How about a New Generation of Baseball movies?
Why aren’t there any more great ones?
Over the holidays this year I caught up watching some baseball movies that have been around for a while. Several of them were ones I never watched before. For the first time I watched The Sandlot (I know, I know), Mr. 3000 and Mr. Baseball. Nothing all that new or different in any of those but we’ll discuss that later. The reason I did not watch any more recent movies (Trouble with the Curve is the most recent somewhat successful baseball feature length movie and that’s from 2012), is that there just isn’t much worth watching.
Wikipedia has a nifty list of baseball movies, er, ‘films’ as they call it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_baseball_films
The list goes back and starts with a short documentary film in 1898 called ‘The Ball Game’. You can imagine — grainy black and white films with guys playing baseball. Fun to look at but hardly a movie. In 1916 a “5-reel” drama called ‘Casey at the Bat’ based on Thayer’s famous poem was released. 5 reels? And am I the only baseball fan who does not have all that much love and nostalgia for ‘Casey at the Bat’ as a poem, film or anything else? The poem represents a stitch in time which is at best mildly amusing. The first time.
Wikipedia lists 182 films. The most recent from 2023 is ‘Tomorrow’s Game’ — the plot line — On the day of his uncle’s ascendance into the Baseball Hall of Fame, Daniel is forced to embark on a journey through time that sees him restore his family’s legacy and rewrite baseball history.
I admit that I missed that one, but I did watch ‘It Ain’t Over’ a 2022 documentary about Yogi Berra made by his daughter Lindsay. I enjoyed this and I’m not even a Yankee fan. Yogi is probably one of the most underappreciate pure baseball players once you take away all the noise and goofiness about his being Yogi.
Not on the list is ‘Facing Nolan’. A 2023 documentary made by the Ryan family that appears on Netflix. It was worth watching. Baseball documentaries have an easier chance of being good than a baseball drama or comedy. And baseball biopics often are love letters to the subject made by members of the family.
When I was very young ‘Pride of the Yankees,’ starring Gary Cooper was the standard for baseball movies. Poignant about Lou Gehrig’s career and career-ending/life-ending battle with the disease that took his name, you are not allowed to not like that movie. Then and still now I found it meh although I’ve not watched it in a long time. Did I mention I was not a Yankee fan? It’s also patently unfair to assess a movie made more than 80 years ago in the context of the spirit of today’s times. Aren’t all movies from 1942 are overly dramatic, overly sentimental, and out-of-date in some regard or another if not entirely?
On our podcast episode from a few years ago ‘Silver Sluggers of the Silver Screen’ my son and I discussed our favorite baseball movies. Like most people we agreed that the 1980’s was a prolific if not ‘golden era’ for baseball movies starting with ‘The Natural’ in 1984 and including ‘Eight Men Out (1988) ‘Bull Durham (1988)’, ‘Major League (1989)’, ‘and Field of Dreams (also 1989). The 1990s was more uneven with movies like ‘A League of their own’ (1992), ‘The Scout’ (1994), and ‘For the Love of the Game (1999)’ being offset by movies like ‘Angels in the Outfield’ (1994), which was a remake of a 1951 film), and ‘Ed’ (1996) with Matt LeBlanc. Was ‘Rookie-of-the-Year’ (1994) a good baseball movie? It was preposterous, silly and made me laugh a little but c’mon really?
But since the 1990’s, the pickings have been slim. Billy Crystal’s ‘61’ (2001) yet another Yankee movie, was good. Dennis Quaid did a pretty good imitation of a baseball player in the good true-to-life story ‘The Rookie’ (2002). That’s kind of it for that decade unless you feel that the remake of ‘Bad News Bears’ (2005), Fever Pitch (2005), and ‘The Benchwarmers’ (2006), are worthy. TBH, I did not care much for the first Bad News Bears movie from 1975.
And the 2010’s had maybe the best baseball movie in the past 25 years — ‘Moneyball’ (2011). ‘42’ (2013) about Jackie Robinson was also very good. The rest of that decade did not produce memorable movies although there were quite a few among them ‘Million Dollar Arm’ (2014) with Jon Hamm, which I saw and ‘The Phenom’ (2015) which I did not, and apparently did not miss much according to the reviews.
Have I omitted one of your favorites? That’s likely because there are so many and like I am with ‘The Scout’ which I love, if you’ve a bent to a baseball movie you will watch it every time you pass it by. What do I want from a baseball movie that’s not a documentary? Something that makes me think differently about the game itself for starters. It can have relationships both romantic or otherwise, but I want to watch and think, ‘I hadn’t thought of it that way before’. A different light, a new view. A light on something overlooked in the game itself. Surely all the great baseball movies cannot have already all been made?
Even if baseball is no longer ‘America’s Pastime’, it’s still worth trying to make another one, right?
About the Author: Mark Kolier along with his son Gordon co-hosts a baseball podcast called ‘Almost Cooperstown’. He also has written baseball-related articles that can be accessed on Medium.com and now Substack.com.
