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The greatest sports movie ever?


The Bad News Bears (the original)

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[deleted]

I can't pick a single one, so I'll list four, in no particular order.

Others have mentioned Hoosiers, and I concur with that. I'm from Kentucky and it made me do something I thought was impossible, root for an Indiana basketball team. Plus, Gene Hackman is good in everything he does. I'm jealous of the man; here he not only got to suck face with Barbara Hershey in her prime, but was paid to do it.

61* -- I'm very much into baseball so this was an enjoyable experience. Roger Maris really got screwed with the asterisk deal, and even though this movie was made after his death, it kind of makes up for it. Director Billy Crystal has a passionate love of the game and it shows.

Mr. Baseball (1992) -- Well, I don't think anyone, including me, would put this on a list of greatest movies. But I enjoyed it. I used to date a Japanese woman, have vacationed there, and speak some Japanese (although I haven't had the chance to use it in many years and am quite rusty). The movie has interesting and funny insights into Japanese baseball and culture generally.

Eight Men Out (1988) -- A well done look at the 1919 Black Sox scandal. Incidentally, I'd recommend Eliot Asinof's book, upon which this movie was based. It was originally published in the early 1960s and, oddly, took a quarter century to become a movie. Very informative. What most people don't know today is that baseball was rife with gambling in those days. The outrage over the scandal wasn't because players were betting and throwing games, everyone knew that was happening; it was that not even the World Series was sacred.

As an honorable mention I'll add The Pride Of The Yankees (1942). I liked it when I saw it, but that was a long time ago and I don't recall much about it.

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Victory (1981)

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Chariots of Fire (1981)

(Surprised no mention of The Karate Kid III yet)

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> Chariots of Fire (1981)

Good one! I'm surprised I didn't think of that when I wrote my post above.

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