10 Baseball Movies That Need to be Made

The '67 Sox shocked the world by winning the American League pennant

Now that Jackie Robinson's story has finally been brought to the big screen, here are some more baseball stories that would make great movies:

1. Joe DiMaggio: The 56-game hitting streak seems like a good place to start
2. Ted Williams: There's so much cinematic gold here (batting .400, Korean War combat missions, homering in his final at-bat) it's not even funny
3. Summer of '49: Great source material with David Halberstam's book. The same could also be said about "The Teammates" and "October 1964"
4. The 1967 Red Sox: Everything about the "Impossible Dream" team screams Hollywood
5. The Miracle Mets: Ditto
6. Roberto Clemente: Follow his quest to 3,000 hits and tragic death
7. 1975 World Series: The greatest Fall Classic of all time deserves a movie
8. 1978 Red Sox-Yankees rivalry: Could work as a miniseries, maybe follow-up "The Bronx is Burning"
9. Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa: Would love to see a movie made about the 1998 home run race. It can be the sort-of sequel to "61*" the same way "This is 40" was a sort-of sequel to "Knocked Up"
10. Daniel Nava: The baseball equivalent of "Rudy"

Other ideas: 1951 Dodgers-Giants, Josh Hamilton's fall and rise, Mark Fidrych's rookie season, Sandy Koufax's dominance/retirement, Hank Aaron breaking Babe Ruth's record, Bill Buckner and 1986 World Series, Ichiro Suzuki coming to America and leading Seattle to 116 wins, Tony Conigliaro

The Boston Pops

During the 2007 Academy Awards, Martin Scorsese earned his first Best Director win for "The Departed" after previously receiving nominations for "Raging Bull," "The Last Temptation of Christ," "Goodfellas," "Gangs of New York," and "The Aviator."  The general consensus among critics and moviegoers was that the win was more of a lifetime achievement award for Mr. Scorsese than anything else because while "The Departed" was a good movie, it certainly was not the best of his career.  I have seen all of the above films except for "Last Temptation," and I would certainly agree ("Goodfellas" and "Raging Bull" beat "The Departed" in my book, but it's closer with the other two).  He easily could have won for any of those movies, and after 25 years of stiffing him the Academy relented and gave him an Oscar that should have already been collecting dust in his home.

In fact, I would go so far as to argue that he didn't even deserve it that year.  Clint Eastwood's "Letters from Iwo Jima" and Paul Greengrass's "United 93" were both superior films in my opinion, and either one of them would have been a better choice for Best Director.  But alas, 2007 was Scorcese's time, and Eastwood had already won Best Director two years prior for "Million Dollar Baby," so the Academy didn't feel like it owned him anything.

With Oscar contenders coming out and on the way, this got my thinking about a similar instance that happened in baseball nearly three decades prior.  The year was 1979, and 39 year-old slugger Willie Stargell helped lead his Pittsburgh Pirates to 98 wins and World Series victory.  Although "Pops" was past his prime, he still swung a productive stick and managed to sock 32 homers and post a .281/.352/.552 line.  He missed 36 games, accumulated just 2.3 WAR and didn't lead the league in any significant category.  His was a fine season by a great player, but nothing special in and of itself.

Yet somehow, he earned enough MVP votes to finish in a flat-footed tie with Keith Hernandez, who beat him in every category not named home runs, while finishing ahead of guys like Dave Winfield, Mike Schmidt, George Foster, Johnny Bench, Dave Kingman, Andre Dawson, and his own teammate Dave Parker, who was three times more valuable to the Pirates with his  6.7 WAR.  The voters gave Stargell extra credit for his role as a leader on the team, but Pops clearly did not deserve the NL Most Valuable Player award in 1979.

Like Scorcese, he essentially won it as a lifetime achievement award and an apology from the BBWAA.  Stargell posted much better seasons in the early '70s and narrowly missed winning in 1971 (silver), '72 (bronze) and '73 (silver again).  The voters stiffing him in 1973, when "Pops" enjoyed the best season of his career and led the league in doubles, home runs, RBI, slugging, OPS, and OPS+, for Pete Rose was a downright travesty.

Luckily for Stargell, he got his hardware at the end of his last productive season, meaning 1979 turned out to be his last legitimate chance at the award.  He hung around for three more seasons, barely played, didn't earn a single spot on an MVP ballot, and hung up his spikes for good after 1982 with 475 career home runs.

And wouldn't you know it, the BBWAA made him a first-ballot Hall of Famer in 1988.

Ranking the Pixar Movies

I'll admit it; I'm a sucker for Pixar movies.  They're nearly perfect in every way, even though they're so simple on the surface (plots center on fish, toys, bugs, trash, and cars).  But maybe that's why they're so successful; because we can all understand and enjoy them regardless of age.  Their combined 11 Oscar wins only validate their greatness.

They're so good and timelesss that if we survive the looming 2012 apocalypse I can guarantee that twenty years from now, I'm going to dust off the old DVD player and pop in Monsters Inc. and enjoy it with my children. 

Pixar has rolled out a dozen films over the past decade and a half, and almost all of them have been top notch movies that satisfy critics and audiences alike.  Although its budgets have swelled from $30 million for 1995's Toy Story to a blockbuster-like $200 million for Toy Story 3 and Cars 2, they're worth every invested penny because these movies are more bankable than Will Smith.  They rake in cash faster than an experienced card counter at a blackjack table in Vegas, never failing to hit the $360 million benchmark for worldwide gross.  Simply put, these flicks put lots of butts in those cushy movie theatre seats.

Quick tangent.  Interestingly, the studio's first half dozen films except for Finding Nemo came out in November as holiday season movies, whereas the last half dozen have premiered during the late spring/early summer and have competed with (and often surpassed) the summer blockbusters.  I'm guessing Pixar could release a movie during the slowest weekend of the year (usually the one closest to New Year's) and still own the box office.

But how would you rank them?  Subjectively, this task appeared nearly impossible at the beginning.  I mean, how in the world do you pick between Finding Nemo and WALL-E?  It's like choosing between your children.  These movies all have great characters, meaningful lessons, and Randy Newman's music, yet they are also unique and maintain strong senses of identity. They are just so darn good, I needed a little help from some movie websties to put them in order.  I conducted my ratings by summing up IMDb ratings (converted to 100 points to give them equal weight), Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes, and while some rankings were easy to predict I found others to be quite surprising.

12. Cars 2 (2011)
IMDb 65/100
MC 57/100
RT 38/100
Total=160
Pretty obvious.  The disappointing sequel bombed with critics and audiences, and no amount of Oscar recognition can save it from itself.  It is easily the worst Pixar film to date (but still not a bad movie) and will hopefully discourage the company from thinking about a Cars 3.  This one felt less like a Pixar movie and more like a James Bond flick, and if I wanted to see Daniel Craig kicking some butt this summer I would have waited for Cowboys and Aliens, right?  I'm not sure if less Owen Wilson was a good thing or a bad thing, but I do know that there was way too much Larry the Cable Guy.  The world just didn't need a second Cars movie, just like we don't need five pound cheeseburgers, segways and houses with nine bathrooms.  But I digress....

11. Cars (2006)
IMDb 74
MC 73
RT 74
Total=221
Intriguing premise set it on the fast track to greatness before it was likely derailed by Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) acting like a total jerk (imagine a completely watered-down Ricky Bobby) until the last act of the movie.  We don't watch Pixar movies to see friendless, selfish, egotistical meanies treat everyone like crap. Cars was the only Pixar film that failed to win the "Best Animated Feature" Oscar between 2000 and 2011, so that should tell you something, too.  I'm actually surprised it scored so well with critics and audiences considering it had been widely regarded as Pixar's worst movie until Cars 2 came along.

10. A Bug's Life (1998)
IMDb 73
MC 77
RT 91
Total=241
Pixar waited three years to make its second movie and didn't fall very short of the high bar it had set for itself.  Don't confuse this with Antz, which is very similar but different enough to stand on its own.  For instance, the ants in this one look round and blue whereas the ones in Antz are brown and thin.  As good as this movie was, I think I like the animated short (where the old guy plays chess with himself) attached to it even more.  I can't for the life of me figure out how Cars has a higher rating on IMDb.

9. Monster's Inc. (2001)
IMDb 80 (#242 all-time)
MC 78
RT 95
Total=253
We learned that the monsters lurking in the nooks and crannies of our closets aren't as scary as we think they are.  A valuable lesson, to be sure, for the millions of frightened tikes out there.  But how could you be scared of a diminuitive green cyclopse named Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal) or a blue furry bear called Sulley (John Goodman)? 

8. Toy Story 2 (1999)
IMDb 80
MC 88
RT 100
Total=268
Pixar dipped into the sequel pool with its third movie (seems early for a company with so much creative juice) and scored big time.  A surprising lack of Oscar recognition hurts this film in the rankings, but Seinfeld's Newman character is classic in the role of an overweight slob of a toy collector trying to make a quick buck by shipping Woody to a Japanese museum.  Toy exploitation is no laughing matter, though, especially when it involves our favorite talking playthings.

7. The Incredibles (2004)
IMDb 81 (#209)
MC 90
RT 97
Total=268
Tie goes to the higher IMDb rating here.  The first Pixar movie with humans (albeit ones with superpowers, because let's face it--regular humans are just plain boring) as main characters.  You could tell Cars 2 was trying to replicate the secret agent feel of this one but ended up missing the mark.  Plus this one had Samuel L. Jackson in it, so you know it's good.  I'm just glad director Brad Bird got the recognition he deserved five years earlier for The Iron Giant, another animated masterpiece.

6. Finding Nemo (2003)
IMDb 82 (#169)
MC 89
RT 98
Total=269
A smash hit that threatened to gross one billion dollars, this fan favorite was so vibrant and colorful; in my opinion it has the most impressive visuals of all the Pixar productions.  Nemo may have been a little fish swimming in a big ocean, but Pixar was firmly establishing itself as the Hammerhead shark in the animated movie tank at the Hollywood aquarium (see what I did there?).  Barely beats Toy Story 2 and the Incredibles, but the higher IMDb rating tells the story here.

5. Up (2009)
IMDb 83 (#100)
MC 88
RT 98
Total=269
Another tie!  Once again I use the IMDb rating to give this one the edge, and the fact that it was nominated for Best Picture doesn't hurt either.  I think this is Pixar's saddest movie, but you gotta love the dogs with the talking collars and Kevin, the gigantic bird with an even bigger sweet tooth. The ornery old guy balances well with the sweet little kid, and by the end they develop great chemistry as the father and son the other never had. The 3-D was a nice touch, too.

4. Ratatouille (2007)
IMDb 81 (#187)
MC 96
RT 96
Total=273
Patton Oswalt's movie career never took off, but he stayed relevant in Hollywood by playing an underdog French rat with a gift for cooking.  With a little help from a bumbling garbage boy, he becomes a renowned chef in Brad Bird's second turn with Pixar.  Moral of the story, as always; it's who you know. For the record, I think this is ranked too high, but my stats don't lie (and yes. that rhymed).

3. Toy Story (1995)
IMDb 82  (#139)
MC 92
RT 100
Total=274
Pixar's impressive feature film debut takes home the bronze.  I will always hold a special place in my heart for this one because it was the first movie I ever saw in a theatre (I was three at the time).  After thrilling us with Pizza Planet, the Claw, and attempted escapes from the sadistic next-door neighbor Sid (somewhere between Darth Vader and the shark from Jaws on the pure evil scale), this one taught us to reach for the stars in our journey to infinity and beyond.  It also helped Tom Hanks solidify the apex of his career during the mid-90s after Forrest Gump and Apollo 13.

2. WALL-E (2008)
IMDb 85 (#51)
MC 94
RT 96
Total=275
Gas prices approached five bucks a gallon in the summer of 2008 and called more attention to environmental/energy issues, so this movie came out at the perfect time.  Dialogue was scarce in a movie where the two main characters (a trash compactor and robot) can hardly speak, so WALL-E relied on its stunning visuals, creative concept, and interesting vision of the future (to briefly summarize, we're all fat and live on a spaceship resort in the bowels of outer space) to carry the day.  Nothing wrong with silver, WALL-E.

1. Toy Story 3 (2010)
IMDb 86 (#36)
MC 92
RT 99
Total=277
Was there really any doubt? One of the best movies ever.  Period. I laughed, I (nearly-movies never make me tear up but this one came dangerously close) cried, and I felt like my childhood had come full circle because Andy is going off to college and so am I.  It eclipsed a billion dollars worldwide during the same summer we got our collective minds blown by Inception.  Toy Story 3 is my favorite Pixar movie and deserved to win the gold.  Its masterful use of 3-D was just icing on the cake.

My Favorite Summer Movies

It's the middle of July, so that means we're smack dab in the middle of my favorite season.  A few days ago, I wrote about my affinity for summer flicks and why I love them so much.  After much deliberation, I have composed a list of my personal favorites.  These movies weren't necessarily released in the summer, but did a memorable job in capturing the glory of this treasured time of year.  My list is not ranked and is in no particular order.

"Jaws"-Hollywood's first summer blockbuster was about  a terrifying summer on the fictional Amity Island (played by Martha's Vineyard)

"61*"-fantastic HBO drama about Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris's pursuit of Babe Ruth's single season home run record during the magical summer of 1961.  The best and most realistic baseball movie I've ever seen

"Independence Day"-classic summer blockbuster about an alien invasion in the first week of July.  Pure entertainment and defines the phrase "popcorn flick"

"American Pie 2"-hilarious romp reunited the original cast at a house on Lake Michigan for their first summer back from college

"Gone Baby Gone"-Ben Affleck's masterpiece about a missing child investigation during a sweltering Boston summer.  In my top five

"Super 8"-I discussed this more thoroughly in my other post, but it's about a group of kids in a small Ohio town during the summer of 1979.  They're making a zombie movie when a train crash unleashes a mysterious monster near their homes.

"Wedding Crashers"-raunchy summer comedy where the incomparable duo of Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn take advantage of wedding season

"Crooklyn"-Spike Lee's semi-autobiographical portrait of an African American family's summer in 1970s Brooklyn and a fond recollection of innocent youth

"Bobby"-underrated drama about that fateful June day in 1968 when Robert F. Kennedy was gunned down in the Ambassador Hotel

"Mississippi Burning"-powerful movie depicting the FBI investigation of the strange disappearance of three civil rights workers in Mississippi during the turbulent summer of 1964 "when America was at war with itself" (the movie's tagline).  One of my all time favorites

"Do the Right Thing"-the best of Spike Lee's storied career.  Racial tensions bubble over on a sizzling summer day in Brooklyn, and Lee makes you feel the heat with an intensely red and orange color palette.  You'll want an ice-cold glass of water after this one

"The Wackness"-Josh Peck as a lonely pot dealer/high school graduate drifting through the summer of 1994 in New York City.  The movie is divided into three parts; June, July, and August, the three best months of the year

"Stand By Me"-Rob Reiner classic about four boys looking for a dead body during Labor Day weekend, 1959.  Full of nostalgia for a simpler time

"Disturbia"-Shia Labeef is under house arrest for the summer when he begins to suspect his next door neighbor is a murderer

But for me, the best has to be...

"The Sandlot"-the summer of 1962 was a great time to be a kid, and this movie captures a magical time for nine ten year-old boys that just wanted to play baseball every day. This is the ultimate summer movie as far as I'm concerned since it has scenes involving baseball, the Fourth of July, campouts and a community swimming pool.  'Nuff said

Missing any of your personal favorites?  Feel free to comment and let me know

Celebrating Bayhem, Blockbusters and Summer Movies

Is this the worst summer ever for movies?  Because that's what everyone is saying these days.  I don't know about the worst, but it definitely feels like the most unoriginal.  Each Friday the latest summer flicks premiere, and every single one of them seems to be a sequel or involve superheroes.  But as a collective audience, we should be blaming ourselves, not lazy Hollywood screenwriters.  You know why?  Because these movies are making money.  Lots of it.  I mean, if a steaming pile of crap like "The Green Lantern" can earn $110 million domestically with four weeks of screen time, then we deserve junk in our cinemas.  We pay for the tickets; no one forces you to go see a movie when you can rent it On Demand or get it in the mail from Netflix.  So instead of pointing the blame finger at the studios for following the money at the expense of new plots and characters, turn it 180 degrees and point it back at yourself for supporting the production of such films with your wallet. 

But don't get the impression that I'm bashing this summer's movie lineup, because I'm not.  Did we really need a second "Hangover," a fourth "Spy Kids" and a fifth "Fast and the Furious?"  Of course not.  Nonetheless, I must admit that I was thoroughly satisfied by every movie I've seen this summer (X-Men: First Class, Hangover II, Super 8, and Transformers Dark of the Moon--more on that one in a moment).  They met or exceeded my expectations.  I had never seen an X-Men movie before, but the latest installment was very cool and had more of a James Bond polished feel to it.  "Hangover II" was a letdown compared to the first, but still provided the humor even though it fell into the classic sequel trap of trying to top its predecessor.  "Super 8" was a great movie for many reasons.  Although it felt like a blend of "Cloverfield," "E.T." and "Jaws," it was an homage to Steven Spielberg and qualifies as the most original movie of the summer.  Besides its great thrills and laughs, "Super 8" had a whimsical/curious/innocent childlike quality about it that made me look back on the more carefree days of my youth.  It was the perfect summer movie, which are supposed to be fun and entertaining popcorn flicks where you can turn your brain off for a couple hours and enjoy the air conditioning.  After all, you're not going to the theatres in July to see potential Oscar nominees, unless you buy a ticket for a Pixar production or a Christopher Nolan flick, so if a summer movie can offer a few laughs and some cool special effects then it has served its purpose. 

Which brings me to an equally popular and polarizing figure in Hollywood; Mr. Michael Bay, the teenage boy that never grew up.  To me, Bay's flicks epitomize summer blockbusters because they are always big, loud, and fun, and they manage to stand out by being bigger, louder, and more fun than the competition.  I have an absolute blast (no pun intended) while sitting back and letting the Bayhem overwhelm me for two-plus hours on a summer evening.  For those of you unfamilar with the term, Bayhem is a style of filmmaking that includes (but is not limited to) movie stars dealing with heartstopping car chases, falling buildings, dueling robots, sexy girls, hit-or-miss jokes, and many explosions, all essential ingredients in the successful summer movie recipe.  That's why I can't stand it when critics like Roger Ebert and Peter Travers constantly complain about lack of plot, lengthy running time, choppy editing, cheesy dialogue and an abundance of things that go boom in his movies.  They've seen all his movies from the past fifteen years, so what the hell do they expect from him?  I hate to say it, but these complaints make them sound like dinosaurs, the kind of cynics who would have opposed the automobile and rock and roll once upon a time.  Their criticisms are unfair for no other reason than they address staples of every Michael Bay movie.  All his movies are long, based on thin scripts, edited like music videos and rely on big budget special effects for gratuitous action.  At this point Bay is what he is and viewers should know what they're in for when they sit down to watch one of his movies.  Expecting anything more would be like expecting Dwight Howard to sink 90 percent of his free throws or Ichiro Suzuki to bang out 30 homers.  Not gonna happen, right?  But you accept them for what they do because they do it well.  That's the key, and Bayhem is the same way; if you don't embrace it for what it is, then you're going to be disappointed and miss out on a great time. 

So don't go trashing his movies, because no one is better at creating Bayhem and the perfect summer blockbuster than Michael Bay himself.