documentary is great, but that doesn't fit the category. Now that I'm thinking about it, The Sandlot gets honourable mention.

That's my list.

Can't find the scene from Bull Durham I mentioned, so I'll post the "the speech" instead.



(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)