Top 5 Baseball Movies

Spring Training is just wrapping up and opening day is just around the corner. Spring is officially here and we are starting to get warm weather days (more then usual) in San Diego. Turned on the TV the other day and one of my favorite sports movies and favorite movies of all time was on, The Sandlot. So I thought I would put down my Top 5 Baseball Movies. I guess America really loves their baseball movies, because there are a lot of classics that do not make my list, and some really good ones just got left off. Heck this is my list anyways, go make your own.

#5 Major League - With Greg "Wild Thing" Vaughn and Willy Beaman this movie about a bunch of ragtag, washed up baseball players has just the right amount of charm and love of the game to always require repeat viewing. Wild Thing, I think I love you.

#4 Bull Durham - Another movie with a young wild pitcher and a wily veteran catcher, see a trend here? If for nothing else I love this movie for the behind the scenes peek at what goes on during a pitchers huddle on the mound. When is a good time for men to talk about wedding gifts anyways?

#3 Stealing Home - The core of this movie is a father/son relationship and how baseball tied the two together. As the movie moves on and the father dies, the son gets away from his love of the game with life and grief and growing up. But it all comes back to the end when he decides to get his stuff together and steal home one more time. Mark Harmon, Harold Ramis, and Jodie Foster bring a story together that spans a generation. This movie is one of my favorites, the music brings it home for me, and it does not even show up on most Baseball movie list.

#2 A League of Their Own - "Theirs no crying in Baseball!" Tom Hanks plays Jimmy Duggan, a washed up drunk ex ball player who is pegged to coach a women's baseball team when the men go off to war in World War II. Geena Davis, Madonna, Rosie O'Donnell and others round out the cast of this charming movie that shows that women can indeed play baseball, and Tom Hanks is at his absolute best the drunker he gets in the movie.

#1 The Sandlot - What can I say? I'm a sucker for kids movies that are good and they came out when I was growing up. Bad News Bears is just as good, but this one sticks with me. From the classic one liners "Your killing me smalls", to the reverance the boys show for the game, the pickling of the beast, to the music of the early 1960's in America; this movie has it all for me. And I gotta tell you, a special treat for me is the 4th of July scene with Ray Charles singing "America the Beautiful". Tell me that scene does not spark up nostalgia for you everytime.