80s Movies About Baseball

The decade baseball movies stopped being about baseball and started being about your dad.

Entries
10
Category
Film
Updated
  1. A worn home plate on a beach at sunset, a VHS tape half-buried in the sand beside it.

    10. Stealing Home

    Steven Kampmann and William Porter · 1988

    Mark Harmon as a washed-up ballplayer, Jodie Foster in flashbacks as the babysitter who shaped him. Ebert detested it. Harmon says it found its audience on video. Both things are true; that's what VHS was for.

  2. A child's baseball glove and ball left on an empty Little League mound with mountains in the distance.

    09. Amazing Grace and Chuck

    Mike Newell · 1987

    A Montana Little Leaguer refuses to pitch until the world gives up nuclear weapons, and pro athletes join his strike. Gregory Peck plays the president, just to make the most 1987 premise imaginable official.

  3. A small boy's sneakers on a bleacher seat next to a pennant-shaped shadow and a single baseball under bright day light.

    08. Tiger Town

    Alan Shapiro · 1983

    The very first Disney Channel Premiere Film: a kid wishes, an aging Detroit Tiger played by Roy Scheider starts hitting. Every made-for-cable sports miracle since owes it a thank-you card.

  4. A baseball glove overflowing with stacks of cash on an empty bullpen bench.

    07. Brewster's Millions

    Walter Hill · 1985

    Richard Pryor, minor-league pitcher for the Hackensack Bulls, must blow $30 million in 30 days to inherit $300 million. The baseball is a bookend, but John Candy as his catcher counts double.

  5. A smoldering cigar resting on the brim of a dusty baseball cap on a sun-bleached bus seat.

    06. Long Gone

    Martin Davidson · 1987

    An HBO movie about a last-place 1957 Florida minor-league club, the Tampico Stogies, with William Petersen as a player-manager who never made the bigs. A year before Bull Durham it got there first, and it has long been maddeningly hard to find.

  6. Eight old-fashioned wool baseball caps lined up on a bench beside a stack of banknotes and a 1919 newspaper.

    05. Eight Men Out

    John Sayles · 1988

    The 1919 Black Sox scandal, told with real anger about who gets paid in baseball. Cusack, Strathairn and D.B. Sweeney lead; Sayles plays Ring Lardner and Studs Terkel plays a sportswriter. Made for about $6 million and it shows its work.

  7. A pair of thick black-rimmed glasses resting on a pitcher's mound beside a scuffed baseball, stadium lights blazing.

    04. Major League

    David S. Ward · 1989

    The Indians are terrible, the owner wants them worse, and Charlie Sheen's Wild Thing gets glasses. Bob Uecker steals it as a broadcaster slowly losing his will to live on air. Set in Cleveland, shot mostly in Milwaukee, beloved in both.

  8. A small lit baseball diamond carved out of a tall Iowa cornfield at dusk, the stalks glowing at the edge of the outfield.

    03. Field of Dreams

    Phil Alden Robinson · 1989

    A farmer plows under his corn because a voice says so, and the movie makes you believe the voice. It earned a Best Picture nomination and, in 2021, a real MLB game in Iowa. Nobody has ever made it through the last scene dry-eyed.

  9. A wooden locker-room bench with a catcher's mask, a single red rose and a well-thumbed poetry book on it.

    02. Bull Durham

    Ron Shelton · 1988

    Shelton played five years in the minors before writing this, and it shows: the bus rides, the clichés for reporters, the meeting on the mound about a wedding gift. Sports Illustrated called it the greatest sports movie ever. Close.

  10. A hand-carved wooden bat with a lightning bolt burned into the barrel, leaning against a dugout rail under exploding stadium lights.

    01. The Natural

    Barry Levinson · 1984

    Redford as a slugger out of myth, lit like a cathedral by Caleb Deschanel, scored by Randy Newman so well the theme still plays over baseball highlights. The novel ends bleak; the movie does not. Hollywood knows its customer.

Honorable mentions

  • An umpire's chest protector and mask lying on home plate beside a small royal crown.

    The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!

    David Zucker · 1988

    Not a baseball movie, but its climax has Frank Drebin knocking out the home-plate umpire at an Angels-Mariners game to save the Queen, with Reggie Jackson as a hypnotized assassin. Best baseball scene of 1988 not set in Durham.

Dishonorable mentions

  • A cracked bat lying across a microphone stand on an empty stage.

    The Slugger's Wife

    Hal Ashby · 1985

    Neil Simon wrote it, Hal Ashby directed it, it cost $19 million and made $1.3 million. A Braves slugger chases the home-run record and a rock singer. The record held up better than the movie.

Every list.
On tap.

No newsletter. Point your AI at our public MCP server, or follow the RSS feed. New lists show up in both.

Get the MCP RSS