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The Best Baseball Movies of All Time, From ‘Field of Dreams’ to ‘A League of Their Own’

Entertainment

Aug 23, 2024 3:56 pm·

By SCOTT BARWICK

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Closer has selected the best baseball movies of all time, so don’t look past these classics depicting the national pastime.

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The Best Baseball Movies of All Time From Field of Dreams to A League of Their Own

Bull Durham

Based on the minor-league baseball experiences of writer-director Ron Shelton, this 1988 film starring Kevin Costner and Tim Robbins became an instant classic. “It’s about a guy who loves something more than it loves him back. And that’s bigger than baseball, it’s bigger than sports, it’s bigger than gender,” Shelton says.

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Damn Yankees

For any baseball movie, you’ve gotta have heart, miles and miles of heart. And in adapting Broadway’s biggest baseball smash, this 1958 musical had plenty, as Gwen Verdon, Ray Walston and Russ Brown reprised their Tony-winning turns in this pic about a fan (Tab Hunter) who deals with the devil for his diamond dreams.

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Take Me Out to the Ball Game

Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack! Starring Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly, this 1949 ode to baseball’s early days captured the spirit of the game’s anthem — reportedly the third most sung tune in the U.S. after “Happy Birthday” and “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

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Moneyball

Telling the story of A’s exec Billy Beane, 2011’s definitive look at the business of the game was a dinger for star Brad Pitt. “I saw a man going up against a system, questioning the reasoning: Just because we’ve been doing it this way for 150 years, why shouldn’t we change it?”

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A League of Their Own

There’s no crying in baseball. But there are plenty of compelling, untold chapters — as director Penny Marshall proved when her 1992 look at WWII’s All-American Girls Professional Baseball League became the sport’s highest-grossing hit ever.

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The Bad News Bears

Just like 1993’s The Sandlot, this 1976 flick about a ragtag group of Little Leaguers touched all the bases for many a boy of that era. “[I know] men who have posters of The Bad News Bears,” explains star Tatum O’Neal, who singles out her character, Amanda, as the reason. “It must be [her] toughness with a little femininity.”

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Major League

Juuuust a bit outside. This 1989 comedy — quoted by real-life players, announcers and fans alike — is in the wheelhouse of one of its stars as well. “I just love this game,” gushes Charlie Sheen, a onetime high school pitcher. “I study it. It lives within me.”

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Field of Dreams

“I’m moved by it,” says Kevin Costner of the 1989 pic about baseball’s power to remind us of all that once was good and could be again. Yet, there’s a quibble. “It was a perfect little movie that climaxed to [the line] ‘Do you want to have a catch?’ It was like fingers on a chalkboard to me. I grew up with, ‘Do you want to play catch?’”

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The Pride of the Yankees

“Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.” While he got the words and exploits of New York great Lou Gehrig down pat in baseball’s quintessential 1942 biopic, Gary Cooper wasn’t a natural. The actor never played baseball growing up and needed lessons from former MLB batting champion Lefty O’Doul!

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The Natural

For this 1984 classic about men and myths, Robert Redford kept one legend in mind to play the titular Roy Hobbs — Red Sox Ted Williams. “Ted was my hero when I was a kid. He was from California, and I was from California. He was left-handed, and I was left- handed. And I wanted to be a professional ballplayer.”

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