Top Ten Tuesday: The 10 Best Baseball Movies

Happy Tuesday, dear readers! Each week, we’ll rank the top 10 films in a specific category. While we aim to tie these lists to big releases, that won’t always be the case. Our goal? For you to enjoy, share your own lists, and join in on a lively, friendly debate. This is an interactive space to build community here at The Contending.

No fancy intros, no long essays – just a category and a list. Sound good? Good. Let’s hit some baseball.

Clarence told me if I wrote about baseball movies, people will come.

They’ll come to The Contending for reasons they can’t even fathom. They’ll turn up at our website, not knowing for sure why they’re doing it. They’ll arrive at our homepage, as innocent as children, longing for the past.

“Of course, we won’t mind if you look around,” he’ll say. “It’s free to subscribe.” They’ll pass over their emails without even thinking about it. For it is emails they have and entertainment insights they lack.

And they’ll walk out to the Just for Fun section, and sit in shirt-sleeves on a perfect afternoon. They’ll find they have welcomed spots somewhere along one of the comment sections, where they contribute their own lists and cheered for their favorites. And they’ll read the articles, and it’ll be as if they’d dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick, they’ll have to brush them away from their faces.

Then he said “People will come, Mark.

The one constant through all the years, Mark, has been baseball movies. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball movies have marked the time.

This website, this game – it’s a part of our present, Mark. It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again.

Oh, people will come, Mark. People will most definitely come.”

So here we are, counting down our top 10 baseball movies of all time. Happy belated Opening Day to those who celebrate.