10 Best True-Life Sports Movies

top 10 sports
WatchMojo recently put together a list of the 10 best biopics, considering sports movies based on real-life people and teams. The list, which does not include documentaries, puts together a decent list that is a good start for prompting a discussion.

There are some good choices on the list, even including some nice surprises like Hurricane (1999), Chariots of Fire (1981), Remember the Titans (2000), 42 (2013), and Cinderella Man (2005). I doubt everyone will agree with the complete list, but everyone will agree with some of the films. Check it out.

It is difficult to argue with WatchMojo’s number one pick. But no Miracle (2004), Eight Men Out (1988), Brian’s Song (1971), Rudy (1993), Pride of the Yankees (1942), or We Are Marshall (2006)?

What sports biopics would you add to the list? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Jackie Robinson Takes the Field

    Jackie Robinson On April 15, 1947 as a soft breeze blew across Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, Jackie Robinson took his position at first base to play his first official Major League Baseball game for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Robinson was 28 years old, having served in the U.S. Army and played in the Negro American League before Dodger general manager Branch Rickey recruited Robinson in 1945 to join the Dodger organization.

    On this date against the Boston Braves, Robinson broke the color barrier that had existed in baseball for more than fifty years.  The last such player before Robinson was catcher Fleetwood Walker who played for the American Association’s Toledo Blue Stockings in 1884.

    Robinson’s major league career that began that day would not be easy. But Robinson triumphed over the hate he encountered, both as a man and as a player, making him the greatest hero of any sport.

    Many were hostile to him, but many others admired Robinson at the time. The radio even played a song about him in 1949, “Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit that Ball?

    Baseball eventually recognized his accomplishments too. On this date in 1997, Major League Baseball retired his number 42, making it the first number retired for all teams.

    Robinson’s Major League Debut

    To go back and relive that sunny day at Ebbets Field on this date in 1947, listen to this 2007 NPR interview with writer Jonathan Eig, who wrote a book about Robinson’s first year called Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Season. The interview discusses the historic game played this date in 1947.

    Movies About Robinson

    In 2013, a very good movie bearing the name of Robinson’s number 42 was released. But another earlier movie from 1950 told his story starring Jackie Robinson himself in The Jackie Robinson Story.

    Below is the entire film, although the sound quality is not great. The recreation of his Major League debut begins around the 54-minute mark. The movie condenses events to give Robinson a triple on a day the first baseman went hitless.  In the real game, he did score the go-ahead run after reaching on an error.

    Another Rookie Debuting On This Date

    Finally, here is a trivia question about that April 15, 1947 game. On that date, one other rookie besides Robinson took the field for the Dodgers that day, who was it?

    As explained in the video above, the other rookie was Spider Jorgensen.  Jorgenson was called up on such short notice that he did not have a glove. But his new teammate Jackie Robinson loaned Jorgensen one of his gloves.

    Using that glove, third-baseman Jorgensen fielded a ball hit by Boston’s Dick Culler, throwing it to Robinson at first base to make the first out of the game.  The Dodgers won by a score of 5–3.

    At the end of the 1947 season, the Dodgers won the National League Pennant.  And Robinson won the Rookie of the Year Award, which is now called the Jackie Robinson Award.

    1950 photo of Jackie Robinson and The Jackie Robinson Story via public domain. Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    “42”: Great Story, Good Movie (Review)

    Jackie Robinson Movie The previews for 42, the new movie about baseball player Jackie Robinson, tempted me to wait until the movie came out on video. I feared that the movie would not have much that I did not already know, and the preview made me wonder if the movie was going to be more like a made-for-TV movie. But I love baseball movies and Jackie Robinson’s story is worthy of the big screen, so I headed out to the local movie theater. While the movie may not rise to the level of the best baseball movies, it is still entertaining and worth your time in the theater.

    42 covers the story of how Jackie Robinson, played by Chadwick Boseman, came to break the code of Major League Baseball’s ban on black baseball players. The film does not cover all of Robinson’s career, but it covers his rise from the Negro Leagues through his first season in the Majors. Boseman does an excellent job of portraying the hero as a human being, and Nicole Beharie also does a great job of playing Robinson’s wife, Rachel. The most well-known actor in the cast is Harrison Ford, who in an unusual role for him, plays Brooklyn Dodgers owner Branch Rickey.

    Some have complained that writer-director Brian Helgeland focuses too much on the white men like Rickey. With no standing to defend the movie’s perspective, I do understand the complaint and would like to see a film that focused almost entirely on Robinson’s view. But 42 is trying to do something else by showing the historical context of Robinson’s great achievement. I also appreciated that Helgeland did not settle for showing stereotypes and that he featured some good people in the South as well as racists in New York.

    One minor weakness in the film is that it only shows Robinson’s first season, and it left me wanting more. So 42 suffers from some of the problems with biopics that can only cover so much time.

    42 also suffers a little from trying to fit into the baseball movie genre. Baseball films often end with an important baseball game win (or loss), and 42, like the recent Moneyball (2011), tries to fit in that genre but comes a little short because of real life. During Robinson’s first season in the Majors in 1947, his team did win the pennant and the movie portrays the climactic scene of Robinson hitting the home run to clinch it. But since the Dodgers won the division over the Cardinals by five games that season, it was somewhat lacking in drama. The movie does not follow Robinson into the World Series, apparently because the Yankees beat Robinson’s team four games to three. So reality took away a little of the traditional baseball climax, but, of course, the drama of 42 is really on Jackie Robinson succeeding when so much was against him, and the movie does a good job of telling the real story.

    The movie does do an excellent job of showing some of the difficulties that Jackie Robinson encountered from opposing players, opposing managers, and his own teammates. And you get to see the true strength of a man who had the courage to turn the other cheek for a higher cause (although not depicted in the film, by 1949 when other black players were established in Major League Baseball, Robinson could finally fight back).

    Conclusion: Overall, 42 is an engaging story about some things you knew about and probably some things you did not. It tells the story of a real hero and should be required viewing for every child in America. For a bonus video, here is Jackie Robinson appearing on What’s My Line? after he retired from baseball, and you can see at the end how he still speaks fondly of Branch Rickey.

    Other Reviews Because Why Should You Trust Me?: Rotten Tomatoes gives 42 a critics rating of 77% and an audience rating of 88%, which makes sense because fans may appreciate the true-life story and care less if the movie is too predictable. Jeffrey M. Anderson at Combustible Celluloid says that 42 is “a wonderful, huge, glossy, mythical portrait of America’s growing pains.” By contrast, Rick Kisonak at Seven Days concludes that Jackie Robinson “deserves a movie that strives to be at least half as great as he was, a movie better than a cookie-cutter Hollywood biopic like this one.”

    Bonus History Lesson: At the end of 42, Helgeland shows scenes of modern baseball players, starting with Yankee Derek Jeter for some reason, wearing Jackie Robinson’s number 42 on the annual Jackie Robinson Day. I wish, though, that Helgeland had shown a scene of the baseball player who actually inspired the idea of having players wear Jackie Robinson’s number on that day, Ken Griffey, Jr.

    How does “42” rank among the great baseball movies? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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