Top ten Sports movies

This list was seemingly impossible for me because I tried to remove the movies I just loved as a kid from movies I really love. For example, Rookie of the Year is certainly not in the top 10 sports movies, but I loved it so much as a kid, it was tough to take it off my list. Also, you not find Hoosiers or Caddyshack on my list, like you will on every other sports movie list. There is nothing wrong with Hoosiers, it just does not resonate with me for some reason and Caddyshack, well with the exception of Bill Murray, I just don't think it is very funny. Oh, I also left Jerry MaGuire off the list specifically because I felt sports were kind of secondary in that movie, otherwise it would near the top of this list because it is a phenomenal movie. Yes, these are in a specific order. Sorry if the top of my list does not surprise anyone.

10. Hoop Dreams- 1993 is the year I like to say I became a fan of film. It is the year that opened my eyes, well 1994 was the year that opened my eyes to the world of the documentary because of this movie. This movie is also the first movie I remember feeling mad that it was robbed of an Oscar. For any kid growing up playing sports, Hoop Dreams kind of gives our story life, but to an insane degree. The movie follows William Gates and Arthur Agee, two prep school basketball players maneuvering life as high school basketball stars, and poor inner city youths. The movie is heart breaking, stunning and intimate. It gets behind these two boys and their lives and at the time I remember thinking it was all so vivid and I was amazing at the story telling that could be made out of just people's lives. I strongly recommend this movie to everyone, but especially basketball fans.

9. Major League- I maintain that is the funniest sports movie ever. I know you can put other movies into the mix, but for me, this is tops. Every character works and every joke hits. You get a piece of the front-running fans, the egotistical players, frustrated coaches and everything in between. It is non-stop hilarity and Charlie Sheen is right in the middle of it being a hard throwing bad ass. The movie might not be funny to non baseball fans, but maybe that is why I love it so much. The people who created it obviously love baseball and the baseball stuff is excellent. It is not difficult to believe Charlie Sheen and Wesley Snipes as baseball players. The movie is still funny and while they tried to ruin it with needless sequels, this movie still sits tall as a purely funny sports film.

8. Remember the Titans- I know a lot of people who have issues with this movie, but, well screw them. It is a good flick. Based on the true story of the first high school football team in the south to mix races, the movie is powerful, funny, sad and courageous. Denzel Washington makes an excellent leader and the young cast rises to the occasion. I love to see the stories that show our history and show the people who had the nerve to stand up to the norm and change the course of history and make no mistake, this is a story about that. This is a story about people who were bred to loathe each other realizing that they were not so different and that sports bring people together for one common goal. It is a moving story with the kind of tragedy and inspiration one would expect from such a story. I know people think it is hokey, but it gets to me every time and that is all that matters.

7. The Sandlot- So one movie from my youth made it through, but for good reason, I think. First of all, I can watch it today and still think it is a wonderful movie and that counts for something. Secondly, baseball has the ability to make me feel like a kid again. It fills me with childlike wonder and anytime I am in a baseball park, I get wide eyed and giddy. I grew up on baseball and my entire family loves it. There is no movie out there that captures that youthful innocence of baseball like The Sandlot. It is a movie that loves baseball. It lives inside the joy of rounding up some friends, grabbing the gear and heading out to the diamond. It understands how important those summer days are and how important friends are and they are all wrapped up in the world of baseball. The movie is so perfect in how it captures all of it and even thinking about it makes me feel like a kid again.

6. Rocky- It is impossible not to have this movie on any sports list. It is the ultimate underdog tale. It has iconic lines, iconic shots and an iconic song. The boxing feels brutally real and it does not bow to the mainstream by giving us the perfect ending, which the subsequent Rocky movies did give us. Stallone wrote, directed and stars in this movie and shows a real flare for the behind the scenes stuff. Setting up boxing shots cannot be an easy task and it all looks so effortless. Rocky is that ultimate guy movie. It hits hard in the ring and outside of the ring. It makes us believe we can do something everyone told us we couldn't do. it is a wonderful David vs. Goliath story and I am pretty sure I would get my Dude Card revoked if I did not include it. It is not a movie I go back to often, but when I do watch it again, I am always glad I did.

5. Any Given Sunday- This movie is hardcore! There is an eye falling out on the field, blood everywhere, people puking their guts up, all kinds of swearing and the kind of hard hitting football action that look and sounds like a war movie. It is a brutal look at a sports team in the middle of all kinds of shit. It has great actors all over the place and it has this brilliant contrast of young, cocky actors (Bill Belleamy, Aaron Eckhart, Jaime Foxx) and grizzled veterans (James Woods, Dennis Quaid and Al Pacino). It also has Cameron Diaz in the nastiest role of her life and sprinkles in a real life NFL player who gives this amazing monologue about being beaten down and broken. It is a pessimistic gnarly movie that does not flinch in believing that athletes are corrupt, but that the system is even more corrupt. It is a tough movie to watch at times, but it is so slick and so forceful, ou cannot help but be mesmerized. I do not think it is for everyone, but football movies never get nearly as nasty as this one does and I think they should!

4. Raging Bull- Ali was able to get the boxing scenes as intimate as humanly possible, but no movie has ever made me feel punches through a television like Raging Bull. There is something primal, nasty and villainous about everything in this movie. Scorsese never captured anything the way he captured Jake Lamotta's violence inside the ring and outside. There is something about the combination of Scorsese's camera and De Niro's raw emotionally gutted performance that is so violently beautiful and gorgeous in the destruction of lives. Now, De Niro is also helped by two amazing supporting performances by Joe Pesci and Cathy Moriarty, but make no doubt about it, De Niro and Scorsese are this movie. Never have I seen an actor and director be so in sync in every single way. And the boxing, oh man, how nasty! I really think that no one can really appreciate cinema until they have seen this movie. It is a sports movie without question, but it is also a mastery of cinema.

3. Bull Durham- If you played baseball, watch baseball, listen to baseball or read about baseball, you know that baseball players are strange and they are slaves to superstitions. No movie captures the strangeness of baseball players quite like this gem. Tim Robbins is stupidly amazing and Kevin Costner's Crash Davis is the ultimate "never was." He plays someone every guy sees in themselves. Crash Davis is a man who has got to do what he loves forever, but was never as good as he should have been. You add in Susan Surandon's sexy character who knows exactly how to help a guy in a slump and you got one hell of a movie. It is funny, interesting and realistic and it gives a really good look at what life on the road looks like. It asks worthy questions about the difference between youthful energy, and a kind of veteran knowledge. It shows how conflict on a team is not good for anyone and how sports require everyone to be on the same page to reach the ultimate goal. It is the baseball movie for pure baseball fans.

2. Rudy- The quickest way to reduce me to tears is to show me the final 15 minutes of this movie. It does the trick every damn time. If this movie is on television, I have to watch it. It is that movie. It is a wonderful story about a guy with a dream and everyone in the world telling him he would never reach it. he wasn't smart enough, fast enough, big enough, athletic enough and he defied every single one of them. He eventually got into Notre Dame, then he made the back up football squad, then he made the made team, but never got to play and then as soon as he got a promise from the coach he would get to play, the coach left and the promise died, but Rudy was no longer alone. His heart, dedication and pure joy for football was noticed by the rest of the team and he became the definition of what Notre Dame football was and in the end, he got on that field and realized that dreams are entirely possible and that if you continue driving yourself forward, you can be who you believe you are meant to be. And by the time the entire crowd is chanting "Rudy! Rudy! Rudy!" I am completely drowning in my own tears. I love it.

1. Field of Dreams- If you have not seen this movie but plan on it and do not want it ruined for you, stop reading! Kevin Costner stars a guy who grows through all kinds of crazy trials and problems because he hears a voice. The voice belongs to the ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson and Costner is supposed to build a giant baseball stadium for ghosts to play baseball. No one understands why, but he believes it is his purpose so he does it. In the end, it turns out he did it, just so he could play catch with his dead father. What every young boy wants in life is to play catch with his dad. I know I cherished those moments as a young boy and to be honest, I think I would still love to do it. Field of Dreams captures that idea. It believes baseball to be a pure game and it is how I like to think of the game. I hate that the video is not with it, but this is the speech that reminds me every time why I love this movie: