Top 5 Baseball Movies

Every year around this time, two things happen. First, I start yearning to get into the garden and plant, even though the ground is still mostly frozen. At least this year, the growing season will start earlier! The second thing is I start getting excited about the upcoming baseball season.

I always miss watching the game when the Word Series finishes, but after a long summer and exciting fall, I'm okay with break. We get into the holidays and sports are far from my mind. Then come January. There is nothing to recommend January. About this time of year, there's a flurry of activity among the teams - trades, fan activities, and the talk of spring training. However, the actual season won't start until the very last days of March. So, to get myself through this troubling time, I have a few go-to baseball movies that I watch yearly. In my entirely biased opinion, the list is below...

5. Eight Men Out - A great cast in this one, it's about the players who threw the 1919 World Series. I love John Cusack in most anything he's in, so that's a bonus, but this is a cool story about one of those ultimate baseball stories.




4. Field of Dreams - "If you build it, he will come!" I grew up watching this movie, but it never gets old. It's about a guy who hears voices and is urged to build a baseball field in the middle of his corn field. In doing so, the men from the 1919 Chicago White Sox (see previous entry) get to play again and eventually, he get to meet his dad, whom he never had a good relationship with. Kevin Costner, James Earl Jones, and that guy from West Wing. :-)


3. Fever Pitch - I'm not a Red Sox fan, but this movie transcends one team. It's just lucky that it happened to be the year that the Sox won the Series for the first time in 86 years. Plus, cute little story and I am a Drew Barrymore fan. Based on a Nick Hornsby novel inwhich the sport was originally soccer. The 1997 British movie stars Colin Firth.


2. The Rookie - A heartwarming story about an older guy who, after a bet with the high school team he coaches, tried out for the majors and makes it. It's a great story, made even better by the fact that it's based on a true story.




1. A League of Their Own - Yeah, I know it's a girls movie, but hey, I'm a girl! Plus, it's got Geena Davis and Tom Hanks, Rosie O'Donnell before she went bonkers and Madonna in a role that seemed a little too easy for her to play. I don't know how many times I've used the line, "There's no crying in baseball!"

There are some other great ones out there that I love to watch - The Natural, Mr. Baseball, and Mr. 3000, which makes me laugh every time Bernie Mac sings the Mr. Softie song. But, these are the five that I need until that first pitch at Safeco on March 31st.