The Sports Brewery

Meerkat’s 6 goto Baseball movies

Posted on 04. Apr, 2010 at 5:00 am by Meerkat in Baseball, MLB Baseball, The Fermenter, TV & Movies

Finally … baseball season is here … just in time … because NCAA hoops is down to the last game.

Back in the day I was more of a NBA guy, than a MLB guy … funny how time changes a guy … just the opposite these days.

I welcome MLB with open arms, not because my love for the NBA has waned over the years … but because the Phillies are a team of ass kickers right now.  Seriously, when your team is a group of marauders on the diamond, could you care so much for NBA hoops?  Probably not.  These are special days to be a Phillies fan.  I must also state that being an avid fantasy baseball guy has had its influence as well.

Every spring, all baseball fans are optimistic their squad will contend, but for Philly, we KNOW they will contend in 2010.  And anything short of another WS appearance will be disappointing.  Expectations are high to say the least, we aren’t spoiled yet, but we are embracing the ‘chest-out’ feeling our boys have given us.  It’s been a long time coming … and we’re all marinating.

So before the records change from 0-0 to 1-0 or 0-1.  It’s time to dive into the pool of baseball bliss before it becomes all to real with stats, sportscenter highlights, and web gems.  Before Carl Ravech and John Kruk become like brothers to me late at night when I tune in to ESPN’s Baseball Tonight … a need for cinematic hardball pleasure should be enjoyed beforehand.

The Yankees @ Red Sox throw out first pitch in 2010 sometime after 5:05 PST tonight.  So before that, I might need to pop in a baseball classic to butter myself up for the upcoming April-November (yeah, god damn November! … fix that Selig!) marathon.

Here now, my 6 goto baseball movies, not ranked, just 6 that I can watch on any given day:

“The Natural“

Okay, I did say I wouldn’t rank these, but I will say that “The Natural” and “Major League” are 1a and 1b for me.  There is no better baseball character than Roy Hobbs, right?  The guy was gonna be the best pitcher ever … gets shot … comes back years later to be a surreal hitter slash all-America dude that wins everyone over with his lightning bolt patch.  Come on, you don’t wanna be Roy Hobbs?  Alright, maybe the getting shot part isn’t much fun, but the story is great.  Sometimes hokey, yes.  But The Natural brings every guy back to being a kid in the backyard with a whiffle ball bat smokin a pitch over the chain-link fence on a hot summer afternoon.  Isn’t that what a great sports movie should do, time and time again?  Bring you back to a time when things were simpler and sweeter?  The memorable quotes of this film sum it up nicely …

Pop Fisher: C’mon Hobbs, knock the cover off the ball!

—————-

Pop Fisher: You know my mama wanted me to be a farmer.
Roy Hobbs: My dad wanted me to be a baseball player.
Pop Fisher: Well you’re better than any player I ever had. And you’re the best God damn hitter I ever saw. Suit up.

—————-

Roy Hobbs: Pick me out a winner Bobby.

What makes this movie special, is the fact that, it appeals to a guy in two ways.  At first you wanna be Roy Hobbs because he’s the legend, the home run hitter, the natural … but when you get older, you understand Roy Hobbs as the older guy.  The guy that just desires to make a difference again.  The guy with the second chance.  The guy that is the one looked up to by all the kids.  The role model that has the opportunity to make a difference in ball-playing kids that dream of being-the-guy.

The triangle of Roy Hobbs, manager Pops Fisher, and batboy Bobby Savoy … is what makes The Natural a goto movie … for many ages.

And no baseball movie moment can come close to Roy Hobb’s final home run.

“Major League“

Classic.  This film’s first 40 mins still make me laugh after all these years.  Mostly because the characters are timeless.  Willie ‘Mays’ Hayes, so typical of today’s athletes and their self-promotion.  Pedro Serrano is very much like Ryan Howard, throw him off-speed pitches!  Charlie Sheen as the ‘Wild Thing’, can you say Mitch Williams?  Major League nailed all the baseball stereotypes in a way that was acceptably funny to all.  You can watch this movie today and believe it was about today’s players (well, except for the fact there were no roid jokes).  And after all the jokes, this movie hits you in the soft spot with the lovable underdog storyline.  How can you not pull for these bunch of cast-offs?  The despicable owner that wants to lose so the franchise can be moved elsewhere, is a rallying point for movie watchers, and players, in the film.  And because it’s a comedy, the owner happens to be a former stripper!  Major League is simply awesome … and loaded with great quotes (so many, they all can’t be listed):

Heywood: How’s your wife and my kids?

—————-

Jake Taylor: That’s my wife…
Willie Mays Hayes: Does she know that?
Jake Taylor: Well, she would’ve been if I hadn’t screwed it up… who’s that guy she’s with?
Willie Mays Hayes: I don’t know. He’s not wearing a nametag.
Rick Vaughn: Want me to drag him outta here, kick the s*** out of him?

—————-

Harry Doyle: Just a reminder, fans, comin’ up is our “Die-hard Night” here at the stadium. Free admission to anyone who was actually alive the last time the Indians won a pennant.

—————-

Lou Brown: Forget about the curve ball Ricky, give him the heater.

—————-

Harry Doyle: Heywood leads the league in most offensive categories, including nose hair. When this guy sneezes, he looks like a party favor.

—————-

Pedro Cerrano: Bats, they are sick. I cannot hit curveball. Straightball I hit it very much. Curveball, bats are afraid. I ask Jobu to come, take fear from bats. I offer him cigar, rum. He will come.
Eddie Harris: You know you might think about taking Jesus Christ as your savior instead of fooling around with all this stuff.
Roger Dorn: Shit, Harris.
Pedro Cerrano: Jesus, I like him very much, but he no help with curveball.
Eddie Harris: You trying to say Jesus Christ can’t hit a curveball?

—————-

Eddie Harris: Yo, bartender, Jobu needs a refill.

—————-

Harry Doyle: This guy threw at his own son in a father son game.

—————-

Pedro Cerrano: Hats for bats, keep bats warm.

Okay, I had to stop with the Major League quotes, serioulsy, there are a million … go here if you wanna see more for laughs.  Thank you IMDB.

“Eight Men Out“

If you love baseball history, then this is the movie for you.  John Cusak leads this cast about the 1919 ‘Black Sox’ scandal.  Back in the days when ballplayers felt like servants to the wealthy owners that controlled their contracts, a revolt during the World Series no doubt, would seem incomprehensible nowadays … seemed justified back then.  With no union, the super loaded White Sox of 1919 staged a ‘sorta’ fix to make some cash that they felt righteously overdue.  Well, things don’t go as planned, which is no surprise when you deal with the underworld and players like Joe Jackson.  How things shake out is the undercurrent that keeps you glued to this baseball movie history piece.

“Say it ani’t so Joe, say it ain’t so”

How tremendously horrible it would have been to find out your hero might have cheated … LONG BEFORE, Pete Rose, Mark McGwire, Jose Canseco, Barry Bonds, and so on.  Back then you knew everything from attending games, radio, or newspaper.  Reporters kept dirty secrets to themselves … even they didn’t want to ruin their heroes reps.  My how things have changed.

“Long Gone”

Okay, I’ll admit I have not seen this movie in over a decade.  But damn!  I remember it being a fun flick.  A little known HBO movie starring William Peterson, aka Gil Grissom from CSI.  This movie is about minor league good times.  How can you not love a character by the name of Stud Cantrell?  And his team the Tampico Stogies?  Oh yeah, Virginia Madsen plays the babe Dixie Lee Boxx, back in the ’80s, she was a babe.  Not gonna go in depth, well, because I don’t remember much.  I gotta rent this myself again, really soon.

“Bull Durham“

Ahhh, Crash Davis.  One of the great baseball characters of all time.  Anyone that reads Bill Simmons knows he classifies this movie as a rom-com.  Which is kinda okay.  This flick fluctuates from guy-movie to date-movie, often.  Which is great if you need to trick the significant other into watching a sports movie.  Obviously, the triangle in this one is Crash Davis-Annie Savoy-Ebby Calvin LaLoosh.  WTF!  Who was smokin what when they thought of Tim Robbins character’s name?  Ebby Calvin LaLoosh?!  That is genius. 

Bull Durham and Long Gone give you the minor league experience in two different versions, both great.

Now the girls will get all mushy about the Crash/Annie scenes, but dudes will always quote the Crash/LaLoosh scenes:

Ebby Calvin LaLoosh: Why’s he calling me meat? I’m the one driving a Porsche.

—————-

[Mechanized bull noises in background]
Crash Davis: Well, he really hit the shit outta that one, didn’t he?
[laughs]
Ebby Calvin LaLoosh: [softly, infuriated] I held it like an egg.
Crash Davis: Yeah, and he scrambled the son of a bitch. Look at that, he hit the fucking bull! Guy gets a free steak!
[laughs]
Crash Davis: You having fun yet?
Ebby Calvin LaLoosh: Oh, yeah. Havin’ a blast.
Crash Davis: Good.
[pause]
Ebby Calvin LaLoosh: God, that sucker teed off on that like he knew I was gonna throw a fastball!
Crash Davis: He did know.
Ebby Calvin LaLoosh: How?
Crash Davis: I told him.

—————-

Joe Reardon: He walked 18.
Larry: New league record!
Joe Reardon: Struck out 18.
Larry: Another new league record! In addition he hit the sportswriter, the public address announcer, the bull mascot twice…
[Joe laughs]
Larry: Also new league records! But, Joe, this guy’s got some serious shit.

—————-

Larry: Who’s this? Who are you?
Crash Davis: I’m the player to be named later.

“Field of Dreams“

Welcome to baseball fantasy world.  FOD is more like a dream sequence that everyone wants to believe in.  Chicks most likely don’t get it, because guys will always wanna go back in time to play with their heroes of yesteryear.  But in this case, it’s more than that … main character Ray Kinsella ultimately ends up playing catch with dad.  The heartstrings are pulled tight after all realize that the true role model in life, dad, should be held up much higher than any athlete on TV or on any field.  All the unbelievable of FOD, like ball-players walking out of corn-fields, ball-players changing ages, and everything else … is dismissed because of the overwhelming grip of innocence which is — pops and son playing catch.

Besides being the voice of Darth Vader, was James Earl Jones ever cast into a better role?  Alright, my brother and I might argue about his role as Admiral Greer in the Tom Clancy movies … but Jones was awesome in FOD.  Jones was a scene stealer.  Every memorable scene has JEJ in it.

Terence Mann: Ray, people will come Ray. They’ll come to Iowa for reasons they can’t even fathom. They’ll turn up your driveway not knowing for sure why they’re doing it. They’ll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past. Of course, we won’t mind if you look around, you’ll say. It’s only $20 per person. They’ll pass over the money without even thinking about it: for it is money they have and peace they lack. And they’ll walk out to the bleachers; sit in shirtsleeves on a perfect afternoon. They’ll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they’ll watch the game and it’ll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they’ll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come Ray. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh… people will come Ray. People will most definitely come.

Though JEJ and Costner are the bulk of the film’s goto moments … the best moment has got to be when ‘Moonlight’ Graham crosses the foul line.  The moment brings us all back to what is real and what is fantasy.  It’s what makes this movie special.  Shouldn’t we hero-worship the doctors, firemen, police officers of everyday life?  FOD, in a round-about way, brings it back to reality.

“A League of Their Own“

Stop scratching your head.  Yeah, it’s a movie about chicks playing baseball, but god damn, they really hit one out of the park with the action scenes and storyline in this WWII flick.  How can you not get caught up in the characters of women playing ball because everyone else is either fighting offshore or making bombs in factories?  Yeah, Madonna and Rosie O’Donnel make for a mixed bag of entertainers for this cast, but it works for me.  Especially when Geena Davis is the super-star catcher of the league, she is very believable.  Maybe not as a catcher, but as the superstar.  And the Dotti and Kit sister-rivalry is perfect.  Any brother/brother duo can relate.

This movie grabs one in different ways, 1) sibling rivalry, 2) WWII homeland history, 3) baseball drama.  Of all the movies in this post, just maybe, the drama of a baseball game is done best by A League of their Own.  The final game with opposing sisters is done as well as could be.  I mean, big sis says give her high fastballs, she can’t hit’m.  Lil sis hits one and scores.  Awesome.

Eventually, the siblings, DO … figure it out.

Tags: Baseball, MLB, TV & Movies