Best baseball scenes from non-baseball films
The sport of baseball has been round for 150 some-odd years — longer than soccer or basketball, longer than many nations have existed. It infiltrates each a part of our tradition: books, music and, most notably, films. And typically, even when a film is not about baseball, baseball nonetheless slips into the script — making for a memorable cameo.
We combed by among the finest baseball scenes from non-baseball movies and got here up with our favorites beneath. Have a film we missed? Please, be happy to yell at me on Twitter.
Some would possibly name it the best non-baseball film with a baseball scene, whereas others, like this author, would possibly name it the best film interval. You might virtually classify the primary Naked Gun film as a baseball film for the reason that complete final quarter of it takes place throughout a Mariners-Angels sport. Reggie Jackson is an murderer, a younger Joe West makes an look and Leslie Nielsen calls balls and strikes like Cotton-Eye Joe simply got here on at a marriage.
Most individuals agree that the bench scene received Robin Williams his Academy Award, however watching two near-strangers leap into one another’s arms whereas cursing and crying over a Red Sox sport that occurred 20 years earlier than must be among the finest jiffy in Good Will Hunting. And because it’s wrapping up, it finally ends up not likely being about baseball. There are surprisingly extra essential issues in life.
Watch the clip right here. (Warning: Graphic language)
3. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
There is not a ballpark, participant or any actual type of baseball really performed on this scene from Milos Forman’s 1975 basic, however it’s top-of-the-line on the record. The impossibly evil Nurse Ratched will not enable Randle McMurphy and the opposite psychological hospital inmates to observe the 1963 World Series. So, McMurphy, performed brilliantly by Jack Nicholson, decides to simply think about he is watching it. As he publicizes Tom Tresh and Mickey Mantle homering off Sandy Koufax, it is arduous to not smile watching his wide-eyed buddies making their approach again out into the room to see what all of the commotion is about. (Unfortunately for McMurphy, that is not precisely how the ’63 Series went).
Watch the clip right here (Warning: Graphic language)
4. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Ferris Bueller reaffirms every part we would do if we performed hooky from college: Steal your finest pal’s dad’s sports activities automobile, impersonate The Sausage King of Chicago at a very nice restaurant and, after all, go a baseball sport. The scene has every part, from lovely pictures of Wrigley Field to Harry Caray to Principal Rooney at maybe his most pathetic.
This is the shortest baseball cameo of the bunch and it is also the weirdest. Near the tip of Men in Black, Edgar, the alien bug, is making an attempt to get again to his dwelling planet. He takes off utilizing the highest of one of many World Expo Observatory Towers in Flushing, Queens. As he is making an attempt to go away Earth’s ambiance, he passes over Shea Stadium, proper as a fly ball is headed in Mets proper fielder Bernard Gilkey’s route. Bernard, as you would possibly count on, has some bother assessing the scenario.
Like Ken Griffey and Bobby Bonds, Peter Pan’s son in some way turned out higher than he did at baseball. Sure, Pan might fly, however younger Jack might hit dingers. He additionally does it on a transferring pirate ship with Captain Hook watching and Smee, a poor man’s Luis Tiant, on the mound.
Traffic is a violent, heart-stopping film concerning the drug commerce. But the ultimate scene, set to Brian Eno’s rating, is something however. Earlier within the movie, Benicio Del Torro’s character tells the DEA that he’d surrender the whereabouts of his drug kingpin boss if they’d merely put lights on a Little League baseball discipline in his hometown in Mexico. Eventually, Del Torro retains his finish of the deal, however we’re unsure concerning the DEA. And then, simply earlier than the credit roll, we now have our reply: The sounds of bats hitting balls, a dusty ballfield late at night time, youngsters yelling and Del Torro smiling on from the stands.
8. Captain America: The First Avenger
Unlike any of the opposite films on this record, the Avengers’ baseball scene serves as an essential clue to the principle character determining what’s taking place. Captain America, a superhero who exists within the Forties, wakes up in an odd room with an outdated transistor radio broadcasting a Dodgers-Phillies sport — an actual Dodgers-Phillies sport — from 1941. A lady is available in and tells him he is in a restoration room in New York City, however Steve Rogers is aware of his baseball and remembers he was at that precise Dodgers sport in ’41. How might it’s taking part in now? He blasts his approach by the partitions of his room and discovers he is been sleeping for 70 years. He’s in modern-day Times Square.
9. The Marx Brothers: A Night on the Opera
I haven’t got a complete lot to say about this. “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” in some way begins taking part in through the opera and the Marx Brothers do what you suppose the Marx Brothers would possibly do: They pull out a baseball and use a violin as a bat.
10. Back to the Future Part II
Another extraordinarily brief baseball scene, however notable as a result of it just about predicted a future no person thought would ever occur: The Cubs profitable the World Series. Marty McFly travels ahead in time from 1985 to 2015 to search out hoverboards, individuals wearing tinfoil physique armor and the long-suffering Cubbies topped world champs. And then, within the real-life model of 2015, Chicago practically lived as much as the prophecy. The Cubs lastly did win all of it the following season, making the film miss by one yr however making a sure film star lose his thoughts.
