MovieChat Forums > 42 (2013) Discussion > Name your favorite baseball biopics or m...

Name your favorite baseball biopics or movies


For me it's a toss up for Pride of the Yankees and Fear Strikes Out. Both great movies with great performances and very touching stories. Very inspirational movies too. I also loved The Winning Team with Ronald Reagan as Grover Cleveland Alexander. Like the others, it's touching and inspirational. I loved Reagan as Alexander. Another big favorite of mine is The Stratton Story with Jimmy Stewart. I loved it for the same reasons I mentioned above.

reply

Major League, duh.

reply

My first thought!

Best baseball movie ever, back when Cleveland was terrible.

reply

My favorite historical baseball movie is Eight Men Out

Fictitious baseball movie--The Natural

reply

Sugar is an outstanding movie about a kid from the Dominican Republic adjusting to life and playing professional baseball in the United States. Easily my favorite baseball movie.

reply

Sugar is a little-known gem and one of my favorite baseball movies. I also like Eight Men Out, 61* and Moneyball.

And now I can add 42 to the list.

reply

I loved all those movies also. Being a baseball geek and just a geek in general, I love attention to detail. I realize some fictionalization is required in every biopic, but I apprecite the littl things. In 61 the actors playing Mantle and Maris had their batting stances and swings down perfectly. Jackie Robinson had a distinctive stance. He held the bat high and the bat was tited back towards the catcher. I think the movie 42 was mosty accurate though.

reply

42 took a lot of liberties and omits a bunch of key people.

For example, in the film Jackie reaches first, then steals 2nd ... then 3rd ... then home! The real Robinson's first Major League at-bat was a ground-out to 3rd, his second was a fly-out to Left, and his third he hit into a double-play. He ended his debut by reaching on error during a sacrifice. They later claim he has stolen 27 bases without being caught (which in reality, he had been thrown out 11 times), and so forth.

They even get the small details, like the Dodgers' radio station, wrong! (WHN, not WMGM)

Jackie's performances in the film are pretty much entirely fictional, he received tremendous support from his team-mates, and two other teams had black players within about 2 months of his debut. He had a damn tough job, and he did it with a remarkable amount of class.

To be honest, this film is kind of insulting what the REAL man did by over dramatizing in comic book fashion what actually happened. His REAL fears, such as that none of his teammates would even shake his hand in public when he did well, much less actually support him, and that he played through them with a steel mask on his face. The REAL comportment and class he showed, even when he felt he was wronged.

It's also pretty damn insulting to many players that showed no evidence of being racist, and treated Jackie just like they treated everybody else ... like Enos Slaughter. Yeah, he spiked him. He also spiked Rigney, and plenty of other people (all white). It was his style.

As Entertainment, judge it how you will. As History, it is pretty *&#@(!@ terrible.

reply

Major League and The Sandlot! Benny Rodriguez will be the best movie baseball player for-ev-er.



One should always be on the lookout for fiendish thingies when enjoying winter sports.

reply

1. Major League
2. Eight Men Out
3. The Natural
4. The Bad News Bears (1976)
5. Rookie of the Year

reply

Biopics... Eight Men Out and Cobb

reply

"Field of Dreams"

"More cowbell!"...Christopher Walken

reply

Bang the Drum Slowly
Field of Dreams
pride of the Yankees
The Sandlot




It is not our abilities that show who we truly are...it is our choices

reply

It's good that somebody added Bang the Drum Slowlywhich is a great movie with a memorable early performance from Robert DeNiro. The baseball scenes in it weren't very good, though. It was too obvious they were intercutting actual major league footage and Michael Moriarty, who was supposed to be a Tom Seaver type of pitcher, looked like he was lobbing it.

Major League was kind of a farce but very entertaining. Eight Men Out was a very intricate and tightly plotted movie.

The Rookie was another very good movie about baseball that showed other facets of Jim Morrison's life, too. Unlike lots of other baseball movies, they did a good job of making it appear that Dennis Quaid could throw 100 miles per hour.

reply

Major League and The Sandlot.

"America isn't ready for a gay, mexican chicken sandwich" - Poultrygeist

reply