Special Edition: Play Ball!
Volume 3, Issue 5 - March 6, 2026
Humphrey Bogart once said, “A hot dog at the ballpark is better than roast beef at the Ritz”.
Franxflix couldn’t agree more.
And George Will once said, “Winter is the period between the last play of the Michigan-Ohio State football game and the reporting date for pitchers and catchers.”
So what do we do in that gloomy period? Watch baseball movies, of course!
No other sport takes to the screen quite like baseball. Oh sure, you’ve got your basketball (Hoosiers) and football (The Longest Yard) and definitely boxing (Golden Boy, Raging Bull) but they’ve got nothing on baseball. The pacing of the game, the colorful characters, the length of the season all lend itself to a perfect framework on which to hang stories.
All sports are metaphors for combat, which can be extended to life in general, but baseball steals a base on the others. Think about it: it’s a team sport, but each player has to take a turn at bat facing all of the opponents alone. And in return, the pitcher has to face that one guy with faith in his entire team to back him up. In that sense it’s like Biblical combat, in which ancient armies would send out their champions to face each other.
Yet it’s entirely American. Developed in the early 19th century, it took off during the Civil War as the respective armies roamed the countryside waiting to face their fellow countrymen in battle. During the downtimes, one of the most popular pastimes was a game sometimes called Base Ball. The rules were codified several years later by former Maj. Gen. Abner Doubleday, and the sport lives on as an echo of that conflict.
Comedy, drama, love stories, personal tragedy all graft neatly and metaphorically onto America’s pastime, set in (corporate facsimiles) of an expansive rural pasture.
There may be no crying in baseball, but there’s plenty of crying from watching baseball movies. Correlation is not causation, but I find it interesting that I rarely have a dry eye at the end of most of these. (Including from some that have generated the tears from laughter).
Let’s take a look at some of the best ones.
Note: since Franxflix’ mission is the 20th century, some of your more recent favorites might be missing. (Moneyball, The Rookie, 61* etc).
So what’s your favorite?
~ As always, click on the MOVIE POSTER for a sneak preview ~
Your starting lineup, in alphabetical order:
The Bad News Bears (1976)
directed by Michael Ritchie
starring Walter Matthau, Tatum O’Meal, Vic Morrow, Joyce Van Patten, Jackie Earle Haley
Regular readers will know how much I love this movie from my Best Movies of 1976 post.
Social, personal, and comedic intentions aside: let’s focus on the baseball. This film captures that feeling of youth endeavors like no other - that thing your parents signed you up for that you didn’t really want to do, with all these kids you have nothing in common with, and the “moral victories” that mean so much in any endeavor. The use of Bizet’s Carmen as the soundtrack is the chef’s kiss to the whole thing, with its allusions to feats of valor in the bullfighting arena in contrast to these 11-year-old boys (and girl!) who just want to get a crummy hit.
Bang the Drum Slowly (1973)
directed by John Hancock
starring Michael Moriarity, Robert DeNiro, Vincent Gardenia, Danny Aiello, Phil Foster, Selma Diamond
I’ve had so many conversations over the years defending Robert DeNiro against folks who say he always plays the same character. That’s fair, to a point, especially as he’s gotten older and relies on a caricature of his younger gangster self. But this is my ace in the hole in the argument: have you ever seen him as a dumb country boy who just wants to play baseball and happens to be dying of cancer? Argument over.
A terrific heartfelt movie that uses the passing of a baseball season as a metaphor for life: we know the trajectory, and the potential paths, but neither the timing nor the outcomes. You get up day by day and bang the drum. Slowly.
This movie begs the question: why wasn’t Michael Moriarity a bigger star? If you know him at all, it’s probably from the early days of the NBC crime drama Law & Order. He’s a very good actor who should have gotten more exposure; the only other thing I remember seeing him in is as one of the a-hole townsfolk in Clint Eastwood’s Pale Rider.
Funny footnote: Even though the team is wearing pinstripes and have an interlocking NY in a headline-ish font on their chests, the team is called the Mammoths; the uni’s are juuuust different enough to avoid copyright infringement from MLB and the Yankees. The away shots were filmed in Yankee Stadium (and RFK in Washington), but the home games were shot across town in Shea Stadium.
The original filmed version of the novel was as a play for television in 1956, starring Paul Newman. You can still find versions of it online. It’s pretty good but lacks the magic of the ballpark that the movie presents.
The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings (1976)
directed by John Badham
starring Billy Dee Williams, James Earl Jones, Richard Pryor, Stan Shaw, Ted Ross, Mabel King
I mentioned this in my 1976 Cutting Room Floor.
You got three of the hottest African-American commodities of the day on a barnstorming baseball trip around the country.
It’s not often that the esteemed James Earl Jones plays a goofball (other than this, did he ever?) which is a shame.
It’s a fun romp across the early 20th century landscape.
Bull Durham (1988)
directed by Ron Shelton
starring Kevin Costner, Susan Surandon, Tim Robbins, Robert Wuhl, Trey Wilson, Max Patkin
I’ve spent the past several months informally polling folks about what their favorite baseball movies are. Almost universally, Bull Durham enters the conversation, as it should be.
It is kinda the one.
So many great situations, great lines, great acting.
The Court Martial of Jackie Robinson (1990)
directed by Larry Peerce
starring Andre Braugher, Ruby Dee, Bruce Dern, Daniel Stern
You’ve probably never heard of this one, because it was made for HBO rather than theatrical release. Starring the incredible Andre Braugher as Jackie Robinson, the man who would one day break the major league baseball color barrier, the movie is set during Robinson’s tenure as an officer in the army during World War II. After refusing to move to the back of a bus when ordered to do so by a (white, civilian) bus driver, he is dragged off by the MPs and faces court martial.
That’s it: nothing fancy. Lots of flashbacks to Jackie’s early career. Andre/Jackie defends himself in court against the whole hypocritical Jim Crow system, laying the groundwork for his later more famous achievement.
A baseball/courtroom drama - that’s Franxflix’ sweet spot!
Eight Men Out (1988)
directed by John Sayles
starring John Cusack, D B Sweeney, Clifton James, Christopher Lloyd, Michael Lerner, Charlie Sheen, David Strathairn
“Say it ain’t so, Joe”.
As famous in its day as “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.”
The mid-late eighties were a great time for baseball movies.
John Cusack stepped away from his usual Gen-X angst roles for a minute to play Buck Weaver in this fictionalized account of the Chicago “Black Sox” scandal, which resulted in eight players (who were acquitted in court) being banned from Major League Baseball for life, stripped of their futures and reputations, for reputedly throwing the 1919 World Series. The most damaged was “Shoeless” Joe Jackson (D B Sweeney) who woulda/shoulda been in the Hall of Fame.
John Sayles is a methodical story-telling director, and he unfolds this at the pace it deserves. It ends in a courtroom, but unlike The Court Martial of Jackie Robinson the courtroom seems are almost an aside. The real focus is on the joy of players when they were playing for love of the game, willing to be slaves to forces beyond their control in pursuit of fleeting euphoria. Gossamer wishes dispersed and crushed by the buy-’em-out moneyed-class is old news to us but imagine it at the time. No, don’t imagine it: watch this movie.
Jackson died penniless after playing under pseudonyms as an intinerant player who would show up to try out for minor league teams, and then move on once his identity was discovered.
I’ve long maintained that the Hall of Fame (which is run by the Baseball Sportswriters Guild, not MLB itself, should install a Wall of Shame outside the Hall to memorialize the players whom they’ve deemed unworthy to be inside but everyone knows should be in. Jackson. Rose. All of the 90s asterisks: Canseco, Sosa, Bonds, McGwire, Clemens. Let Jackson and Rose in and keep dem bums outside.
Field of Dreams (1989)
directed by Phil Alden Robertson
starring Kevin Costner, Amy Madigan, James Earl Jones, Ray Liotta, Burt Lancaster, Timothy Busfield
Kevin Costner’s second baseball movie is arguably good in spite of him, not because of him. On a superficial level it’s not even that good— almost all of the characters are slightly annoying entitled boomers, even the great James Earl Jones as a reclusive J D Salinger-esque writer who is obsessed with how culturally great “The Sixties” were. (It was Salinger in the novel; he threatened to sue if his name was used in the movie).
With an introduction like that, why should you watch this film? Three reasons, right down the middle.
One: the spine-tingling voice that whispers “Build it, and he will come”, and all that stands for: a pristine ballfield in a cornfield in Iowa that summons the ghosts of great players of the past, including “Shoeless” Joe Jackson played by Ray Liotta. (To this day, no one quite knows who “The Voice” is, but it is rumored to have been Ed Harris).
Two: Burt Lancaster, in his final role, playing Doc “Moonlight” Graham. The role was intended for James Stewart (who had played a pitcher in 1949’s The Stratton Story), but Lancaster owns it. This is a great exit from one of the greatest film icons, walking off into the cornfields and whatever lies beyond.
The entire premise of Robert Kinsalla’s book on which the movie is based is his noticing Graham’s entry in the Baseball Encyclopedia: One game, with otherwise zeros across the line: no plate appearances, no hits, no runs, no nothin’. (Fun FranxFlix fact: I have the last printed edition of the Baseball Encylopedia, c. 1996, and can verify this).
Who was this ghost? Kinsella fleshed did as much research as he could pre-internet, traveling to Minnesota, talking to folks and finding out that Graham was a beloved small-town doctor who maybe used to play baseball; that was all he got. He fleshed out the details in his imagination for himself, leading to a story that ends in a cornfield in Iowa.
Three: If you are a father, or a son, or a daughter, and you don’t choke up or outright bawl at the “Want to have a catch?” line at the end, then you just may have no soul; at the best may God have mercy on whatever is left of it. Yes, there is absolutely crying in baseball. But moment’s over, get over it.
No other movie ties baseball to the promise of the American concept of chasing one’s dreams, and our blessed physical environment, whether that be writing novels in New York, owning a farm in Iowa, or chasing a little leather ball in warm summer fields.
For Love of the Game (1999)
directed by Sam Raimi
starring Kevin Costner, Kelly Preston, J K Simmons, John C Reilly, Vin Scully, Steve Lyons
It was the best of baseball movies, and it was the worst of baseball movies. It was universally panned, and lost money at the box office. The only award it received was Costner’s Razzie for Worst Actor of the Year. (You have to understand, it was fashionable for many years to hate on Costner, sometimes with good reason: The Postman, Waterworld, even Academy Award winning Dances with Wolves. But this ain’t one of them.
Clear the mechanism. If we confine ourselves only to the baseball part, as I suggest in Best Movies of 1999, this makes Kevin Costner 3 for 3. In the end, a walk is as good as a hit.
Costner plays Billy Chapel, an aging, broke-down Tigers pitcher playing what could be his last game, a meaningless one at the end of a losing season. (Oh, and he’s having woman trouble or something. Who cares).
The movie is as much of a film-baseball singularity as can be. Other movies such as Bang the Drum Slowly and Major League had come close to matching the realism of what we see at the park or on tv, but this one looks like it is an actual episode of Sunday Night Baseball, complete with real announcers Vin Scully and Steve Lyons (and Yankees announcer Bob Shepherd). This is interspersed with Chapel talking to himself on the mound, “clearing the mechanism”, and facing each batter one by one, with occasional encouragement from his long-time catcher Gus (John C Reilly). If you know the game, you can’t not love these parts.
Clear the mechanism.
And yeah, even the tidy rom-com ending is aight.
A League of Their Own (1992)
directed by Penny Marshall
starring Tom Hanks, Geena Davis, Madonna, Lori Petty, Rosie O’Donnell, Jon Lovitz, Garry Marshall, Bill Pullman, Ann Ramsay, Ann Cusack
My original take is here, Best Movies of 1992.
This is a movie populated by actors I don’t like (Madonna, Rosie O’Donnell, and the overly-sanctified Tom Hanks); yet I love it. Each of the aforementioned are perfect at what they do, abetted by the real stars, Geena Davis and Lori Petty as competitive sisters who can’t let go of their real-life childhood rivalry even when they’ve both granted access to the male-child dreamworld of Majorish League Baseball.
Major League (1989)
directed by David S Ward
starring Tom Berenger, Charlie Sheen, Wesley Snipe, Corbin Bernson, Renee Russo, Margaret Whitton, Bob Uecker
Crass. Predictable. Formulaic. Wonderful.
Fun FranxFlix Fact: I’ve mentioned before that I worked in a second-run movie theater for a year in college. When we got a picture, I was guaranteed to see it at least a dozen times. This was one of those movies, so perhaps it’s brainwashing that makes me like it. But not likely. It’s one of those films that over the years has become as quotable as any, especially Bob Uecker’s gleefully irreverent announcer. "Juuuuuust a bit outside”.
Many pro ballplayers say that Charlie Sheen’s “Wild Thing” Vaughn demonstrates the most believable pitching form shown by an actor onscreen. (Sorry, Costner).
The Natural (1984)
directed by Barry Levinson
starring Robert Redford, Robert Duvall, Glenn Close, Kim Bassinger, Wilford Brimley, Barbara Hershey, Richard Farnsworth, Joe Don Baker, Michael Madsden
As I mentioned before, I have a love/hate relationship with this movie. From a film perspective, hackneyed in so many ways. And yet when I take informal polls of regular folks, it always rates right up there. Sometimes you don’t care that you’re getting played.
The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)
directed by David Zucker
starring Leslie Nielsen, Priscilla Presley, Ricardo Montalban, George Kennedy, OJ Simpson, Laurence Tierney, Reggie Jackson
Hey, if Die Hard is a Christmas movie, then The Naked Gun is a baseball movie.
No major character is a baseball player. There are no scenes in a locker room or dugout. And yet, this is a baseball movie.
Reggie Jackson, the greatest player of all-time (“Just ask him”, was the common joke; “They should name a candy bar after me,” he said, and they did) enters the movie late and plays kinda himself, as a hypnotized would-be assassin of Queen Elizabeth II, whom in real life wouldn’t be caught dead at a baseball game. So many layers of funny already.
Enter Leslie Nielsen, as Police Squad captain Frank Drebin, alias famous operatic tenor Enrico Palazzo, alias the greatest MLB umpire ever.
Comedy gold in a baseball setting, and another gem from 1988.
Pride of the Yankees (1942)
directed by Sam Wood
starring Gary Cooper, Teresa Wright, Babe Ruth, Walter Brennan
The documentation of one of the most sublime events in the American twentieth century, told as realistically as 1940s Hollywood could be expected to do. Released a mere three years after the events depicted, it had to gel with what the public knew, just juicing it up a bit for maximum emotional impact.
The true story of Lou Gehrig, one of the most integral players of the Yankees infamous Murderer’s Row. His seventeen-year career was still going strong in 1939 when he was diagnosed with the debilitating disease that would be named for him, and he had to sit out his first game after the astonishing 2,130 he had played consecutively— a record that would hold for 56 years until surpassed by Cal Ripken Jr.
Stoic Gary Cooper was the perfect - some might say only - choice to play the Iron Horse, which he does with dignity. His “luckiest man on earth” speech is nearly as haunting as the original.
I know I was griping about how the love story ruined For Love of the Game, but in this one it absolutely makes the movie work. Teresa Wright is lovely as Lou Gehrig’s wife.
Babe Ruth and several other Yankees play themselves.
The Sandlot (1993)
directed by David Mickey Evans
starring Tom Guiry, Mike Vitar, Patrick Renna, Chauncey Leopardi, Brandon Quinton Adams, Denis Leary, Karen Allen, James Lee Jones
On a film level, one could dismiss this as totally derivative of Stand By Me and A Christmas Story and even the TV series The Wonder Years: Aging narrator recounts an impossibly wondrous summer coming of age. But you know what? There should have been thousands of similar movies made and we’d call it a genre.
Just like The Bad News Bears, you’ve got the fat catcher, the mouthy runt, the geek, the black kid, and the superstar outfielder. But you’ve also got James Earl Jones, who can’t seem to stay away from baseball movies. And then there’s Wendy Peffercorn…
Take Me Out to the Ballgame (1949)
directed by Busby Berkeley
starring Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Esther Williams, Betty Garrett, Jules Munchin, Edward Arnold
It’s 1910. You have a choice between two jobs that take a lot of effort for very little reward: vaudeville, or baseball. Which do you choose?
Why, both, of course! I mean hey if you’re Frank Sinatra or Gene Kelly, something’s gotta take, right?
One of the best things about this film is how they elliptically refer to how “old-fashioned” the game had been thirty years earlier- the uniforms, equipment, rules, etc. This was seventy years ago.
It’s all relative, isn’t it? No talk of steroids, AI umps, strikes, million-dollar contract negotiations. Same game though. <sarc>
Films that didn’t make the post-season.
“Let’s face it kid, it’s just not you’re night”.
Angels in the Outfield (1994) - starring Danny Glover, Tony Danza, Christopher Lloyd, Matthew McConaughey, Adrien Brody
The Babe (1992) - directed by Arthur Hiller, starring John Goodman
The Babe Ruth Story (1948) - directed by Roy Del Ruth, starring William Bendix
Cobb (1994) - directed by Ron Shelton, starring Tommy Lee Jones
Damn Yankees (1958) - starring Gwen Yverdon
Fear Strikes Out (1957) - starring Anthony Hopkins
Headin Home (1920) - starring Babe Ruth
It Happens Every Spring (1948) - starring Ray Milland, Jean Peters.
The Jackie Robinson Story (1950) starring Jackie Robinson
Mr Baseball (1992) - starring Tom Selleck
The Naughty Nineties (1945) - Not really a baseball movie, but contains Abbott and Costello’s classic Who’s on First? routine.
Rookie of the Year (1993) - starring Gary Busey, appearances by Pedro Gurrero, Barry Bonds, & Bobby Bonilla
Speedy (1928) - starring Harold Lloyd and Babe Ruth
The Stratton Story (1949) - starring James Stewart
The Corrected Oscars MVP Awards
Going to do something a little different this time. Rather than actor, director etc, let’s take a look at the outstanding players by position:
