It’s spring and baseball season is here again!
Major League Baseball is in full swing. My son is having a breakout Little League season (I’m looking into restructuring his contract), and we have a mission team preparing to lead a gospel-centered baseball camp in Germany this summer.
All this means I’m updating my list of the best baseball movies of all time and some memorable quotes from them. So here we go…
1. Moneyball
“It’s unbelievable how much you don’t know about the game you’ve been playing all your life.” (Mickey Mantle)
“I know you are taking it in the teeth, but the first guy through the wall… he always gets bloody… always.”
“I made one decision in my life based on money. And I swore I would never do it again.”
Not only a great baseball flick, now one of my favorite leadership movies of all time.
2. Field of Dreams.
Ray Kinsella: “Fifty years ago, for five minutes you came within… y-you came this close. It would KILL some men to get so close to their dream and not touch it… they’d consider it a tragedy.”
Dr. Archibald ‘Moonlight’ Graham: “Son, if I’d only gotten to be a doctor for five minutes… now that would have been a tragedy.”
Find contentment in where your dance with destiny takes you. I wrote about this in my book Audacity: Find Your Crazy. Change The World. And by the way, if you build it they might not come!
3. The Rookie
“It’s never one thing” that derails your shot at your dreams.
“You know what we get to do today, Brooks? We get to play baseball.”
It’s not just about the destination, we need to rediscover our joy in the journey.
4. 42
“I want a player who’s got the guts not to fight back.”
“Your enemy will be out in force. But you cannot meet him on his own low ground.”
“Baseball was proof positive that democracy was real. A baseball box score after all, is a democratic thing. It doesn’t say how big you are, or what religion you follow it does not know how you voted, or the color of your skin, it simply states what kind of ballplayer you were on any particular day.”
My son now wears the #42 in Little League after being inspired by Jackie Robinson.
5. Sandlot
“You’re killing me Smalls!”
“You play ball like a giiirrrrrrrrl!”
This film brings back so many childhood memories.
6. A League of Their Own
“There’s no crying in baseball.”
“It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard… is what makes it great.”
7. Mickey (2004)
“They can throw curveballs and hit homeruns, they still listen to their fathers… most of the time. And what every dad wants is just one more season.”
Not a very popular movie, but definitely in my top ten best baseball movies of all time.
8. The Natural
“I believe we have two lives… The life we learn with and the life we live with after that.”
“It took me sixteen years to get here. You play me, and I’ll give ya the best I got.”
“You’ve got a gift Roy… but it’s not enough – you’ve got to develop yourself. If you rely too much on your own gift… then… you’ll fail.”
It reminds me it’s never too late to become the person you might’ve been.
9. Eight Men Out
“I may be dumb, fellas, but I ain’t stupid.”
“Say it ain’t so, Joe. Say it ain’t so.”
10. Sandlot 2
Great soundtrack–that’s all I got on this one.