The 12 Best Baseball Movies of All Time
Happy baseball season, folks.
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April showers bring may flowers, but this month also brings me baseball. The 2023 season is officially upon us, and there’s plenty to look forward to this year. On Opening Day, Aaron Judge smacked the season’s first homer against the Giants, Shohei Ohtani pitched six scoreless innings, and the sports world was abuzz about the new pitch clock. The rule change has made baseball games faster, but baseball fans sure have a lot of opinions when it comes to changing America's oldest game.
If you're looking to get into the baseball spirit, look no further than a good baseball movie—and the countless scenes of players storming the pitcher’s mound. Really, baseball, movies, and America are the perfect trifecta. That's why this sports-movie subgenre produces some iconic cinema. So If you love a good comeback, a final at-bat, and a lot of spitting and cussing, then you'll love these best baseball movies of all time.
Air Bud: Seventh Inning Fetch (2002)
Say all you want about Air Bud's inclusion on this list. It's fine. Just know one thing: if you come at Air Bud, you best not miss.
Major League (1989)
In Major League, a Cleveland baseball team owner assembles an intentionally horrible squad so she can have an excuse to move to Miami. But when the team finds out, they start winning—thanks to the leadership of Manager Lou Brown and Ricky Vaughn (Charlie Sheen), who can finally see after picking up a pair of glasses. Antics ensue.
Angels in the Outfield (1994)
Is a pre-pubescent Joseph Gordon-Levitt and the sight of Christopher Lloyd with wings not enough reason to get you to watch Angels in the Outfield? Well, just know that this film about literal angels coming down from heaven to help a baseball team clinch its division title is undoubtedly worthy of standing alongside (or at least nearby) the other supernatural baseball movie that can make you cry.
Eight Men Out (1988)
In 1919, indignant members of the Chicago White Sox—including John Cusack and Charlie Sheen in his first baseball movie—conspired with gamblers to intentionally lose the World Series. Based on one of the biggest scandals in baseball history, it's an engrossing film for obsessives of sports history.
The Bad News Bears (1976)
42 (2013)
Field of Dreams (1989)
Just one year after Bull Durham, Kevin Costner returned to the diamond (a DIY one this time) as an Iowa farmer who hears a voice in his corn field that says, "If you build it, he will come." It's an iconic line that begins an unforgettable journey—one that truly captures the spiritual nature of the game and its legacy.
A League of Their Own (1992)
Based on the real All-American Girls Professional Baseball League—which supplemented the MLB during WWII—this Penny Marshall-directed film stars Geena Davis, Rosie O'Donnell, and Madonna as members of the Rockford Peaches. The all-star cast is complete with Tom Hanks as the washed-up club manager Jimmy Dugan, who has the iconic line, "There's no crying in baseball."
The Natural (1984)
In The Natural, Robert Redford plays Roy Hobbs, the talented young player who carries the struggling New York Knights to victory. It has one of the most iconic final at-bats in baseball movie history—a home run that destroys the lights, with Hobbs running the bases in a shower of sparks. (In the book The Natural is based on, Hobbs actually strikes out in the end.)
The Sandlot (1993)
It's the movie that changed pickup baseball forever and captured young millennials' dreams of backyard glory—and beyond. Scottie Smalls moves to a new neighborhood, where he learns the ways of baseball from his new friends when he's forced to retrieve his father's Babe Ruth-signed baseball from the clutches of "The Beast" next door.
Moneyball (2011)
Based on Michael Lewis's nonfiction book of the same name, Moneyball is a baseball movie with surprisingly little baseball. Instead, the Aaron Sorkin-written script somehow makes behind-the-scenes baseball management exciting. Plus, Moneyball details a new era of the game driven by sabermetrics—with a true underdog story to boot.
Bull Durham (1988)
In his first of four baseball movies, Kevin Costner is Crash Davis, a veteran minor league catcher sent down to the single-A Durham Bulls to mentor Tim Robbins as hotshot pitcher Nuke. It's a clash of egos that grows even more complex when we meet Susan Sarandon's Annie—a follower of the Church of Baseball, who finds herself in a love triangle with Nuke and Crash.
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