Greatest Movies (by sport) nomination thread

[JasonEvans]

almost break it down by sport. There are so many great sports movies, you could vote for favorite football (replacements or titans or brian's song), basketball (glory road or coach carter), baseball (eight men out or bull durham), boxing (cinderella man or rocky), hockey (mystery alaska), tennis (match point or wimbledon), golf (caddyshack or tin cup) movie. Just a thought.

Ok, I will roll out new series of polls over the next several days, starting after Labor Day. Each poll will ask for the best movies BY SPORT. Then, we will have a final face-off between all the sport winners. The posts that follow will contain the categories along with some films I am considering. Please add others if you wish to have them included. Of course, there is a max of 10 films in each category, but I think that should be enough.

-Jason "I ask that you not discuss which films are your favorites... yet. Wait for the official polls for that" Evans

[JasonEvans]

Here is the list of basketball flicks I am considering (listed in no particular order). I already have 10, but feel free to add your thoughts. you may convince me to change my mind.

1. Hoosiers
2. Glory Road
3. Coach Carter
4. One on One
5. The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh
6. Teen Wolf
7. White Men Can't Jump
8. The Air Up There
9. Hoops Dreams
10. Space Jam

Also considered: Blue Chips, Amazing Grace and Chuck, Through the Fire (Doc about Sebastian Telfair), He Got Game, Celtic Pride, and a few others that are frankly not in a league with the rest of these... I think.

--Jason "did I miss any?" Evans

[JasonEvans]

Here is the list of Football movies under consideration:

These I am pretty sure must be on the list:

1. All The Right Moves
2. Brian's Song
3. North Dallas 40
4. Friday Night Lights
5. The Longest Yard
6. Rudy
7. Remember The Titans
8. We Are Marshall

That means I can only pick 2 of these. Help me out here:

1. Any Given Sunday
2. Invincible
3. Everybody's All-American
4. Radio
5. Knute Rockne All-American
6. The Waterboy
7. The Replacements
8. The Program
9. Semi-Tough
10. The Best of Times
11. Johnny B Goode

-Jason "what am I leaving out?" Evans

[wilson]

Is there going to be a thread for the best baseketball movie? I think the best baseketball movie is BASEketball.

[JasonEvans]

Whew, this is not easy. I think Baseball has far and away the finest list of films. Here are the flicks I am considering. WOW! This is just a ridiculous list to pare down. Help me out people!!

1. The Babe
2. Bad News Bears
3. Bang The Drum Slowly
4. Bingo Long's Travelling All-Stars
5. Bull Durham
6. Don't Look Back: The Satchel Paige Story
7. Eight Men Out
8. Field of Dreams
9. A League of Their Own
10. Major League
11. The Natural
12. Pride of the Yankees
13. The Rookie
14. The Stratton Story

Noticed by me, but not good enough (IMO): Cobb, Chasing Dreams, The Benchwarmers, Everyone's Hero, Fever Pitch, For the Love of the Game, Little Big League, Angels in the Outfield, Mr. Baseball, Mr. 3000, Rookie of the Year, The Scout, The Slugger's Wife, Stealing Home (which was filmed in my wife's home town), Talent for the Game (a really good film, IMO, but no one saw it),

--Jason "this list make me ill-- how do I pare that down?!?! What did I leave out?" Evans

[JasonEvans]

Whew, this is a shorter list, but still impressive:

1. Rocky (should I include Rocky III or Rocky Balboa as separate entries?)
2. The Champ (the original or, more likely, the one from the 1970s)
3. Raging Bull
4. The Greatest
5. Requiem for a Heavyweight
6. Ali
7. Diggstown (not a bad flick, if you missed it)
8. The Hurricane
9. Million Dollar Baby
10. Cinderella Man

I am not including The Great White Hype no matter how much anyone lobbies for it.

--Jason "should I include 'When We Were Kings', the documentary about Ali?" Evans

[JasonEvans]

These come from sports that do not have enough other films to get their own category. Still, a lot of these are deserrving of consideration. I gotta figure out how to divide these up.

Golf:

1. Caddyshack
2. Tin Cup
3. The Legend of Bagger Vance
4. Happy Gilmore
5. The Greatest Game Ever Played

Horse Racing:

1. Seabiscuit
2. Phar Lap
3. National Velvet
4. Hidalgo
5. Racing Stripes
6. The Black Stallion

Hockey

1. Slapshot
2. The Mighty Ducks
3. Youngblood
4. Miracle
5. Mystery, Alaska

Running and racing:

1. Chariots of Fire (running)
2. Personal Best (track and field)
3. Prefontain (running)
4. Days of Thunder (auto racing)
5. Heart Like a Wheel (auto racing)
6. Cars (animated auto racing)
7. Talladega Nights (auto racing)
8. Cool Runnings (bobsledding)
9. Breaking Away (cycling)

Others:

1. Ice Castles (figure skating)
2. The Cutting Edge (figure skating)
3. Blades of Glory (figure skating)
4. Bend it Like Beckham (soccer)
5. Victory (soccer)
6. Wimbledon (tennis)
7. Vision Quest (wrestling)

-Jason "I'll probably group many of these into 2 or 3 polls" Evans

[Olympic Fan]

Jason, what you're doing is exactly the same thing that the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee did in the years before 1975 -- one team per conference, no matter how many great teams there are in a conference; the same number of bids (one) for the mighty ACC or the deep Big Ten and paper-thin the Southern or the MVC.

It was unfair then and it's unfair now.

As a fan of sports movies, I feel very comfortable in saying there are FAR more good movies about Baseball and about Boxing than Basketball or Football or Golf or the Oympics or anything else.

So we have to choose among Field of Dreams, The Natural, Major League, Bull Durham and Eight Men Out in baseball -- which all better than any football movie? It's not fair -- the second-place baseball finisher becomes Maryland in 1974!

No, create polls for the various sports if you'd like ... but DON'T compile a one movie per sport poll!

PS Your baseball list barely scratches the surface -- where is 61*? the three great Joe E. Brown baseball comedies from the 30s (Alibi Ike, Elmer the Great and Fireman Save My Child)? Have you ever seen Long Gone -- a great minor league movie, clearly top 10 (William Peterson of CSI fame as a washed-up player-manager; Delmont Mulrooney at the rookie who idolizes him; Larry Riley as "Jose Luis" Brown the black catcher intergrating the Tampico Stogies in the early 50s; Virginia Madsen as the great Dixie Lee Boxx)? How about Blue Skies Again (a 1983 movie with Harry Hamlin doing a dead-on Ted Turner imitation as the owner of a major league team trying out a female hopeful)? It Happened One Spring (Ray Milland pitches the Cardinals to the pennant thanks to his wood-repelling potion)? The original Angels in the Outfield (reported to be Dwight Eisenhower's favorite movie)? The Kid from Left Field (the original with Dan Duryea and Lloyd Bridges)? Rhubarb (a cat inherits the Brooklyn Dodgers)? Rogie's Bump (which stars half the old Brooklyn Dodgers)? What about Damn Yankees for goodness sake?

Actually, you set the bar pretty low when you include The Babe (you include this piece of @## -- actually less watchable and no more accurate than the horrible Babe Ruth Story, which is at least so bad, it's funny -- over the movies you reject. Are you sure you aren't confusing this with Babe, which was a superb movie about a talking pig? Hey, that's about a sheep herding competition and that's a sport ... I nominate Babe for your list of great sport movies as the greatest movie about sheep herding competitions -- if all sports are equal, it needs to be on the list.

Plus, your assertion that "Talent for the Game" is a really good movie that no one saw it makes me question your baseball judgement -- unfortunately, I saw it. So did Bill Simmons, who did a better job ripping it than I ever good (i just wish I could find his review it in his archive).

[JasonEvans]

I would submit that none of the movies you mention would have much of a chance of winning any of these polls or even getting meaningful support. Many of them are unseen by the vast majority of us.

*61 I left out because it was just a made-for-HBO movie and never appeared in theaters. I think the rest of the films mentioned in this thread had a theatrical release (except for Brian's Song, which I should probably now exclude - grrrr).

As for your problem with the whole concept-- what is your solution? We are bound by 10 nominees per poll and clearly there are well more than 10 movies that deserve consideration for the greatest sports movie of all time on this board (as was demonstrated when I first tried that). So, how do we pick the ones to be nominated for the "final 10"? I figured dividing by sport was the best move, even though, I agree, several quite deserving baseball movies will be left off.

--Jason "help!!" Evans

[YmoBeThere]

Is it possible to make multiple votes in a poll? I think that as Jason points out, the poll system may be the limitation more than anything else in getting to a list which compares movies across sports.

[JasonEvans]

Plus, your assertion that "Talent for the Game" is a really good movie that no one saw it makes me question your baseball judgement -- unfortunately, I saw it. So did Bill Simmons, who did a better job ripping it than I ever good (i just wish I could find his review it in his archive).

You know, I have not seen that movie in about 2 decades. I recall liking it, but I may be wrong. I watched it on a plane flight in something like 1991 and may have missed some aspects of it that made it horrible. I must admit, the ending, where 69-year-old Edward James Olmos plays catcher and no one but the pitcher notices, was ludicrous. Sorry for mentioning it

-Jason "worse comes to worse, we could just do polls of the best movies by sport-- in all but basketball (which I think is a bowout for a certain film) I think these polls would be close and compelling" Evans

[JasonEvans]

Is it possible to make multiple votes in a poll? I think that as Jason points out, the poll system may be the limitation more than anything else in getting to a list which compares movies across sports.

Yes, you can make a pool that allows multiple votes-- though if we are voting for "the best" that seems like a cop-out. Also, that does not solve the central problem of picking the 10 even nominated to be in the poll.

-Jason "we could also make polls/lists broken down by fiction, fiction but based on a real story, pure non-fiction/documentary, and some other category like comedy" Evans

[YmoBeThere]

Yes, you can make a pool that allows multiple votes-- though if we are voting for "the best" that seems like a cop-out. Also, that does not solve the central problem of picking the 10 even nominated to be in the poll.

-Jason "we could also make polls/lists broken down by fiction, fiction but based on a real story, pure non-fiction/documentary, and some other category like comedy" Evans

But it might give more clarity in earlier rounds of voting...in other words qualifying certain numbers of movies to move to subsequent rounds.

[micah75]

this list make me ill-- how do I pare that down?!?!

For what it's worth---

Remove:

The Babe
Bad News Bears

Keepers:

5 through 11.

I agree with Olympic Fan about 61. However, like you said, it was an HBO film. Then again, I did rent it from my local video store, and perhaps others have as well.

Reckon the others on the list are borderline.

[Indoor66]

I kind of like the idea of a long list that is pared down by a sequence of voting - win or go home.

[captmojo]

My vote for an add-in would have to be "The Sandlot", on the baseball list.

[ohioguy2]

My vote for an add-in would have to be "The Sandlot", on the baseball list.

I second the nomination to add "The Sandlot" . Best of all for baseball--wow--"Bull Durham" in a close race.

[dkbaseball]

Maybe it's a generational thing, but I strongly agree with Olympic Fan about "It Happens Every Spring." Watching it when it came on TV each year was a ritual for me and my friends in the '60s. It's just one of those iconic films that probably did as much as anything to associate baseball with America's bucolic, wholesome heartland and with the country's mythology.

[DukieInKansas]

Breaking Away (cycling)
American Flyers (cycling)

[ohioguy2]

I forgot about "Breaking Away". What a great film.