Half-Empty: What Are Your Choices For Worst Baseball Movie?

[abolishthedh]

While I haven't seen the following movies, I had strong intentions of seeing one of them. All of these are included in the name of seeing what someone might have to say.

1. "Ed": story line involves a trained chimpanzee which plays 3B for a minor league team. Enough said, and so did anyone see that pile?
2. Pitch Perfect
3. The Benchwarmers
4. Mr. 3000

Regarding Mr. 3000, I had the intent on seeing a movie, maybe and a sports movie, and this one seemed perfect until I read the reviews. The movie had Bernie Mac in a starring role, it was set at the major league level with the Brewers, and the reviews were too negative to bother seeing it. I ended up seeing something else entirely. This would be the place to ask where it stands.

[SamtheBravesFan]

It's watchable. It CAN be amusing at points, which is pretty much what you need. I think it's better than The Slugger's Wife,

[dwj21792]

The Winning Team was awfully bad. Reagan playing Pete Alexander was pathetic. They really went into fantasy land for the baseball facts. Last inning of the 7th inning of the 26 world series they have Alexander striking out the last batter. One of the memorable facts of that series was Alexander walking Ruth and the "babe" making the last out trying to steal second.
Eight Men Out played things fast and loose when they had Dickie Kerr pitching right handed.
Bill Bendix as Babe Ruth had to be the worst bb movie I can remember.
"Bang the Drum Slowly" was excellent. di Nero looked like Willard Hershberger.

Yes. Ruth made the last out . But Alexander did come in in the 7th inning and strike out Lazzeri with the bases loaded after Tony hit a long ball just foul. That part is also memorable.

[dwj21792]

worst baseball movie ever

The Babe Ruth Story made in 1948 is not only the worst baseball movie ever made but possibly the worst movie ever made period. It stars William Bendex who sorta resembles the Babe but the guy is the biggest stiff that ever lived. A cardboard cut-out could have done a better job of acting. The way they portrayed the Babe was rediculous, they made him seem like some kind of saint/super hero. Kind of a cross between Superman with a bat meets Jesus Christ. As we all know the Babe was no saint and this ham fisted portrayel of his life is so corny that I doubt anyone who isn't farting dust could sit through it. Thumbs down!

The guy who played the Babe in Pride of the Yankees did a much better job.
I agree that The Babe Ruth Story left a lot to be desired.
Why do they always seem to pick low grade actors for baseball bippics?

[StarStar00]

Babe Ruth is particularly hard to cast for a movie spanning the majority of his career, because the directors' first inclination is to cast a big huge heavy guy like John Goodman.

But big huge heavy guys can't even fake playing even half believably. And for the first half of his career, Ruth was not fat -- thick and solid, yes, but he didn't get fat until the late 20s with the Yankees. Goodman later lost weight and got down to about 250 -- maybe he could have played the late-era Ruth. But when they made the movie, Goodman was 300 pounds or more and Ruth was never that fat, even in his final year with the Braves.

In more recent actors, Jon Hamm might have been decent to play Ruth -- in good enough shape to play the young athletic Ruth but also round-faced enough he could play the big-bellied Babe of his 30s. But he's 46 now and probably aged out of the role.

"Cobb" was abysmal too. Tommy Lee Jones was way too old to play the young Cobb in the flashbacks as a player, and he looked and sounded nothing whatsoever like the older bitter Cobb. In his speaking voice Cobb had a Southern inflection while Jones was more like a drawling Texas cowboy.

One younger actor who does look, facially, somewhat, like Cobb, is Edward Norton, who is 6-0 and reasonably athletic. In a Cobb movie in the 1990s, I would have cast him as the young player Cobb and then gone with Gene Hackman as the seventyish embittered Cobb.

[Orioles5]

I used to work with a guy that was a dead ringer for Ty Cobb. I eventually asked him if he was any relation to Cobb and he said that as far as he knew he was not related.

[SHOELESSJOE3]

Two that completely missed the mark, because of what he really was.
Both Babe Ruth's Bendix and and OMG.Goodman.
Babe portrayed as a big clumsy oaf. Burn them both.

The Babe made for TV, Steven Lang, right on, the best Babe Movie, 1991.
I have searched for years, unable to find it on a disc, no where.

[epaddon]

I have my own recording of the Lang TV-movie from the original NBC broadcast, though it isn't the most exceptional transfer but quite watchable. It is the best of any Ruth biopic by adding some believable nuance (especially in his relationship with Huggins).

[ol' aches and pains]

Babe Ruth is particularly hard to cast for a movie spanning the majority of his career, because the directors' first inclination is to cast a big huge heavy guy like John Goodman.

But big huge heavy guys can't even fake playing even half believably. And for the first half of his career, Ruth was not fat -- thick and solid, yes, but he didn't get fat until the late 20s with the Yankees. Goodman later lost weight and got down to about 250 -- maybe he could have played the late-era Ruth. But when they made the movie, Goodman was 300 pounds or more and Ruth was never that fat, even in his final year with the Braves.

In more recent actors, Jon Hamm might have been decent to play Ruth -- in good enough shape to play the young athletic Ruth but also round-faced enough he could play the big-bellied Babe of his 30s. But he's 46 now and probably aged out of the role.

They can make up a reasonably slender Gary Oldman to resemble Winston Churchill, I don't know why they couldn't do as much for the Babe.

[Steve Jeltz]

In hindsight, Vincent D'Onofrio should have been cast as the Babe instead of Goodman. He resembles Babe facially and physically. Unfortunately, D'Onofrio wasn't a household name in 1992 and would be too old to be cast as Babe today, as he is 58.

[Toledo Inquisition]

The late, great Jimmy Piersall hated "Fear Strikes Out". He hated Anthony Perkins as not resembling his own playing skills (relative to any Hollywood actor) and said they made things up about his father.

Piersall was involved in the script but said they made "last minute" Hollywood changes to make the picture more "Hollywood." He was angry at what they did to his father.

I'll say that since it was his life, he'd have some knowledge on why the movie wasn't so hot.

[StarStar00]

They can make up a reasonably slender Gary Oldman to resemble Winston Churchill, I don't know why they couldn't do as much for the Babe.

Armie Hammer might be a good pick for the Babe if somebody wants to make a movie in the next 10 years or so.

He's 31 now and has a big round face; he could still pull off the young and (relatively) trim Babe of the Red Sox and with some padding, a prosthetic nose and jowly face makeup, he could play the roly-poly Ruth of his later years.

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At 6-5, he's taller than the Babe but 6-5 today is pretty comparable to 6-3 of a hundred years ago. In 1918, 6-3 was on the borderline between "tall" and "towering."

Not exactly a coincidence, but guys who fit the Ruth role facially and physically happen to be guys who at one time or another were considered for Superman.

Presumably if they made a Ruth movie, also they'd get somebody 6-2 or so to play the 6-0 Gehrig. I could see Ryan Reynolds as Gehrig.

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[toomanyhatz]

Suprised nobody has mentioned the movie where DeNiro was the psycho Giants fan. Think it was called, "The Fan"? Thought it was ridiculous.

Just came here to mention that. Truly awful. Wesley Snipes as an egotistical slugger clearly based on Bonds. The people who wrote the script have apparently never been to a game.

[EdTarbusz]

Just came here to mention that. Truly awful. Wesley Snipes as an egotistical slugger clearly based on Bonds. The people who wrote the script have apparently never been to a game.

John Kruk trying to play a convincing on-field corpse was the best part of The Fan.

[TheGeorgiaPeach]

I don't know about it being a bad film - that is, not entertaining - but Eight Men Out is a pretty bad depiction of the events surrounding the 1919 World Series. To be fair, most of the inaccuracies originate in Eliot Asinof's book, which is a different subject altogether. You could make a list of the inaccuracies in the film - thankfully, somone already has!

Based on my username this is hardly a surprise, but 1994's Cobb, which adapts Al Stump's book, and inherits its inaccuracies.