Play ball! Ranking the 21 best baseball movies ever

Tommy Lee Jones went outside the box, and inside the ballpark, with Cobb, his follow-up to an Oscar-winning turn in The Fugitive. In this uneven-but-well-acted baseball biopic, Jones plays Hall of Fame outfielder Ty Cobb—an early 20th century ballplayer who stood alongside greats like Babe Ruth, but who also distinguished himself for being a racist, wife-beating drunk who was loathed by fans and teammates equally. Written and directed by Bull Durham’s Ron Shelton and co-starring an exceptional Jessica Lange as Cobb’s wife, Cobb explores the dark side of one of America’s most divisive sports figures.

A pre-Psycho Anthony Perkins stars in Fear Strikes Out, an underrated biopic about Jimmy Piersall, the Red Sox outfielder who, in May 1952, suffered a nervous breakdown during a key game. The origins of Piersall’s mental health issues prove to be his tyrannical father (Karl Malden), and the film depicts the fallout of Jimmy’s bi-polar disorder and its impact on both himself and his domineering dad. The film can read as a bit quaint but it’s actually a powerful look at a son who almost ruined his life trying to please his father.

A pre-Star Wars Billy Dee Williams is at his most charismatic in the little-seen and highly compelling The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings. In Bingo Long, Williams plays a Negro League pitcher fed up with his team owner and unable to play in the segregated Major Leagues. So he forms his own squad of talented upstarts (including James Earl Jones and Richard Pryor) and they hit the road playing local teams around the Midwest. Featuring an exceptional ensemble cast, the film shines a light on a chapter in baseball history that deserves more attention, and it does so in a fun, entertaining way.

Yes, it’s an HBO movie, but it’s so good it deserves placement among the theatrically released titles on this list. Written by Hank Steinberg and deftly directed by die-hard baseball fan Billy Crystal, 61* stars Barry Pepper as Roger Maris and Thomas Jane as Mickey Mantle, New York Yankees teammates playing their hearts out in an attempt to break Babe Ruth’s 1927 single-season home run record during the 1961 campaign. Pepper and Jane give arguably career-best performances, grounding the larger-than-life sports figures with a lived-in relatability that make Crystal’s direction and Steinberg’s script shine.

While admittedly not the first title that comes to mind when thinking of baseball movies, attention must be paid to Richard Linklater’s underrated and highly entertaining Everybody Wants Some!! Set in Texas in 1980, Everybody centers on an unruly team of college freshman ballplayers who balance practice and training with dancing and skirt chasing. Their potential path to the Big Leagues—and to adulthood—is dramatized with Linklater’s unique brand of fly-on-the-wall comedy and drama. The ensemble, headlined by Top Gun: Maverick’s Glen Powell, is maybe the most watchable in a Linklater film since his cult fave Dazed And Confused. And like that popular movie, Everybody deserves the same must-see status.

Tab Hunter isn’t bad in Damn Yankees, a showboat-y adaptation of the Broadway musical about a Washington Senators aficionado who literally sells his soul to the devil in an effort to help his team win the pennant. The film hews so closely to the musical version that many of its co-stars were ported over right from Broadway, including Ray Walston as the devil and Gwen Verdon, who won a 1956 Tony for her role as the devil’s partner.

Pride Of The Yankees should come with a Costco-size pallet of tissues for all the tears it will cause. This endearing Lou Gehrig biopic takes its time to chronicle how he went from being the Yankees’ most unstoppable player to the namesake of the crippling disease that cut his career tragically short. Gary Cooper’s take on Gehrig’s famous “luckiest man on the face of the Earth” farewell speech will overload your tear ducts.

Before directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck helped bring Carol Danvers to the big screen in 2019’s Captain Marvel, they wrote and directed Sugar, a hidden gem from 2008. Sugar follows the inspiring and compelling story of Miguel “Sugar” Santos (Algenis Perez Soto), a Dominican pitcher from the town of San Pedro de Macorís who dreams of making it to the big leagues and pulling his family out of their impoverished conditions. Boden and Fleck stage the baseball scenes in an almost documentary style, but where they really excel is putting the more quiet, dramatic beats through a similar fly-on-the-wall lens. You’ve never seen a baseball movie more intimate or empathetic to the athlete’s struggle than Sugar.

The Rookie—Dennis Quaid’s last truly good movie—is one of the most feel-good baseball dramas in recent memory. Quaid quietly commands the screen in this true story of Jim Morris, a high school coach staring down the barrel of a life full of “woulda, couldas” who, at age 35, gets a belated shot at big-league success when he’s called up to pitch for the (then called) Tampa Bay Devil Rays. It’s The Natural put through a PG, family friendly lens–but with more emotional stakes.

Baseball documentaries often tend to be either nostalgic sepia toned affairs or two-hour dramatizations of Wiki articles. But not The Life And Times Of Hank Greenberg, which subverts expectations with its humorous and reflective chronicle of Hank Greenberg, an exceptionally talented first baseman for the Detroit Tigers who faced religious prejudice on his way to becoming an American icon. His considerable gifts, and what he accomplished with them, comprise the bulk of this insightful and necessary look back at a Golden Age of baseball compromised by anti-semitism.

Bang The Drum Slowly is to baseball movies what Brian’s Song is to football. Robert De Niro and Michael Moriarty star as teammates whose friendship is sorely tested when De Niro’s character becomes afflicted with Hodgkin’s disease. When his condition turns fatal, that’s when the movie turns on the waterworks on its way to becoming a classic in the genre.

Director Michael Ritchie, whose cheerful cynicism about American institutions informed 1972’s The Candidate, delivers arguably his most commercial film with The Bad News Bears, a comedy about a cynical, beer-swilling Little League coach (Walter Matthau) and his team of foul-mouthed misfits led by a precocious Tatum O’Neal. Richard Linklater’s 2005 remake isn’t terrible, but it’s nowhere near as good (or quotable) as the original.

The Sandlot is to ’90s kids what Stand By Me is to Boomers. Thanks to its endless airings on cable, fans fell for The Sandlot’s nostalgic, heartstring-tugging look at an unlikely team of suburban teens whose bonds extended well beyond the games they played. It’s a Wonder Years-esque take on the formative experiences of adolescence, starring one of the most likable kid ensembles since The Goonies—and a giant, slobbering dog.

Major League is one of the funniest and most quotable baseball comedies ever. Written and directed by David S. Ward (The Sting), Major League tells the underdog story of the Cleveland Indians, whose owner wants them to lose as many games as possible so she can exercise an out clause in the team’s contract and move the squad to Miami. Standing in her way is a cast of likable oddballs including pitcher Charlie “Wild Thing” Sheen (who, in reality, was a pitching phenom in high school before becoming an actor), the hilarious Wesley Snipes, the crusty James Gammon, and the wonderful scene-stealer Bob Uecker. Ward’s script and direction invest Major League with the exact amount of silliness and cleverness it needs to succeed as a great comedy and an even better baseball movie.

Bolstered by strong chemistry from leads Geena Davis and Tom Hanks, A League Of Their Own is one of the ’90s best and most quoted movies. Director Penny Marshall turns the inspiring story of the women ballplayers who kept baseball alive during World War II into a clever and poignant comedy. As Hanks’ character famously says, “There’s no crying in baseball,” but audiences cried and laughed at League’s charming and heartfelt approach to some of baseball’s most unsung and pioneering athletes.

Jackie Robinson’s life story is expansive enough to justify a trilogy of films. But writer-director Brian Helgeland does Robinson’s story justice with only one, 42, an incredibly well acted and smartly shot drama starring Chadwick Boseman as the iconic infielder for the Brooklyn Dodgers. This modest box office hit focuses on Robinson’s difficult rookie year as the first Black player ever in Major League Baseball. It’s a powerful story surpassed only by Boseman’s equally powerful commitment to telling it. His chemistry with Harrison Ford, as the baseball executive who signed Robinson to his first major league contract, elevates 42 above standard biopic fare. Too bad Hollywood doesn’t make many movies as rich and worthy of the big screen as this anymore.

If you are an avid fan of Field Of Dreams, then you should watch Eight Men Out, the bluntly honest, and way less fantastical, story of how Shoeless Joe Jackson and his White Sox teammates were banished from baseball for throwing the 1919 World Series—while the money men who exploited them went unpunished. The strong young cast includes John Cusack, Charlie Sheen, and D.B. Sweeney, actors with real diamond skills. Bonus points to Sweeney for teaching himself to bat lefty in order to play Shoeless Joe, the White Sox outfielder who was illiterate and easily taken advantage of by the gamblers orchestrating the throwing of the Series.

Somewhere in Barry Levinson’s ambitious crowdpleaser about an aging slugger (Robert Redford) with a magical bat there’s a darker, more sinister tale of sin, redemption, and the toll both take on the noblest of souls. That’s because Bernard Malamud’s source novel reads that way even if this movie adaptation didn’t quite embrace these thornier themes. Still, The Natural’s memorable score and climactic scene, where Redford’s seemingly dying ballplayer hits a home run for the ages, have become iconic. They hold up better than the plot, which can’t tell if it wants to service a fantasy-adjacent baseball drama or something more grounded. But The Natural works beautifully despite its flaws and because of Redford’s earnest commitment to the material.

Moneyball mixes two seemingly very different concepts—math and baseball—to create an entertaining confection. It’s a sports movie that finds heart in the cold, dry analytics used to determine the fates of players on the field while the executives off the field struggle to build the best team. Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian’s breezy, intelligent script does an exceptional job of explaining sabermetrics and the other complexities of baseball performance evaluation. But it wouldn’t have worked as well without star Brad Pitt. His lived-in, vulnerable performance as Billy Beane, the real-life Oakland general manager seeking redemption for the choices he made during his brief career as a player, makes this Oscar-nominated film highly rewatchable.

When you’re younger, James Earl Jones’ speech—about how baseball can be America’s great unifier—may come off as overwrought and dripping with sentimentality. But the older one gets, the harder it is to not shed a tear for the intentions behind that speech. Framed around the notion of building a ballpark in the middle of a corn field so Ray Liotta’s Shoeless Joe Jackson can be redeemed and a father can play catch with his son, Field Of Dreams makes you believe that not only could this story happen, but that it’s worth investing in for the long, tear-shedding haul. Kevin Costner plays the struggling farmer given one last chance to make peace with his deceased dad while Golden Age of Hollywood icon Burt Lancaster make his final big screen appearance as real-life ballplayer and doctor Moonlight Graham. Writer-director Phil Alden Robinson has the difficult task of making the story’s more fantastical elements blend with that of a heartland drama yet he makes it look effortless.

A rom-com with a poetic heart, Bull Durham is one of the best acted and best written movies that just happens to concern baseball. Former minor leaguer-turned-filmmaker Ron Shelton crammed a lifetime of hard-earned wisdom into this shaggy-dog story about baseball, fandom, and sex. Kevin Costner plays Crash Davis, a former major league catcher languishing in the minors who finds himself in one hell of a love triangle with Nuke, a gifted, hot-headed minor leaguer (Tim Robbins), and Annie (Susan Sarandon), a poetry-spouting groupie. Costner is the movie’s charming star, struggling to help Nuke harness his athletic gifts and earn a shot at “The Show,” but Sarandon’s Annie is the movie’s beating heart and soul. Her witty and complicated superfan can appreciate the divine moment when a swing meets a fastball. That’s the type of blue-collar poetry the world of Bull Durham traffics in, and it explains why the movie is such a warm and funny confection 35 years after its release.