It's time for Round 2: Vote for the best baseball film in the MLB Movie Bracket
Well, Round 1 is over. The Bad News Bears just snuck by Eight Men Out and, after a tight early going, The Natural beat out 42. So now, we have entered the Elite 8. Benny "The Jet" Rodriguez vs. Rick Vaughn. Dottie Hinson vs. Roy Hobbs. Who will go the distance? Vote and decide below:
** Round 2 is now finished. Vote in the semifinals right here.
Field of Dreams (1989)
Stars: Kevin Costner, James Earl Jones
Box office gross: $84.4 million
Rotten Tomatoes score: 86 %
One-line summary: An Iowa farmer plows over his crops when a strange voice tells him to build a baseball field for the ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson.
Why it's the best baseball movie ever: This is the only baseball film to be played in marathon fashion on cable television on Fathers Day, and that's because baseball is the foundation of the relationship between fathers and sons. Field of Dreams romanticizes America's pastime and literary history while offering its own addition to the cultural lexicon with, "If you build it, he will come." Plus, it's got the two best things that any original American tale can have: Baseball and time travel.
The Bad News Bears (1976)
Stars: Walter Matthau, Tatum O'Neal
Box Office Gross: $32.2 million
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 96%
One-line plot summary: A broken-down ex-Minor Leaguer tries to whip a Little League team full of athletic disasters into championship shape.
What it's the best baseball movie ever: Most sports movies want to warm your heart. Not this one. There's a child named "Lupus" who is covered in snot for most of the movie. The team is sponsored by a bail bondsman! This isn't starry-eyed and sentimental; it's foul-mouthed and frenzied and no one really learns any lessons about humility or what it means to overcome. But it's also hilarious. Losing with grace can be nice, but it's way more fun to lose and then come up with a bunch of hilarious insults for the winners.
The Sandlot (1993)
Stars: Tom Guiry, Mike Vitar
Box office gross: $33.8 million
Rotten Tomatoes score: 57%
One-line plot summary: A kid uses his step-dad's Babe Ruth-signed ball to play pickup baseball and gets his friends into a big pickle.
Why it's the best baseball movie ever: If you grew up in the '90s and were to openly admit that you've never seen The Sandlot, you'd be met with the same dropped jaws and blank stares that Smalls saw when he first confessed he hadn't heard of Babe Ruth. It's impossible to watch this movie and not feel the sudden urge to blow off all of your obligations, round up the gang and go play some pickup ball in the ol' neighborhood. Heroes get remembered, but legends never die … and this film will echo through eternity.
Major League (1989)
Stars: Charlie Sheen, Tom Berenger, Corbin Bernsen, Rene Russo, Wesley Snipes
Box office gross: $49.8 million
Rotten Tomatoes score: 82%
One-line plot summary: The Cleveland Indians' owner puts together an intentionally terrible roster as a ploy to move the team ... until they start winning.
Why it's the best baseball movie ever: Major League is very much a product of its time -- it's an '80s comedy starring Charlie Sheen. But it is great at what it does, and it nails the baseball side of things more than you might remember: A powerful slugger who can't field? A speedster who can't hit? A flamethrower with no control? All still commonplace in MLB today. Let's not discount Major League's cultural contributions, either. Ricky Vaughn's haircut is still inspiring copycats and Bob Uecker's "Just a bit outside" is among the all-time most quoted lines from a baseball movie. Plus, who doesn't love a story about a team designed to lose but winning anyway?
A League of Their Own (1992)
Stars: Tom Hanks, Geena Davis, Rosie O'Donnell, Madonna
Box Office Gross: $107.5 million
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 77%
One-line plot summary: During World War II, two sisters join the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League and try to take home a championship, despite their own personal rivalry.
Why it's the best baseball movie ever: Is there crying in baseball? No! There isn't! And you know who taught you that? Tom Hanks as Jimmy Dugan in A League of Their Own. The film combines the sweetness of an underdog story with an epic swing dance number starring Madonna. Girl's got moves, on the field and off.
The Natural (1984)
Stars: Robert Redford, Robert Duvall, Glenn Close, Kim Basinger
Box office gross: $48M
Rotten Tomatoes score: 81%
One-line plot summary: After appearing to have his career cut short, Roy Hobbs, a mythic, baseball-playing superhero who's better at life than all of us, perseveres to do incredible things on the field.
Why it's the best baseball movie ever: Wonderboy. A chiseled, mid-career Robert Redford. One of the greatest scenes in film history. The Natural mixes the magic, folklore and drama of baseball life both on and off the field into an Oscar-nominated epic. Now excuse me while I go listen to the soundtrack and swing my softball bat around in my living room.
Moneyball (2011)
Stars: Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Chris Pratt
Box office gross: $75.6M
Rotten Tomatoes score: 94%
One-line plot summary: Iconoclastic Athletics GM Billy Beane embraces sabermetrics as a last-ditch attempt to build a contender in Oakland.
Why it's the best baseball movie ever: This movie accomplishes the impossible task of taking an abstract mathematical concept and turning it into a beautiful narrative tale. Critics of sabermetrics claim they remove the humanity from our game, but Moneyball is a deft argument for the contrary: The numbers reveal the imperfect talent of Scott Hatteberg, Chad Bradford and even Beane himself -- and what's more human than imperfection?
Bull Durham (1988)
Stars: Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins
Box office gross: $50.9 million
Rotten Tomatoes score: 97%
One-line plot summary: Minor League veteran catcher Crash Davis gets sent down to the Class A Durham Bulls to mentor heralded pitcher Ebby "Nuke" Laloosh.
Why it's the best baseball movie ever: Even if you've never seen it, you've probably got at least a few one-liners rattling around in your brain: "He hit the bull!"; "Rose goes in the front, big guy"; "When you speak of me, speak well." But what truly separates Bull Durham is the glimpse it offers of the daily grind of professional baseball, from a meeting on the mound to just how to handle an interview.
It's a movie with something for everyone -- comedy, romance, even a little bit of poetry -- and it does all of it well. Besides, I think we can all agree that "Throw groundballs, they're more democratic," is advice for everyone to live by.