“Damn Yankees” (1958)
A title that’s been uttered by you and me alike during a game (though more times by you), this adaptation of George Abbott’s Tony-winning 1955 Broadway musical is a retelling of Faust filtered through baseball. Ray Walston and Gwen Verdon recreated their Tony-winning roles as the devil and his foxy agent, Lola. While Broadway audiences got a far sexier Verdon (the movie censored her most forceful Bob Fosse-designed gyrations), what remains here is still loads of fun, even if you hate you-know-who. Tab Hunter costars, and the wonderful score reminded us that baseball fans “gotta have heart.” It’s all you really need. (On hoopla, Prime Video)
“Fever Pitch” (2005)
My self-imposed equal time rule requires me to mention this movie. I’d be a liar if I said I liked it. But my disapproval has nothing to do with the Red Sox. I find Jimmy Fallon as obnoxious as you find my love for, um, the ankeesYay. Had this film been cast differently, and had it not been directed by Peter and Bobby Farrelly, who changed the source material’s sport, I might have had a better time. As for those reshoots that incorporated the 2004 World Series Championship by the Red Sox — I’ve no problems with that. The better team won that year. (On Prime Video, Apple TV)
“The Bad News Bears” (1976)
Here’s an instance where the better team lost. This classic Michael Ritchie film features a great performance by Tatum O’Neal and the quintessential role for Walter Matthau. His drunk, bitter coach, Buttermaker, is a role for the ages. This is the movie that introduced Bizet’s “Carmen” to little kids, along with a slew of profanities so frequently uttered that the film was controversial. It was followed by two inferior sequels and a defanged 2005 remake starring Billy Bob Thornton. You know what you can do with them!
If you’re still hungry for great baseball movies from 1976, follow this one with “The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings,” a lively fictional look at the Negro Leagues starring James Earl Jones, Billy Dee Williams, and Richard Pryor. (“Bears” on Apple TV, Kanopy; “Bingo” on Apple TV, Prime Video)
“The Jackie Robinson Story” (1950)
A far more sobering look at Black baseball players, this biopic stars Robinson as himself and Ruby Dee as his wife, Rachel. The baseball player is no actor, but he and Dee have a chemistry that makes their relationship believable. Made by Hollywood a mere three years after Robinson broke MLB’s color barrier, its depiction of the racist hell Robinson endured is shamefully whitewashed and minimalized. But what’s here is quite jarring, especially when you see Robinson himself enduring it onscreen.
Worth watching for historical context, but there’s a better version of this material available. It’s called “42,” and while it’s so corny it could have been made in 1950, it stars the late, great Chadwick Boseman as Robinson and Harrison Ford, in one of his best performances, as Branch Rickey. (“Jackie” on hoopla; “42″ on Prime Video)
“Eight Men Out” (1988)
Those other Sox, the Chicago White Sox, are the subject of John Sayles’s superb look at the 1919 Black Sox scandal. The film has a great dugout of a cast: Charlie Sheen, Christopher Lloyd, John Cusack, David Strathairn, and Michael Rooker, to name a few. Sayles himself shows up as sportswriter Ring Lardner. One of the best baseball movies, hands down, with D.B. Sweeney as “Shoeless Joe” Jackson, the role Ray Liotta played in a certain Kevin Costner movie set in Iowa that would make the perfect doubleheader with this movie. I’m talking about “Field of Dreams,” of course. (“Eight” on Prime Video, hoopla; “Field” on Prime Video, Apple TV)
“Major League” (1989)
Charlie Sheen also shows up as part of another great ensemble in “The Sting” scribe David S. Ward’s hilarious ode to the Cleveland Indians. Tom Berenger, Corbin Bernsen, Wesley Snipes, and the voice of Allstate insurance, Dennis Haysbert, play colorful caricatures on a team so hapless that you can’t help rooting for them once they start winning. Margaret Whitton is hissable fun as the movie’s villain, and Rene Russo is an amusing love interest, but it’s the late Bob Uecker who gets the biggest laughs. Followed by a sequel that is very, very bad. (On Prime Video)
“A League of Their Own” (1992)
There’s no crying in baseball, and there’s no shame in enjoying director Penny Marshall’s fictional look at the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Geena Davis and Lori Petty give the film its heart, while a crabby Tom Hanks keeps the proceedings from becoming too saccharine. David Strathairn’s in this one, too, and the screenplay is by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, the writers of “Fever Pitch.” Madonna in also in this movie; her performance is far better than “This Used to Be My Playground,” the maudlin hit song she provided for the soundtrack. (On Prime Video)
“Fear Strikes Out” (1957)
Three years before he went “Psycho,” the late Anthony Perkins starred as Boston Red Sox veteran (and Billy Martin brawler) Jimmy Piersall in Robert “To Kill a Mockingbird” Mulligan’s directorial debut. “Fear” is one of the first films to deal with bipolar disorder, and Perkins is excellent in the lead, a role also played by “Damn Yankees”’s Tab Hunter two years prior on television. Karl Malden is also good as Piersall’s bitter father. The drama takes precedence over baseball, but this is still worth a look. (On Prime Video, Apple TV)
“The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!” (1988)
You can’t argue with me here! The last third of this movie is a baseball game! Poor Lieutenant Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) not only ruins the “Star-Spangled Banner” (“Look! It’s Enrico Pallazzo!”), he also makes some of the worst umpire calls ever seen. All of this is in service to saving Queen Elizabeth II from a nefarious plot dreamed up by “Fantasy Island”’s Mr. Roarke himself, Ricardo Montalban. His fantasy is to brainwash a baseball player and make him assassinate the California Angels’ royal stadium guest. As an added bonus, you get to see a former Yankees player, Reggie Jackson, get what’s coming to him. (On Kanopy, hoopla, Prime Video)
May the best baseball team win the American League East this season. And you know which team that is!
Odie Henderson is the Boston Globe’s film critic.