By Tyler Wilson
Originally published in Coeur Voice – April 2018
Time to blast John Fogerty’s “Centerfield” from your tiny smartphone speaker, because the Major League Baseball season is here again.
While most of the country becomes enthralled by the NCAA basketball tournament, baseball fanatics can barely wait for the 162-game, six-month season to begin. Spring training games begin in March, and I’m one of those nuts who will sit and watch several meaningless games well before the first official day of spring.
While movies remain my default time-killer in life, baseball, specifically the Minnesota Twins, runs a close second. So you better believe I have a few opinions about baseball movies. If you exclude boxing (which isn’t really a sport, but that’s a whole other conversation), baseball has the best batting average in the sports movie genre. Is that a subjective opinion? Absolutely, but try and tell me and Kevin Costner otherwise.
Let’s get the boring stuff out of the way — “Field of Dreams” and “The Natural” are widely assumed to be the best of the best. Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig in 1942’s “Pride of the Yankees” also serves as an obvious benchmark. These are excellent movies, but if I’m being honest, I don’t have a strong personal affection for “Field of Dreams” or “The Natural,” and as a lifelong hater of the New York Yankees (they are forever evil), I must pretend all Yankees-centric movies, including “Pride of the Yankees,” simply don’t exist.
So Gary Cooper is disqualified, sorry, as well as Billy Crystal’s totally agreeable “61*.” And the hate in my heart very nearly disqualifies 1993’s “The Sandlot,” which hinges its entire story on a Babe Ruth autograph baseball.
For my money, I still point to a recent movie, 2011’s “Moneyball,” as my favorite overall baseball movie. It takes a book about stats and turns it into a compelling story about trying (and somewhat failing) to quantify the magic of the game. Brad Pitt plays Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane, but his perspective as a father and as a fan is more the focus of screenwriter Aaron Sorkin’s snappy screenplay. It has some exciting baseball action but strives to be about something more, and it also proves Jonah Hill can have a legitimate career outside of playing horny teenagers.
If I’m really being honest with myself though, my love of baseball and the movies began when I was a kid growing up in the 90s. For many in my generation, a love of baseball very likely stems from four kid-centric titles, the most enduring being “The Sandlot.” It’s absolutely beloved by both fans and non-fans, as the movie doesn’t really focus on the game after a monstrous dog-next-door snatches the Babe Ruth ball from a group of unruly neighborhood kids. You can find plenty written about this movie, so let’s talk about the more forgotten titles…
Slot #3 here belongs to 1994’s “Angels in the Outfield,” itself a remake of the 1951 film. This Disney entry boasts headliners Danny Glover, Tony Danza and Christopher Lloyd, but also featured the likes of Matthew McConaughey, Adrien Brody and kid Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a foster child who prays to God that the California Angels win the pennant (why stop at the pennant, JGL? Next time ask for the World Series all the way, bud).
It’s predictably sappy and full of ridiculous stuff involving angels only JGL can see assisting the untalented team. Tony Danza shows who’s the boss on the mound, they win, and in real life the California Angels get Disneyfied and turn into the Anaheim Angels, then years later ditch the Disney stuff to become the stupidest official name in baseball, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, and someone please stop this sentence from continuing.
Slot #2 belongs to 1993’s “Rookie of the Year,” about a kid (Thomas Ian Nicholas) who, after breaking his arm in a little league game, discovers he can throw 100 mph. He’s quickly scooped up by the Chicago Cubs (makes sense) and is mentored by veteran pitcher Gary Busey, a guy who would obviously never submit to a voluntary urine test.
Lifelong goof Daniel Stern appears in the film and also directs (still his only feature film directing credit. What a choice). It’s definitely your typical kid “wish fulfillment” 90s movie, but there’s plenty of kooky baseball action, and it actually depicts a successful Cubs team, something that beleaguered fans rarely experienced up until their recent World Series victory (“Rookie of the Year” ends before the World Series, but our hero flaunts a ring in the final frame).
Finally, the baseball movie I’ve seen the most. Slot #1 goes to 1994’s “Little Big League,” a movie often confused with “Rookie of the Year.” It concerns a 12-year-old (Luke Edwards) who inherits the Minnesota Twins and eventually becomes the on-field manager of the team.
It’s fantastic.
Look, don’t judge me. The legendary Jason Robards appears in a couple scenes as the kid’s grandfather, and the movie makes excellent use of Minnesota landmarks like Valleyfair Amusement Park and, of course, the now-demolished Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, where the Twins played games until Target Field opened in 2010. As a kid, I went to these places every summer when I visited my grandparents. Seeing them on the big screen was a treat, plus don’t act like you all weren’t excited to see Wallace, Idaho in “Dante’s Peak.”
“Little Big League” is also notable for prominent appearances by Seattle Mariners Ken Griffey, Jr. and Randy Johnson. The Twins play the Mariners in a one-game playoff at the end of the movie, and Griffey, a superstar at the time (and now and forever), even gets a few lines and a big climactic moment.
More than anything, I enjoy the down-to-earth tone of “Little Big League,” an admittedly curious thing to say about a movie where a kid manages a professional baseball team. Still, it has solid baseball action, an unexpected ending, and some genuinely earned emotional moments. Plus METRODOME.
No promises on how any of these movies play to people who didn’t grow up with them. If I must wear the tattered film critic hat, I say go with “Moneyball” or “Field of Dreams.” For straight laughs, the original “Major League” from 1989 is stupid but still hilarious. I even sort-of like the terrible 1994 sequel thanks to its sustained residency on cable television.
A little more Minnesota Twins movie history – the nearly unwatchable third entry in the “Major League” series, 1998’s “Back to the Minors” is a sorta spinoff focusing on a minor league affiliate of the Twins. Series regulars Charlie Sheen and Tom Berenger rightfully skipped this one, but a few others return and… look, never watch this movie.
Of course the best news about loving baseball movies is that you can watch a half dozen of them in about the same time it takes to watch a single Major League Baseball game.