The best baseball movies of all time

The “spiritual sequel” to Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, this is a charmingly ragged mishmash of college baseball players in the 1980s getting up to a predictable degree of hijinks and tomfoolery.

Sprinkle in Linklater’s signature lived-in nostalgia, and you’ve got a rough-and-tumble baseball movie for baseball and non-baseball fans alike.

An unsavory former pitcher takes the helm of a youth baseball team with all the un-PC late-’70s trappings you’d expect.

Walter Matthau is the deliciously named Morris Buttermaker, and he makes you root, root, root for this fraternity of foul-mouthed miscreants.

Watch the original, and not the 2005 Richard Linklater remake. But speaking of Richard Linklater...

A raw, affecting portrait of the chasm between big league dreams and stark reality, told from the perspective of a young Dominican pitcher.

Language barriers, culture shock, the unglamorous nature of minor league ball...you’re confronted with it all.

Unlike most movies on this list, Sugar doesn’t culminate with the Big Game or the Inspiring Win. Instead, it offers something more real, nuanced and, ultimately, redemptive.

Cleveland hasn’t seen a World Series parade since 1948, the longest active drought in MLB. That century-spanning ennui is captured here in one of the best lovable-loser comedies ever made.

Charlie Sheen as Ricky “Wild Thing” Vaughn. Wesley Snipes as Willie Mays Hayes. James Gammon as the growlingest, best-mustachioed manager who ever growled under his mustache.

Forget the ill-advised sequels. This one stands the test of time, warts and all, much like the ball club it features.

Here’s a movie aimed at children of the ‘80s who still collect baseball cards and were raised by parents from the idyllic suburbia of the 1950s.

The catchphrases are ubiquitous, including and especially, “You’re killing me Smalls!” And Benny “The Jet” Rodriguez’s game of pickle against The Beast remains the stuff of legend.

Ultimately, we’re left with the enduring friendship and memories that are formed during our fly-ball shagging youth.

Billy Beane, the architect of the small-market Oakland Athletics’ run of success, gets an unlikely cinematic treatment.

Put another way: When Brad Pitt plays you in a film about how smart you are co-written by Aaron Sorkin, you are winning at life.

This movie shouldn’t work on paper (on-base percentage and wins above replacement don’t inherently translate to celluloid gold) but it decidedly works on the screen.

Nebraska-born Roy Hobbs has a gift for baseball. He’s also portrayed by Robert Redford, which doesn’t hurt.

This is a nostalgia-tinged trip down sepia-toned memory lane and it might be slightly overrated.

Emphasis on “slightly,” though, because everything from the score to the performances to the general feel has come to define the genre.

Speaking of Kevin Costner, he embodies baseball’s tear-jerking, generation-spanning appeal as Ray, the man who turns a cornfield into something much, much more.

“If you build it, he will come.” If chills didn’t trickle down your spine upon hearing that iconic line, well...what are you doing here?

Does this movie drag out a little? Sure. Does it lay the sentimentality on a touch too thick? Yeah.

But are you seriously complaining? No, you are not.

Set aside the fact that Tim Robbins doesn’t throw like anything approaching a big league pitcher. (Seriously, watch that delivery and cringe.)

This is the baseball movie for a generation.

“Hit ‘em where they ain’t” is an all-time catchphrase, rendered especially amazing when uttered by Susan Sarandon.

And Kevin Costner as long-suffering minor league catcher Crash Davis is a character for the ages.

The members of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, who stepped up to the plate and kept America’s Pastime alive during World War II, receive the treatment they deserve in this Penny Marshall-helmed masterpiece.

Tom Hanks gets the best lines (“There’s no crying in baseball!”) as the boozy manager with a secret heart of gold.

But Geena Davis (aka catcher Dottie Hinson) is the heart and soul of the Rockford Peaches and the film itself.