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Rewind Enjoy with peanuts, Crackerjack
Even if you can't make it out to the ballgame, these baseball movies will make a hit in your livingroom.
By PHILIP BOOTH, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published March 20, 2003
[Photo: Orion Pictures]
Kevin Costner portrays a veteran baseball player who’s getting a rookie ready for the season in Bull Durham.
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Spring is in the air, and the boys of summer are training for the long hot season ahead. Hope springs eternal: Tampa Bay Devil Rays baseball action begins March 31, with a four-game series at home against Boston.
For those looking for an extra dose of team spirit, Hollywood style, here's a look at the Top 10 baseball movies, as selected a few years back by the editors of Baseball America magazine. All are available on home video.
Also worth noting is last year's The Rookie, starring Dennis Quaid as Jimmy Morris, the real-life Texas high school coach who unexpectedly made it into the major leagues at age 35, with the Devil Rays.
Bull Durham (1988) -- The grit, spit, humor and sex of America's Pastime are expertly captured by writer-director Ron Shelton (Tin Cup), a former minor-league player. It's half sports movie, half romantic comedy, with Susan Sarandon delivering the goods as a devoted hardball groupie, Tim Robbins as a rookie pitcher and Kevin Costner as a veteran catcher assigned to prepare the green kid for "the show." Field of Dreams (1989) -- Costner, a natural for sports movies, is an Iowa farmer who defies logic and cuts a baseball diamond in the middle of a corn field. He's following the advice of those ghostly voices that say, "If you build it, he will come." "Shoeless Joe" Jackson indeed shows up, in spirit, along with teammates from the fallen 1919 Chicago "Black Sox" team. Also stars Amy Madigan, James Earl Jones, Burt Lancaster and Ray Liotta. Bang the Drum Slowly (1973) -- Michael Moriarty, as the star pitcher, and Robert DeNiro, as the catcher dying of Hodgkins disease, got major career boosts from this film, a remake of a 1956 television movie based on the Mark Harris novel. Eight Men Out (1988) -- Writer-director John Sayles (Sunshine State) takes off the gloves for this thoughtful examination of the "Black Sox" scandal. The terrific cast includes D.B. Sweeney, John Cusack, David Strathairn, Christopher Lloyd, Charlie Sheen and Sayles. The Pride of the Yankees (1942) -- Gary Cooper is Lou Gehrig in this biography of the baseball great's career, from his signing with the Yankees in 1923 through his farewell speech on July 4, 1939, at Yankee Stadium after learning of his terminal illness. It's a sentimental tearjerker, notable for appearances by Babe Ruth, Bill Dickey and other real-life Yankees players. The Bad News Bears (1976) -- Walter Matthau, never more lovably cranky, is a delight as a beer-guzzling coach responsible for a team of misfit Little Leaguers. Tatum O'Neal is good as the girl pitcher brought in to help the team. Sequels and a television series followed. The Natural (1984) -- Robert Redford and Glenn Close star in this magnificently photographed film about a late-blooming rookie's efforts to get his team to the World Series. Barry Levinson directs, and the cast also includes Robert Duvall, Kim Basinger, Wilford Brimley, Barbara Hershey, Robert Prosky and Richard Farnsworth. A League of Their Own (1992) -- It's baseball beyond the boys club, and maybe the best Madonna movie ever, with the Material Girl as a member of the All American Girls Professional Baseball League, formed in the 1940s. Geena Davis and Lori Petty are sibling rivals on the Rockford Peaches team, Tom Hanks is the booze-drenched coach and Jon Lovitz is an annoying talent scout. Also stars Rosie O'Donnell, Megan Cavanagh, David Strathairn, Garry Marshall, Bill Pullman and Ann Cusack. The Sandlot (1993) -- The joys of neighborhood ball and the endless summers of childhood are recreated in this drama set in the early 1960s. A cast of young unknowns is joined by Karen Allen and James Earl Jones, with Denis Leary and Brooke Adams along for cameos. Major League (1989) -- Here's some dumb fun about a major league team whose owner wants to lose the season and relocate the operation from Cleveland to Miami. Stars Tom Berenger, Charlie Sheen, Corbin Bernsen, James Gammon, Rene Russo, Dennis Haysbert and Wesley Snipes. The franchise spawned two bad sequels.
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