Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

I know this has been done before but I was thinking about this after looking at supertyphhon's best baseball book thread and my runner-up trophy from my last year of Little League. My little runner-up trophy in contrast to the championship trophy is exactly like the scene at the end of the Bad News Bears (original movie) and I mean EXACTLY. We were a meagerly funded team (a small Dodge dealership) who pulled off a Cinderella story by getting into the city (small town of 40,000) championship with a much better team in both talent and funding. It was the best two out of three and we took them to a third game and lost 6-5. But I swear that the award ceremonies were exactly like the Bad News Bears movie, except for the beer drinking. We got our little six inch runner-up trophy and they got their grandiose three foot tall trophy and all of the adults were telling us that we were all winners because of the fellowship and sportsmanship displayed, etc., etc. Well it was pretty clear to all of us who the winners were. The guys with the huge trophy!
Anyway my favorite baseball movie is the Bad News Bears (original) beacause it it hits so close to home and it does invoke those memories of Spring and new grass on the field. I have other favorites of course but I would love to hear other people's favorites and why. Sorry for being so long winded.

Pride of the Yankees, because Gary Cooper was my favorite actor.

1. The Natural - Robert Redford, who is about 50 at the time playing a kid but love the baseball parts, hit the cover off the ball, the first time in BP, pitches one in BP and Max disappears, "losing is a disease", and the walk-off, blood stained jersey.

2.Bull Durham, the ball player language, Costner talking to himself as he hits, telling the other hitter what is coming, Sarandon's character, when meat throws the ball through the window or hits the Bull, lots of fun.

3.Field of Dreams , in your best James Earl Jones voice say "Baseball".

4.The Sandlot - when Squints pretends he is drowning in the pool is the best, the backcatcher is pretty funny, some girl named Baby Ruth, playing ball all day.

Stealling Home was a good one.

Bang the Drum Slowly with Robert Dinero. It was the first baseball movie I saw that treated baseball in a realistic way. It helped that, while baseball permeated the movie, the movie wasn't about baseball. Kind of like The Brian Piccolo Story was a football movie that wasn't really about football.

Kevin A

I saw "It Happens Every Spring" when I was a kid and just loved that movie. I would highly recommend it to anyone, who, like me, loved baseball, but was better with the books than the ball and bat!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Happens_Every_Spring

"Sugar" is a worthwhile film from a few years ago -- about a pitching prospect from the Dominican Republic and his struggles to adapt to U.S. culture, playing minor league ball in Iowa. The kind of sports story that usually doesn't get told -- very realistic and insightful.

I think all the movies previously mentioned are great choices.

I would like to add one I thought was excellent.

61

This was a no nonsense straightforward accounting of Maris's run for the HR record. I thought the characterizations were right on.

1. The Bad News Bears
2. Moneyball
3. Eight Men Out
4. 42 The Jackie Robinson Story
5. The Natural
6. Major League
7. Sugar
8. 61
9. Bull Durham
10. A League of Their Own

I guess I'm one of those guys with no taste, because when it comes to baseball movies I like them all. That said, I'll always remember taking my father-in-law to see Major League at the theater. Pops came to the States in the mid-50s after an interesting escape from a German POW camp and immediately became a die-hard baseball fan, in particular of the Indians. He wasn't much on movies though, and made lots of dismissive noises in various languages on the way to the theater. When Willie store second though, and then came home on the bunt he was out of his seat yelling along with quite a few other folks (the theater was in Cleveland). It was priceless.