Worst. Baseball Movies. Ever.

It seems Waxing America readers are fans of fictional baseball movies, judging from comments on Paul's post about "Field of Dreams," which is on most fans' list of top ten best baseball movies. (Google "top ten baseball movies" to see the usual picks.)

My best ten list is pretty typical, except that I don't include "Pride of the Yankees" (hate the Yankees), or "Bad News Bears" (foul-mouthed cuteness is overrated), or "A League of Their Own" (Madonna and Rosie O'Donnell paying baseball? No.). My unranked ten best are: "Field of Dreams," "The Natural," "Eight Men Out," "Bang the Drum Slowly," "Bull Durham," "Major League," "The Jackie Robinson Story," "The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings," "The Sandlot," and "Long Gone."  My favorite is "Long Gone," an HBO film based on a wonderful Paul Hemphill novel that nailed the "minor league old guy on the way down and young phenom on the way up" story several years before "Bull Durham." Well worth a watch.

Anyway, here's my unranked ten worst:

1. "Fear Strikes Out" - Anthony Perkins playing Jimmy Piersall and not credible throwing or hitting. (thx commenter Ty O'Mara)
2. "For Love of the Game" - Kevin Costner as a sensitive, thinking pitcher worried about his relationship?  Nope. (thx Toni Morrissey)
3. "Mr. 3000" - Despite the Milwaukee locale, Bernie Mac is not a Robin Yount.
4. "Brewster's Millions" - How do you make an unfunny movie with John Candy and Richard Prior? This one manages.
5. "Bad News Bears Go to Japan," "Bad News Bears in Breaking Training," "Bad News Bears" (2005 remake with Billy Bob Thornton), "Major League II" and "Major League: Back to the Minors" - 5 dogs share one slot and don't make one decent film when their good parts are all added together.
6. "The Babe" and "The Babe Ruth Story" - Neither John Goodman nor William Bendix could do more than a bad home run trot.
7. "Strategic Air Command" - 47-yr old Jimmy Stewart as a Cardinals player recalled to the Air Force as a bomber pilot to help save the USA from the Commies, while June Allyson pines for him back home. Painful. (See also "The Stratton Story," another bad baseball movie with Stewart and Allyson.)
8. "It Happens Every Spring" - Ray Milland invents something that repels a baseball from wood, becomes a star pitcher and hilarity fails to ensue. (thx Marshall Cook)
9. " The Slugger's Wife" - Neil Simon wrote this bomb, which Janet Maslin called "...resoundingly unfunny..." (thx Tim Morrissey)
10. "Ed" - Matt LeBlanc and a chimp named Ed. The stupid hijinx are unwatchable.

The very worst?  A tie between "Fear Strikes Out," which has non-baseball scenes of parental abuse that are less fun than the painful baseball sequences, and "Strategic Air Command," which features dialog that General Curtis E. LeMay  may well have written.

Nominations for worse baseball flix to avoid?

- Barry Orton

Comments

[nonheroicvet]

Was no fictional movie last night when the nonfictional Yankees got their nonfictional damn Yankee butts kicked. It was quite enjoyable.

[grumps]

Long Gone may be one of my top ten favorite movies, regardless of genre. Virginia Madsen is gorgeous. Henry Gibson as Teller's father is priceless and Bill Peterson was wonderful before he got so full of himself.

On your worst list how did you miss:
Angels In the OutfieldI-III
Comrades of Summer
Little Big League
and Rhubarb

I might find room on the list of worthwhile films for Damn Yankees and The Scout but what do we do with Naked Gun? There has to be room somewhere for a baseball movie with OJ in it.

[Ty O'Mara]

Overall, very good lists, but I am shocked that, "It Happens Every Spring," is on anyone's 10 worst list. When I was 10 or 12, this movie was pure gold to me. I couldn't get enough of all the old baseball movies when I was a kid. I think we should take into account the era in which these movies were made and for the audience they were made for. Not, once, was I able to watch, "Fear Strikes Out," to completion. It is my top worst baseball movie ever made.

I would take, "Major League," out of the top ten best list and replace it with, "It Happens Every Spring." "Major League," has a weak plot line and very poorly developed characters. Instead of letting the characters evolve in front of you, the movie starts out by telling you point blank who the characters are: this is the crazy wild pitcher, this is the Latin voodoo guy, this is... blah, blah, blah. I think it is terribly overrated.

Thanks, for the list, though, I will be looking to find copies of "Sandlot," and "Long Gone," for a cold winter day-never saw either. Can anyone back me up on this "It Happens Every Spring," opinion? There must be someone out there who thought it was a great movie when they were a kid.

[Jeff]

Agreed on "Long Gone." Good book, too, if distant memory serves.