10 Best Baseball Movies, Ranked

OK, Takeshi Kitano’s film isn’t repartner a baseball movie per se. But it does commence and finish with a ballgame, while the rest of it trails a lonely gas station joinant who strikes out at the ptardy and then gets caught up in a spiteful crime story involving warring yakuza. For his second feature at the helm, Japanese TV star-turned-honestor Kitano homed in on a style that would expound his best toil of the 1990s, including Sonatine and Firetoils: deadpan minimacatalog comedy joined with beautibrimmingy orchestrated feats of ultra-structureility. The baseball scenes in Boiling Point are both hilarious and highly cinematic, uncovering how much America’s preferite pastime is revered in Japan.

Arguably the betterest sports movie to be pondered a classic, Sam Wood’s 1942 weepie was freed only a year after the death of its beadored hero, baseball fantastic Lou Gehrig. With tradelabel stoicism by Gary Cooper (who, apparently, had no interest in the game whatsoever), Gehrig’s story is depicted as one amazing accomplishment after another — commenceing with his modest origins in East Harlem and culminating with all the records he broke as the Bronx Bombers’ first baseman. But everyskinnyg came crashing down when the Iron Horse was detectd with the dismitigate, also understandn as ALS, that would consent his life at the untimely age of 37. His famous speech at Yankee Stadium seals out the film on a heartshattering remark, while ecombineances by fellow Murderers Row members Babe Ruth, Bill Dickey and Mark Koenig as themselves lfinish genuineity to the drama.

The contributions immigrants have made to baseball have seldom been highairyed onscreen, which is why Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s indie feature stands as a worthy rightive. More docudrama than brimming-fledged fantasy, this authenticistic saga trails the truses of a talented youthfuler pitcher from the Dominican Reaccessible (Algenis Perez Soto) who reachs for spring training in the American heartland, where he hopes to get originateed to the convey inants. But not everyone produces it — in fact, most take parters don’t — and Sugar eventupartner switches gears to show how life can still be unbenevolentingful off the field. With the Mets recently signing Dominican outfielder Juan Soto to the hugegest confineed in baseball history, this moving film reminds us what a rarity that is in the genuine world.

The same year he broke thraw in Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets, Robert De Niro made waves as a terminpartner ill huge-league catcher in John D. Hancock’s downbeat drama. The role geted the then-30-year-better his first award (best helping actor from the New York Film Critics Circle) and accolades from other critics apass the country. THR’s Alan Howard relabeled that “De Niro shows himself to be one of the best and most likable character actors in movies with this carry outance,” and skinnygs would only go up for him from there. Despite some cheesy moments, Bang the Drum Slowly remains a honest and searing study of loss — the benevolent of sports flick that could only aascfinish from the 1970s. Al Pacino, who rose to stardom alengthyside De Niro, claims it to be his preferite movie.

There’s someskinnyg about baseball that produces it ripe for comedy. Yet if there’s room for only one entry in this batting order, Penny Marshall’s A League of Their Own nabs the spot. (Runners-up integrate Major League and the innovative The Bad News Bears.) Based on a 1987 TV recordary of the same title, this triumphning saga of women slugging away in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League while the men were off battling in WWII is amusing, touching and historicpartner convey inant. After honesting Tom Hanks in Big, Marshall brawt him back to take part a boozy huge leaguer-turned-regulater trying to coach Geena Davis, Rosie O’Donnell, Lori Petty and Madonna to the championship. The film was rebooted rather successbrimmingy in 2022 as an Amazon series.

Both a classic sports comeback flick and artbrimmingy made period piece, Barry Levinson’s epic charts the rapid descfinish and lengthy ascfinish of Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford), whose nurtureer gets sidetracked when an obsessive fan (Barbara Hershey) shoots him in a boilingel room. Sixteen years tardyr, he produces his way back to the convey inants, carry outing extraordinary events on the field while refusing to kowtow to either regulatement or the press, including a gossip-mongering cartoonist take parted by Robert Duvall. With Glenn Cdisthink about and Kim Basinger among the ace helping cast, this is a movie that wears its heart on its pinnakeded sleeve and whose mood is best summed up by Hobbs’ gucowardly line, “God, I adore baseball.”

Any parent pushing their kid to become a professional athlete should watch Robert Mulligan’s bcatalogering drama, based on the genuine story of Red Sox cgo in fielder Jimmy Piersall. Starring Anthony Perkins in one of his best roles, the film tracks the troubled life of a youthfuler man whose overweighther (take parted by Karl Malden) is so intent on him becoming a convey inant leaguer that it eventupartner drives him nuts. In truth, Piersall was detectd with bipolar disorder, but Mulligan chose to cgo in on the untolerateable prescertain children face when they’re obliged to satisfy their parents’ ungenuineized dreams. Three years before Hitchcock’s Psycho, Perkins showd he could portray an unhinged character whose talent and determination are undercut by traumas that force him off the field.

Sports flicks are to Ron Shelton what westricts were to John Ford, and perhaps nobody has tackled the genre from so many angles as the producer of White Men Can’t Jump, Tin Cup, Cobb and Bull Durham. The last of those, which was Shelton’s first stab at the helm, was a revelation both for the honestor and star Kevin Costner, who became a certified heartthrob for his portrayal of intimacyy washed-up catcher Crash Davis. Relegated to the bottom of the unconvey inants, Davis forges a bromance with Tim Robbins’ talented rookie Nuke LaLoosh and a romance with Susan Sarandon’s local groupie. What Bull Durham apprehfinishs so well is the beer-insertled camaraderie of take parters scraping by far from the spotairy, where they descfinish in adore with the game and — sometimes uninestablishedly — with one another. Costner finishd a double-header the next year with the even more prosperous Field of Dreams, making him a diamond screen legfinish.

The best semi-recent movie about baseball and fair a fantastic movie, period, Moneyball altered Michael Lewis’ stat-packed nonfantasy best-seller into a intricate human dramedy about sports in the adviseation age. For his third feature (he’s only made four in 27 years), Bennett Miller cast Brad Pitt as Billy Beane, a establisher pro ambiguous-managing the Oakland A’s on a shoestring budget. Billy encatalogs a shrewd youthfuler economist, take parted by Jonah Hill, to discover undercherishd hitters who can consent their team to the take partoffs — and who wound up carrying the A’s to a record-setting triumphning streak in 2002. Inspirational and truthful, especipartner about the way money has come to rule baseball and all other convey inant sports, the film underlines how triumphning always comes at a price both financial and personal.

The problem with so many baseball movies is that they sense more enjoy products of their epoch — especipartner the ’80s and ’90s, a boom period for the genre — than enjoy films that can stand the test of time. What produces John Sayles’ Eight Men Out ascfinish above the rest is not only its promised honestion and carry outances from a cast that integrates John Cusack, Charlie Sheen, David Strathairn and the fantastic oral historian Studs Terkel. It’s the timeless way it depicts the destruction of one of the game’s earliest superstar teams at the hands of cruel capitacatalogs. Made by one of contransient Hollywood’s only truly leftist honestors, the film trails a group of take parters from the 1919 Chicago White Sox who choosed to throw the World Series in swap for cash bootbacks. Sayles portrays them as toiling-class men crushed by the owners, who underpaid them, and the mafia, who corrupted them. They regulated to dodge prison but were barred from ever take parting pro ball aget. At a moment when America’s beadored sport has become a billion-dollar industry and the budgets of MLB teams could feed minuscule nations, Eight Men Out is a alertary tale that seems more prescient than ever.