The Best And Worst Baseball Moments In Movies

It's easy to find America's pastime in the movies, but not every baseball moment is a winner. Here are some of our favorites, along with a few that suck no matter how many $7 beers you down before watching.

BEST

1. Bull Durham

**Not Safe For Work Language**

The Scene: When Crash Davis (Kevin Costner) violates one of the game’s tenets when arguing a call with the ump.

Why It’s Great: Because it’s authentic, just like the rest of the flick (uh, with the exception of Nuke Laloosh’s pitching mechanics). “C***sucker” is one of the few characterizations that will get a player or manager tossed from a game, no questions asked. There are several others, but this is a family web site.

2. Eight Men Out

The Scene: The sequence – filmed panoramically without cuts or trick photography or CGI or whatnot – in which Shoeless Joe Jackson (D.B. Sweeney) legs out a triple.

Why It’s Great: It captures the visceral thrill of a human thoroughbred at his athletic peak. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think that Sweeney majored in baseball at a stud factory like the University of Miami.

3. The Natural

The Scene: Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford) hits the climactic dinger and does a whole lotta damage to the stadium’s lighting fixtures in the process.

Why It’s Great: The music, which builds to a towering crescendo, and the slo-mo, which gives the sequence an almost otherworldly quality. It doesn’t hurt that it alters the book’s downer of an ending, where Hobbs doesn’t redeem himself quite so spectacularly.

4. Field of Dreams

The Scene: When Shoeless Joe Jackson (Ray Liotta) lays a heap o’ ethereal trash talk on the ever-surly Ty Cobb. Think of it as ESPN sass for the dead-ball era.

Why It’s Great: You gotta love the gleeful malice in Liotta’s voice, which contrasts neatly with the rest of the flick’s “I love you, paw!” bent. As for the Cobb-baiting, file ‘er under “just desserts” and “how ‘bout them apples?”.

5. The Bad News Bears (original version)

The Scene: Coach Buttermaker (Walter Matthau) sends a few sweet nothings, few of which belonged in what was essentially a kids’ flick, towards the skipper in the opposing dugout.

Why It’s Great: It prepared us for the Ozzie Guillen/Lou Piniella era of manager relations, that’s for sure. Matthau was one of the few actors able to convincingly convey slovenly drunkenness, and we love him for it.

6. The Sandlot

The Scene: The neighborhood gang unites for the first of many informal contests, ushering new kid in town Scotty Smalls (Tom Guiry) into their hardball clique despite his inability to, you know, play. What’s that I smell? Oooh, pipin’-hot nostalgia, served up with a generous heaping of warmth. Yummo.

Why It’s Great: Because it’s real. Whether you played baseball in the streets or in a park, your ad-hoc games came together much in the same way that those in The Sandlot did.

7. The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg

The Scene: A talking head relates the extent to which Jewish slugger Hank Greenberg went to make Jackie Robinson feel welcome.

Why It’s Great: It reminds us that, despite baseball’s less-than-exceptional record when it comes to race relations, there were individuals strong and secure enough in themselves to reject the status quo.

8. A League of Their Own

The Scene: Ill-tempered skipper Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks) laces into Evelyn Gardner (Bitty Schram) after she makes a mental error, then reacts with disbelief when she starts to sob: “There’s no crying in baseball!”

Why It’s Great: Because Hanks used to be a hell of a lot of fun before he became A Big Movie Star; it’s easy to forget his considerable skills as a comedian, which are on full display during this rant.

9. Long Gone

The Scene: Folksy manager (that guy who used to be on “CSI”… you know, the one with the emo beard) chews out his talented charges for not taking the game seriously enough.

Why It’s Great: It’s the second-best scene in a detail-perfect flick about the minor leagues of yore. The best? The one showcasing an in-her-prime Virginia Madsen, which has no relevance whatsoever for the purpose of this feature. Let’s move on.

10. The Naked Gun

The Scene: Fans react gleefully as the Jumbotron displays a host of “funny” highlights, including a base runner getting mauled by a tiger, between innings at a California Angels game.

Why It’s Great: These highlights sure beat the hell out of the way-too-often-displayed clip of Tommy Lasorda falling on his pasta-addled tush. We only wish the in-stadium experience were half this fun.

11. 61*

The Scene: Roger Maris (Barry Pepper) gets heckled by Yankee fans for the sin of being somebody other than Mickey Mantle.

Why It’s Great: It reminds us once anew of the immutable link between baseball fandom and cruel, unthinking alcoholism. Also, Pepper’s swing looks uncannily like Maris’ – say what you want about Billy Crystal (Borscht Belt hack, blah blah blah), but he sweated the details for this one.

12. The Pride of the Yankees

The Scene: "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”

Why It’s Great: We don’t have a piece of dust in our eye or anything like that. We’re outright sobbing, much like our female counterparts did when Mr. Big said that terrible thing about shoes to What’s-Her-Face.

13. Baseball: A Film By Ken Burns

The Scene: The sequence in which a bunch of talking heads, including Bob Costas, discuss how they had to quickly de-victory-proof the Red Sox locker room in the wake of their calamitous collapse during Game 6 of the 1986 World Series.

Why It’s Great: Because it still boggles the mind how the Sox blew it. Two outs, nobody on, a two-run lead… come on! The reality was more fantastic than any baseball fiction.

14. The Rookie

The Scene: Baseball-lifer-turned-teacher-turned-baseball-lifer-again Jim Morris (Dennis Quaid) reacts with dismay to a lowly radar-gun reading... but after he walks away, the radar flickers and reveals that he was throwing some serious heat.

Why It’s Great: The scene – indeed, the entire flick – isn’t played with the usual Disney pathos. It’s just a regular guy realizing his dream in a way that plays to our collective love affair with second chances.

15. Major League

The Scene: Willie Mays Hayes (Wesley Snipes) comes up just a few inches short when attempting to steal a base.

Why It’s Great: It’s one of the few “Major League” gags that isn’t broader than John Kruk, and Snipes underplays it perfectly. Whoa – how’d you like that semi-topical baseball humor? We’ll be here all night, folks. Tip your server.