What do we do between the end of the World Series and the date pitchers and catchers report for Major League Baseball’s spring training in February?
Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby was famously quoted as saying, “People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.”
That sounds pretty close to what I do, too, but certainly we must be able to do a little better than that.
I don’t like to look out the window. It looks too cold. Instead, I give my television a heck of a workout.
I’m not an outdoor sports person and never have been. I play the occasional poker tournament. I’ve gone to two Cedar Rapids Roughriders hockey games this season (which is two more than I’ve been to over the past 3-4 years combined). But I’m just not big on being cold.
I know I could be writing. After all, my posts here at Knuckleballs have become so infrequent that I’m not even sure anyone who used to come around here to read my wit and wisdom will even bother to read this. But I do enjoy writing, it’s just that I find very little of interest to write about during the offseason – at least until the Twins’ front office decides to do something to assure that 2019 is not a repeat of 2018.
So, it’s binging on Netflix or Hulu… or I start working my way through the couple hundred or so DVD/Blu-Ray movies I’ve got laying around.
It occurred to me, while I was watching the Vikings lay an egg in Chicago Sunday night, that I could combine sports, writing and movie watching by starting a series of posts concerning the sports movies in my collection.
I did a quick inventory and found that I have over 30 movies with at least some manner of sports theme. Some of them pretty much everyone is familiar with (Bull Durham, Sandlot, for example), some are more obscure.
Some of them, admittedly, you really have to stretch the definition of “sports movie” to include it. I’m going a bit broadly, I know. It’s not like I included EVERY movie in which anyone competed at anything, though. After all, I didn’t let a few Quidditch matches influence me into including Harry Potter movies, did I? No, I didn’t (though the thought obviously crossed my mind).
So, here’s what I’m going to do: I’ll watch one of these movies every few days or so and then write something about it. I’m not sure it will really be a review. After all, if I didn’t like all of these movies, I probably wouldn’t have bought them or at least would have gotten rid of it by now.
But I’ll give the premise, why I like it, maybe a bit about the actors. Let’s just give it a whirl and see how this goes.
Here’s the list of sports movies I found sitting around.
Friday Night Lights
Remember the Titans
Semi-Tough
The Replacements
We Are Marshall
Leatherheads
Radio
The Express
Bull Durham
Eight Men Out
The Sandlot
Moneyball
42
61*
Major League
The Rookie
Trouble With the Curve
Finding Forrester
Glory Road
Coach Carter
The Legend of Bagger Vance
Tin Cup
Caddyshack
The Greatest Game Ever Played
Miracle
Rocky Balboa
Creed
Secretariat
Seabiscuit
Without Limits
Molly’s Game
Meatballs
Yeah, that last one is a real stretch, I know. But the grand finale is a camp-Olympics with Bill Murray running the show for his camp of misfits. That’s sports, right? Anyway, it’s my list so it’s there.
That’s 32 titles. By my count, nine are baseball-related and eight are football. Only three with hoops as a foundation and can you believe I don’t own Hoosiers? I’ve never been as big a fan of Hoosiers as most people. I really should find a couple more basketball movies to add to the collection, though, because having one more golf movie than basketball just doesn’t seem right. Maybe I’ll pick up White Men Can’t Jump sometime.
Two movies about horseracing. Again, not your traditional “sport,” but if you can bet on it, it must be a sport. That same philosophy would include poker, thus allowing me to include Molly’s Game on list and you can’t go wrong with adding an extra Aaron Sorkin-written film.
Hoosiers is clearly not the only title missing from among the generally accepted “best sports movies” lists that get bandied about frequently. You won’t find Rudy or The Natural. Both were fine, but never among my favorites. I’ve got two movies on the list from the Rocky lineage, but neither of them are the original Rocky. No Bad News Bears. And, while admitting this might get me kicked out of Iowa, I don’t own Field of Dreams.
There are a few that I really thought I did own, but it turns out I don’t. I really like Chariots of Fire and thought I had that one. Maybe it was on VHS. I’m pretty sure I had Slap Shot on VHS, as well. I really thought I had A League of Their Own around here somewhere, but maybe I just thought so because I can’t seem to NOT watch it whenever I come across it while channel surfing.
Some of those that are on my list are better than others. Honestly, a couple of them I barely remember watching once.
But I’m willing to watch any and all of them again, if you will. I guess I’m willing to even if you aren’t.
Rather than do the obvious and start off with one of the movies that everyone knows and has seen a dozen times, I’m going to take a look at the list and try to work through them in reverse order based roughly on level of obscurity.
To that end, I’m going to start with what I would guess is possibly the most obscure movie on the list.
In a couple of days, I’ll post something on the movie Without Limits, which chronicles the too-brief career of runner Steve Prefontaine. Of some interest, perhaps, is that Without Limits is actually one of two separate movies made about “Pre’s” life within about a year of one another in the late 1990s.
If you want to express a preference for where I go from there, here’s your chance. The following five movies are likely among the next tier of “most obscure” titles on the list.
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