BEST BASEBALL MOVIES
“Field of Dreams” (1989) While not the most historically accurate of baseball films – c’mon, Shoeless Joe Jackson batted left-handed and threw righty, not the other way around as Ray Liotta portrayed him – this tale of an Iowa farmer (Kevin Costner) who built a baseball diamond in his cornfield at the urging of a disembodied voice never fails to bring a lump to the throat with the closing scene of Costner’s character playing catch with his longestranged (and deceased) father. “A League of Their Own” (1992)
The little-known story of the World War II-era All-American Girls Professional Baseball League gets light-hearted but respectful treatment in Penny Marshall’s superb comedy/drama. Outstanding performances come from all around, from Tom Hanks as a besotted, washed-up star player turned manager to Madonna as the libidinous center fielder and Geena Davis as her team’s star catcher and the film’s central character. And the closing scenes at Doubleday Field in Cooperstown, N.Y. – set against the strains of Madonna’s “This Used to Be My Playground” – give the film an added poignancy.
“61*” (2001) Director Billy Crystal is a lifelong New York Yankees fan and that certainly showed in this seriocomic historical drama about Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris’ race to break Babe Ruth’s home run record in 1961. In addition to the attention to detail paid to Yankee minutiae (Yogi Berra’s malapropisms, Phil Rizzuto’s tendency to ramble), the film also features the downright spooky resemblances of Thomas Jane and Barry Pepper to Mantle and Maris. And a few jabs at the opportunistic New York sportswriters of the day didn’t hurt either.
“42” (2013) Dashing Indiana Jones as rumpled Brooklyn Dodgers General Manager Branch Rickey? Well, the artist known as Harrison Ford manages to pull it off in style in this outstanding drama about the challenges faced by Jackie Robinson (played deftly by the late Chadwick Boseman) in breaking baseball’s color barrier in 1947. As the majors’ first African-American player, Robinson had to be strong enough not to fight back against the slings and arrows of racism, a struggle Boseman portrayed superbly – especially in one wrenching scene where an opposing manager repeatedly taunts Robinson with an inflammatory epithet.