Baseball Movies: The Top 10 Best in Cinematic History

A ranking of the 10 best baseball movies — including comedy, drama, fantasy and musical — in the history of cinema.

Aside from sex, war and politics, few subjects get Hollywood’s attention so frequently as baseball movies. Virtually since the beginning of the film industry, movie-makers have returned to the National Pastime for inspiration.

In 1920, well before the introduction of sound, Babe Ruth starred in a feature film titled ‘Headin’ Home.’ Shot in New Jersey over six days in the middle of the 1920 season, Ruth played a hick-town kid who became a baseball star, then returned to thwart the evil doings of a greedy banker intent on foreclosing on the home of his sweetie.

The Babe’s acting may not have opened a new career path for him, but neither did it kill the genre.

In the 1930s, Joe E. Brown starred as Ring Lardner’s Alibi Ike, and a few years after that Gary Cooper starred in a famous Lou Gehrig biopic. William Bendix played the Babe in a widely panned biography, and Jackie Robinson starred as himself in The Jackie Robinson Story produced in 1950.

Since then Hollywood has found baseball to be a fine source for in all genres:

• Musicals: Damn Yankees, comedy
• Comedy: Major League, the Bad News Bears, romance
• Romance: Take Me Out to the Ballgame, Bull Durham
• Drama: Bang The Drum Slowly, The Natural
• Biography: The Winning Team, Pride of St. Louis
• Fantasy: It Happens Every Spring
• History: Eight Men Out, Cobb

Hollywood has not necessarily hewed closely to factual realities in these presentations. Several, notably John Sayles’ 1980s “Eight Men Out” and Tommy Lee Jones’s 1990s “Cobb” have drawn tepid reviews from baseball historians for their willingness to subvert actual events to fit a good story.

Brad Pitt’s more recent work, “Moneyball,” was frequently criticized for the selective way it distilled the success of the 2002 Oakland A’s down to Billy Beane’s legitimate genius, in the process looking past the contributions of a dominant A’s pitching staff.

Many baseball movies, however, have drawn much-deserved praise both for their stories and for their performances. Listed below are 10 of the best in that respect.

10. The Bad News Bears

Most baseball memories begin at the youth level. Drawing on this, in 1976 Walter Matthau starred as the disreputable but caring manager of a downtrodden Little League team comprised of misfits. Matthau, a problem drinking former major league pitcher, recruits a couple of unlikely players – a juvenile delinquent in training and a fastballing girl – and turns the team into the least likely championship contender in history.

The first on this list of baseball movies, The Bad News Bears featured teen star Tatum O’Neal as the girl pitcher and Jackie Earle Haley as the troublemaking slugger. Although the league laughingstock at season’s start, the team comes together to make it to the championship game where it plays the ultra-talented and ultra-privileged perennial champions.

It is a plot line that will be repeated across the decades.

The movie was widely praised, mostly for its exposure of the competitiveness of some youth baseball programs. Rotten Tomatoes gave it a rating of 97 percent. Most of the era’s most prominent critics gave it passable, if not always adoring, reviews.

The Bad News Bears was so well received that it spawned two sequels plus a brief television series. Made on a budget of $9 million on sets no more glamorous than some southern California youth baseball fields, it returned $42.3 million at the box office.

9. Moneyball

9th on this list of best baseball movies, the 2011 film was adapted Michael Lewis’ best-selling 2003 book of the same name. It tells the story of how Oakland Athletics’ general manager Billy Beane used innovative SABRmetric techniques to manipulate the A’s to a 21-game winning streak, the AL West Division title, and eventually into the 2002 post-season.

Brad Pitt gave an Academy Award-nominated performance as Beane, one of six nominations that also included Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor for Jonah Hill, who played Beane’s nerdy alter ego and assistant.

At the time, team officials relied almost exclusively on traditional scouting methods to identify talent. Moneyball tells how Beane eschewed those methods as inefficient and costly, instead emphasizing overlooked traits, notably on-base average. Today every big league team has a statistical analysis office, but in 2002 such a strategy was considered heretical.

The movie cost $50 million to make and grossed about twice that much. Rotten Tomatoes gave it a rating of 94. As evidenced by the six Academy Award nominations, critics were generally effusive of their praise, both of Pitt and of the storyline.

Historians have been somewhat less kind, noting several factual omissions or inaccuracies. The A’s three most important players – pitchers Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder, and Barry Zito – are written out of the story entirely. Art Howe, who managed the 2002 A’s, has criticized his portrayal as a hard-headed, change-resistant field boss, a characterization probably done for dramatic effect. Some players have spoken out in Howe’s defense.

8. Pride of the Yankees
This classic 1942 movie stars Gary Cooper as Yankee legend Lou Gehrig. The star first baseman had died just one year earlier from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which came to be known as “Lou Gehrig’s Disease.”

The film was adapted from a story written by Paul Gallico, at the time one of the nation’s best-known sports writers. It is in its essentials a biography with significant overtones of hagiography, relating Gehrig’s rise from college star at nearby Columbia University to a hero capable of standing alongside Babe Ruth on the Yankees.

The film is noteworthy for the appearance of several of Gehrig’s teammates – including Ruth, Bob Meusel and Bill Dickey — at various points. Its highlight, naturally, is Gehrig’s July 4, 1939, “Luckiest Man” speech.

The movie grossed $8.08 million, making it the seventh most popular film of 1942 in terms of box office. The film received 11 Academy Award nominations, including Gary Cooper (as Gehrig) for Best Actor and Teresa Wright (as Mrs. Eleanor Gehrig) for Best Actress. It was also nominated for Best Picture. It won only one, however, for film editing.

Like most fact-based baseball movies, historians have criticized some of its points, although in the case of Pride of the Yankees those criticisms are generally not central to the story

7. Damn Yankees

The 1958 film follows the plot line of Douglass Wallop’s 1954 book, “The Year The Yankees Lost The Pennant,” which subsequently became a popular Broadway play. It’s a baseball riff on the Faust legend in which Joe Hardy, a middle-aged fan of the downtrodden Washington Senators played by Tab Hunter, makes a deal with the Devil in which Hardy trades his immortal soul for the chance to lead the Senators to the pennant.

Unbeknownst to Hardy, the Devil – a committed Yankees fan known in the film as Old Applegate – plans to renege on the deal and trap Hardy. But with the help of Lola (played by Gwen Verdun), who had been recruited by Applegate to help him ensnare the ballplayer – he escapes the devil’s clutches and leads the Senators to the pennant.

His diving catch of the final out – a Mickey Mantle line drive – occurs just as Applegate – played by Ray Walton – turns him back into a middle-aged man. Hardy limps out of the park through a center field gate and is never seen as a ballplayer again, mysteriously returning to his wife..

Listed #7 on this list of best baseball movies, Damn Yankees was nominated for one Academy Award for its musical score, highlighted by Verdun’s rendition of “Whatever Lola Wants (Lola Gets), and an ensemble performance of “You Gotta Have Heart.”

6. 42

Of the various Jackie Robinson biographies, this 2013 film featuring Chadwick Boseman as the ballplayer and Harrison Ford as Branch Rickey, is probably the best. It retains the stark treatment and intense language of the 1950 Robinson biopic while avoiding any of the first-person concessions that may be necessary when telling the star’s own story.

Production values, including the game re-creations, are highly evocative of the era.

The plot does not stray far from the essentials of Robinson’s story. Signed by Rickey to integrate the game in 1946, he spends one preparatory season in Montreal, then arrives in Brooklyn in April of 1947 to widespread abuse – both verbal and physical, in several cities. Some of his own teammates threaten to refuse to play, reneging only when Rickey and field manager Leo Durocher assure them they will be suspended.

In the end, Robinson wins over the team with his aggressive play, winning Rookie of the Year honors and leading Brooklyn to the 1947 National League pennant.

Made on a $50 million budget, the movie grossed nearly twice that much and was widely hailed. The 1940s look of many of the ballpark scenes was achieved using digital imaging techniques.
Inaccuracies? Yes, film-makers did take a few liberties. In the film, Robinson is shown hitting the pennant-clinching home run at game’s end. He actually hit it in the top of the fourth inning.

Moreover, it was only the first run in a game Brooklyn eventually won 4-2. Finally, the Dodgers only clinched a tie for the pennant that day; the actual clincher followed a day later.

5. Bull Durham

This 1988 romantic comedy tells the fictional story of three people. Kevin Costner stars as “Crash” Davis,” an aging rider on the majors-to-minors shuttle, sent to Durham to nurture one of the franchise’s budding talents.

Tim Robbins plays that talent, “Nuke” LaLoosh, a pitcher destined for the majors as soon as he can master his erratic arm and equally erratic brain. Susan Sarandon plays Annie Savoy, the Durham resident and baseball groupie who takes both of them under her wing – and occasionally to more intimate locales.

The movie is universally recognized among the best baseball films of all time principally because of its expert playing out of the universal themes of gender conflict, talent development, and maturation. Sports Illustrated, among others, has ranked it as the best sports movie of all time.

Its most famous passages include Crash’s litany of things he believes in, among which were: “…The small of a woman’s back … the hanging curveball, good scotch … that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone … and long, slow wet kisses that last three days.”

The public appears to have agreed since Bull Durham grossed $58 million against a $7.5 million budget.

The film, listed here 5th among the best baseball movies, was written and directed by Ron Shelton, who was intimately familiar with his subject matter, having played minor league baseball for five seasons.

3. Major League

Released in 1989, Major League plays off the well-worked theme first put to film in Damn Yankees: a series of unforeseeable events conspire to elevate a long-downtrodden team into pennant contention.

In this case, the team isn’t the Washington Senators but the Cleveland Indians, and the antagonist isn’t Satan but the team’s satanic new owner. She tries to undermine the team’s performance so much that it will kill fan interest and permit her to move it to her favorite city, Miami.

That plan is foiled by an eclectic collection of new talent, including an ex-con relief pitcher played by Charlie Sheehan, a naïve, light-hitting speed merchant played by Wesley Snipes, and a voodoo chanting power hitter played by Dennis Haysbert. The film stars Tom Berenger and Corbin Bernsen as often feuding veterans.

Its most famous lines, though, were probably uttered by Bob Uecker, who played Harry Doyle, the team’s jaded announcer. Even today, if a pitcher let’s fly a particularly wild pitch, the announcer is odds-on to imitate Uecker’s memorable description in one such scene: “Juuuuuust a bit outside!”

The film is generally rated as the best pure baseball comedy. Made on an $11 million budget, it grossed nearly $50 million.

It also contained an element of life imitating art. At the time it was made, the Indians had not played a post-season game in 35 seasons. Within two seasons they would begin to assemble a real-life cast that would carry Cleveland to the 1995 and 1997 World Series, and to five consecutive post-season appearances.

2. The Natural

2nd on the list of best baseball movies is The Natural.

Filmed in 1984, The Natural breathes life into Bernard Malamud’s 1952 novel of the same name. Listed 2nd here among the best baseball movies, The Natural was nominated for four Academy Awards.

Robert Redford stars as Roy Hobbs, a talented prospect whose career hopes are thwarted when he is shot by a deranged woman he does not know. Malamud derived that part of the plot from the real-life 1949 shooting of Philadelphia Phillies first baseman Eddie Waitkus in a Chicago motel. The real-life Waitkus recovered and returned to the Phillies in time to play a role in the team’s 1950 championship.

In the novel and movie, though, Hobbs is sidelined for 16 years during which he is forgotten. Chance events bring the aging Hobbs to the attention of the management of the lowly New York Knights big league team, and he eventually carries them to the pennant.

The climactic scene shows Hobbs crushing a home run off the stadium light and sending a flurry of sparks cascading around the park for dramatic effect.

Produced on a $28 million budget, The Natural grossed about $48 million. Although not strictly following the plot line of Malamud’s book, it is nonetheless widely considered one of the best dramatic adaptations of a baseball novel ever filmed.

In fact, there is probably only one other contender for that title…

1. Field of Dreams

Produced in 1989, the best of all the baseball movies, Field of Dreams stars Kevin Costner, Amy Madigan, Burt Lancaster and James Earl Jones in an adaptation of W.P. Kinsella’s 1982 book, “Shoeless Joe.”

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Like the book, it plays off the 1919 Black Sox scandal. At its heart, though, Field of Dreams is memorable as the consummate “fathers and sons’ story. It focuses on the seemingly irrational desire of Roy Kinsella, a relatively poor Iowa corn farmer, to plow up large portions of his land to build a baseball field in the middle of nowhere.

In the process, Kinsella nearly puts his family into bankruptcy. His labors are eventually rewarded, however, when the field attracts the attention of the spirits of the long-disgraced Black Sox who – invisible to the skeptical neighbors – make it their own playing field.

In time Kinsella’s own long-dead father, a one-time bit ballplayer, joins them on the field, leading to a memorable reunion in which Kinsella/Costner is allowed to utter one of those bonding lines that define America: “Hey dad, wanna have a catch?”

Made for $15 million, which I consider the best of all the baseball movies, the film grossed nearly $85 million.

The ballfield still stands today in Dyersville, Ia.; in fact, it has become both a tourist attraction and a campground where youth baseball teams from around the country can come to play a game…or just have a catch with their dads.