Baseball Movie Binge: The Best of the Rest
by Mike “There’s No Crying in Baseball” Lunsford, EIC of GGR
As we wind down our Baseball Movie Binge, I started to take inventory. It was easy to divide up the first 6. You had the whole Major League series, so they fit together. Then you had all the Kevin Costner baseball flicks. It all made sense where these films should be cataloged in my reviews. But I didn’t watch them in this organized fashion. I was much more liberal in my choosing. The criteria: if it was a baseball movie and I felt like watching it, I’d watch it. AND if I had never seen it before, then I had to watch it. In fact, let me do a quick “honorable mentions” review of 2 baseball movies I hadn’t seen before and finally watched.
Eight Men Out
Ehhh, it was good enough. Where I’ll give this movie credit was that it LOOKED super authentic. It also had a star-studded cast and every single actor pulled their weight. There was just something missing. I did enjoy this film and would probably watch it again if it wasn’t such a pain in the ass to find. Good flick, worth your time.42
Good movie. Not a thing wrong with it. It’s the newest of the baseball movies so it had that going for it, but also for that reason it’s had plenty of attention given to it. Chadwick Boseman (Black Panther) was great as Jackie Robinson. Harrison Ford as Branch Rickey was also great but the one that shocked me? Alan Tudyk as Phillies Manager Ben Chapman. MAN, that was jarring. There’s racist comments, the n-word used liberally in this film but Tudyk was the Babe Ruth of racial slurs. I mean…damn. It was uncomfortable to listen to. It just shows how committed an actor Tudyk is.
On to the “Best of the Rest.”
One movie I will rarely turn down if it’s on TV or pops up on a streaming service is the one we will kick this article off with.
The Natural
This is such a good movie, not just a good baseball movie. It takes a regular man and makes him incredible, then we watch his fall and then subsequent redemption. Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford) was a phenomenal young baseball player on his way to Chicago to play for the Cubs when an obsessed stalker who was targeting star athletes shoots him in the abdomen. She subsequently commits suicide after ruining young Roy’s career.
16 years pass and Hobbs is now in his mid 30s, hoping for one last shot at baseball stardom. He finds his way onto the roster of the lowly New York Knights. His manager, Pops (Wilford Brimley) is irritated that such an old player has been sent to him so much so that he refuses to play Hobbs. When he finally gives him a chance to pinch hit, he tells him to “hit the cover off the ball.” Roy does just that, literally hitting the covering off the ball as it turns to twine and thread as it rolls into the outfield. We see Roy perform feats that only mythic heroes could accomplish but along the way he shows that he is also a man of substance and character, turning down bribes from the corrupt owner of the Knights.
The movie has one of the greatest endings of all time. Not only does Roy discover that his high school sweetheart (Glenn Close) is at Game 7 of the National League Championship Series, but that they have a son together. To make matters even more epic, the gunshot of 16 years ago rears its ugly head as the bullet was lodged in Roy’s stomach lining all those years and has caused irreparable damage: if he keeps playing baseball he may die. Bottom of the 9th, 2 outs, down by 2 with 2 men on base, Roy comes to bat and his wound is bleeding. He’s down to his last strike when this happens:
Is the ending cheesy? Maybe a little. He literally hits the lights out. It causes fireworks to rain down. The epic music swells as the hero saves the day in the face of insurmountable odds and gets to ride off into the sunset. He got his shot at redemption and became legendary.
Sometimes we need a happy ending. We need to see the good guy be a good guy and not a hopelessly flawed person. The original book has Roy being “on the take” and they end up losing in the end, his legacy tainted. I like the movie version better, regardless of how cavity-inducing it may be. You want a movie about corrupt baseball players? Go watch Eight Men Out. You watch The Natural when you want to feel good about the world. You watch it as a reminder that because of baseball’s longevity and its tie to this country as our nation’s past time, baseball players of bygone eras had their stories told as epic tales of Herculean feats. Roy Hobbs is that hero.
Mr. Baseball
This movie got lots of play on cable when I was growing up, but I never got a chance to watch the whole thing. Since I have tons of time and lots of internet access, I figured now was the time to watch Magnum P.I. take his baseball skills to the Land of the Rising Sun.
Is the movie fantastic? No, but it’s pretty entertaining. It’s the perfect fish-out-of-water story as New York Yankees slugger Jack Elliot (Tom Selleck) gets released by the Yanks and shipped to Japan to play for the Chunichi Dragons. One would assume that baseball is a universal language and that even though Eliot doesn’t speak the language, his play on the field would speak to his teammates. If only it was that easy.
“You’re jealous of my mustache!”
Elliot clashes with the Dragons team mentality. He continues his selfish style of play and his arrogance in his abilities is exposed quickly. Fellow American Max “Hammer” Dubois (Dennis Hayesbert just hanging around baseball sets again) warns Jack that his style must change. Elliot doesn’t heed the warning and ends up getting suspended. Hat in hand, he goes to his manager Uchiyama (Ken Takakura) who works on improving his game as his success hinges on a successful “Mr. Baseball” as Elliot has come to be referred in Japan.
The formula of “cocky guy has a fall from grace and then rebuilds to find success” is a timeless formula. It works in this film. Is it amazing? No, but it’s fun. Even when Selleck is playing the big, dumb, stubborn alpha male American to a T, he still oozes charm. Through his love interest, Hiroko (Aya Takanashi) the daughter of his manager, Jack learns Japanese culture and how to be a decent teammate. In Hiroko, he finds love and sheds his playboy lifestyle as he returns to the States to become a coach for the Tigers. Was it predictable? Sure. But who the hell cares? Not every movie needs to leave you weeping at the ending. Looking right at Big Fish.
Damnit, if I hear that Pearl Jam song I’m gonna lose it.
A League of Their Own
Like The Natural, A League of Their Own transcends the ranks of just a great baseball movie and leaves its mark as a great movie, period. It’s 1943 and World War II threatens to shut down Major League Baseball. Candy magnate and Chicago Cubs owner Walter Harvey (Gary Marshall) talks the other Major League owners into bankrolling a Women’s Baseball League. He puts his assistant Ira Lowenstein (David Strathairn, Good Night and Good Luck) in charge of running the league. They send scout Ernie Capadino (John Lovitz, Saturday Night Live) to start finding talent.
Ernie’s first stop is in Oregon where he finds sisters Dottie (Gena Davis, Thelma & Louise) and Kit Henson (Lori Petty, Tank Girl). Ernie is interested in the heavy hitting Dottie but she refuses to go. She ends up being convinced when she realizes that Kit will never get her chance to play if she stays home and Ernie will only take Kit if Dottie comes. At the try outs they meet fellow players “All the Way Mae” Mordabito (Madonna) and Doris Murphy (Rosie O’Donnell, The Rosie O’Donnell Show) and get picked to play on the same team. They’re coached by washed out former Cubs slugger Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks).
Initially Dugan thinks the woman’s baseball league is a joke, showing up to the games drunk and sleeping through most of it. But as the season wears on, he starts to respect the girls, especially Dottie.
The team starts winning and the league starts to draw interest from fans behind their star, Dottie Henson. This furthers Kit’s envy of her older sister which boils over into an epic screaming match between the two of them, ending with Kit being traded to a rival team. And who do the Peaches face in the World Series? None other than Kit’s new team. The series goes to a decisive game 7 and Kit, who gave up the potential game-winning hit the inning prior to her older sister, is at bat. She tags the ball deep into the outfield to tie the game and blows past her third base coach’s stop sign, barreling towards the plate and her sister Dottie.
“RED LIGHT KIT! RED LIGHT!”
Kit runs her older sister over, dislodging the ball and scores the winning run. She wins the series for her team and gets the glory. Racine wins the Women’s World Series!
Now, film historians will debate for years whether Dottie purposefully dropped the ball so her sister could come out on top or not. Well…maybe not film historians but James Rambo and I sure did. Could Dottie have been subconsciously giving her little sister the chance to redeem herself and the call for high strikes was all part of her plan? Then when Kit flies through the stop sign at 3rd and crashes into her so her and Dottie go ass over teakettle she would then “decide” to drop the ball? No, that’s a ridiculous conspiracy theory. The amount of extra work that would have been required just to put her little sister over is ludicrous and honestly is a slap in the face to Kit. It destroys any growth she may have as a character because even when she wins, it’s because of her big sister.
What’s way more likely is that Dottie underestimated her little sister. She told Ellen Sue to throw high strikes, a pitch Kit can’t lay off but also can’t hit. What does Kit do? She smokes one to left center. And when she rounds third coming for home, Dottie is thinking “oh, she’s toast.” And then Kit nailed her in the chest with her shoulder at full speed, something she’s never seen before from her little sister. Kit wanted it more. She wanted the redemption. She needed to prove to her sister and the world that she was could do it. More importantly, she needed to prove to herself that she could.
The movie ends with an older Dottie showing up at Cooperstown, NY to see the dedication of the Women In Baseball wing at the Baseball Hall of Fame. She reconnects with many of her old teammates and sees her sister Kit as well. It’s unknown if they had seen each other a great deal in the years between, but you can see that it is pleasant reunion.
The movie is fantastically written, acted and directed. Penny Marshall did a masterful job, giving us a wonderful baseball movie but also a terrific film in its own right. Any one who has a sibling has had fights and rivalries with them, wanting to prove that they were better which makes the movie completely relatable. It also has a message of equality as you see the skeptical Jimmy think the “girls” are not ballplayers but begins to see that they sacrifice just as much and can hold their own with the boys of the big leagues. And it has one of the greatest quotes of all time about the value of overcoming struggles.
Jimmy: “Sneaking out like this…quitting…you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. Baseball is what gets inside you. It’s what lights you up. You can’t deny that.”
Dottie: “It just got too hard.”
Jimmy: “It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.
I hope you all enjoyed this Baseball Movie Binge as much as I did. Maybe it inspired you to watch a few of these films. Maybe you called your dad after you bawled your eyes out after watching Field of Dreams. Perhaps you were rooting for Cleveland in Major League even though you knew they would win anyway. Maybe you smiled ear to ear when Roy Hobbs hits that game winning, pennant winning home run. Maybe you laughed your butt off when Jimmy Dugan called the umpire “a little penis in a hat.” Either way, all of these movies have a way of touching us, whether we’re baseball fans or not. Thank you for reading.