By IAN WILSON
Hollywood will soon celebrate another edition of the Academy Awards in Los Angeles, and hand out Oscars to the most critically acclaimed movies of the year.
We’re also big film lovers, but we have a certain type. We like baseball movies, or at the very least ones that have memorable baseball scenes in them. We also give bonus points to movies that have some kind of connections to Alberta and Saskatchewan.
With that in mind, here’s a look at 10 movies that we enjoy and have written about in the past:
FIELD OF DREAMS
This 1989 movie brings the magical words of W.P. Kinsella’s classic Shoeless Joe to life. The plot focuses on Iowa corn farmer Ray Kinsella, played superbly by Kevin Costner, who hears voices that tell him to replace a section of his cornfield with a baseball diamond. “If you build it, he will come.”
Many do come, including the 1919 Chicago White Sox and author Terence Mann (James Earl Jones), who is loosely based on shut-in author J.D. Salinger. The movie is well-written, with a great cast, and it’s a must-see for any baseball fan.
It didn’t win any Academy Awards, but Field of Dreams was nominated for three at the 1990 Oscars – best picture, best writing (adapted screenplay) and best original score.
Kinsella was born in Edmonton in 1935 and he was raised near Darwell, Alberta until he was 10 years old, at which time he and his family moved to Edmonton. Kinsella was hired as an English professor at the University of Calgary in the late 1970s before Shoeless Joe was released in 1982. The Order of Canada recipient wrote many more baseball-inspired works after that, including The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, The Thrill of the Grass and Box Socials. He passed away on Sept. 16, 2016 at the age of 81.
A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN
This film gave the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) – which operated from 1943 until 1954 – the spotlight it deserved and this 1992 movie was a baseball classic.
Starring Tom Hanks, Geena Davis and Madonna, this World War II era flick follows the Rockford Peaches and explores what the women of the league had to deal with during a difficult inaugural season.
A League of Their Own didn’t receive any Oscar nominations, although it easily could have. The film was, however, nominated for two Golden Globes, including a best actress nod for Davis.
Because this movie is a fictionalized account of the AAGPBL, the actual player names are not used, but it does a great job of capturing the spirit of star athletes from the circuit. Over the league’s history, 28 players hailed from Saskatchewan and another 10 came from Alberta. A few names of note include Helen Nicol Fox and Betty Carveth Dunn – both have been inducted into the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame. Saskatchewan’s Arleene Noga was recently announced as a Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame inductee as part of the Class of 2025.
MONEYBALL
Based on the best-selling book by the same name, Moneyball delves into the Oakland A’s strategy of using analytics to compete with big-market teams in MLB. The 2011 movie and the book helped popularize sabermetrics in baseball. It stars Brad Pitt as Athletics’ general manager Billy Beane and Jonah Hill as Peter Brand, a character based on assistant GM Paul DePodesta.
Moneyball was nominated for six Academy Awards – including best picture, best actor (Pitt), best supporting actor (Hill) and best adapted screenplay – but it did not bring home any hardware.
The movie chronicles the 2002 season of the Oakland A’s, who were the parent club of the Triple-A Edmonton Trappers from 1995 to 1998. Many of the players depicted in the movie spent time playing for the Trappers, including third baseman Eric Chavez and shortstop Miguel Tejada. Jason Giambi – who was in Oakland from 1995 through 2001 before bolting for the Yankees in 2002, and whose departure was cited as one of the team’s reasons for adopting a different strategic approach – also played for the Trappers in 1995. Another player in the film, sidearm pitcher Chad Bradford, played for the Calgary Cannons in 1998.
THE BATTERED BASTARDS OF BASEBALL
This fun documentary chronicles the wild events surrounding the Portland Mavericks, an independent, minor-league team that played five seasons in Oregon in the 1970s. The film features interviews with Kurt Russell, whose father Bing Russell owned the team, and pitcher Jim Bouton, the author of Ball Four. The title is actually lifted from Bouton’s book, a tell-all tale that landed him in hot water with Major League Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn.
The Battered Bastards of Baseball didn’t win any major awards, but it did receive a standing ovation at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival and a bidding war took place to acquire the rights to the documentary and adapt it into a feature film.
Before Bouton pitched for the Mavericks, the knuckleballer suited up for the Calgary Jimmies of the Alberta Major Baseball League (AMBL) in 1975.
THE NAKED GUN
Hey, if Die Hard is a Christmas classic, well then yippee ki-yay, you bet The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! is a baseball film.
This may not have been an Oscar-worthy entry, but The Naked Gun was a finalist for a Jupiter Award in the Best International Film category in 1990. Rain Man claimed that honour.
Leslie Nielsen also received a Funniest Actor in a Motion Picture (Leading Role) nomination at the 1989 American Comedy Awards for his work as Lieutenant Frank Drebin. Nielsen lost to Tom Hanks, who played a child turned adult in the movie Big.
Born in Regina, Saskatchewan, Nielsen was a prolific actor who appeared in more than 100 movies and over 150 television shows. His family lived in the Northwest Territories before moving to Edmonton in 1930. Nielsen graduated from the Alberta capital’s Victoria School of the Arts and enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1943 at the age of 17. He trained as an aerial gunner and after the Second World War he moved to Calgary, where he worked as a disc jockey at a radio station.
Nielsen stole the show in The Naked Gun for his undercover work as an umpire and American anthem singer Enrico Pallazo during the movie’s hilarious scenes during a game between the California Angels and Seattle Mariners.
THE HILL
Starring Dennis Quaid and Colin Ford, The Hill follows the true story of Rickey Hill, who was born with a degenerative spine disorder that required him to undergo several surgeries and wear leg braces as a child.
The film chronicles his upbringing, including the poverty his family faced living in Forth Worth, Texas, and the objections his father, a Baptist pastor, had to his son playing baseball.
Directed by Jeff Celentano, the uplifting movie was named the 2024 Best Family Feature Film winner by the Family Film Awards.
Hill achieved his dream of playing pro baseball and his first minor-league assignment sent him to Lethbridge, Alberta, where he suited up with the Expos of the rookie level Pioneer League during their inaugural season. As an 18-year-old, Hill played in 39 games for Lethbridge and posted a .217 batting average with one homer and four doubles over his 106 at bats. He played alongside Hall-of-Fame outfielder Andre Dawson that season. Hill made headlines that summer when he tied the knot with his high school sweetheart, Sherran Lambert, during a ceremony at home plate at Henderson Stadium.
THE PRIDE OF THE YANKEES
This 1942 biopic, starring Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth as himself, came out a year after Gehrig’s death from the disease that now bears his name. The highlight of the movie is Cooper’s re-enactment of Gehrig’s famous “Luckiest Man on the Face of the Earth” speech at Yankee Stadium.
The Pride of the Yankees was nominated for 11 Academy Awards – including best picture, best actor (Cooper) and best actress (Theresa Wright) – but only claimed one Oscar for film editing.
Cooper was something less than an accomplished ball player when he signed on for the Iron Horse role, so major league outfielder Floyd “Babe” Herman was brought in as Cooper’s double for much of the on-field action. Before Herman made a name for himself in Major League Baseball, he was a star player for the Edmonton Eskimos of the Western Canada League. In 1921, the 18-year-old batted .330 for the Eskimos while leading the league in hits and triples.
IT AIN’T OVER
You can observe a lot by watching. Especially if you’re watching this documentary about Yogi Berra, the legendary catcher with the New York Yankees.
It Ain’t Over was screened at the 2022 Calgary International Film Festival (CIFF), where it was nominated for Best International Documentary. The 98-minute exploration of Yogi didn’t take home that award, but it did win the Audience Award and Best Feature at the Nantucket Film Festival, as well as the Best Feature Documentary Award at the 2023 Boulder International Film Festival.
Written and directed by Sean Mullin, the doc also received several nominations for other awards.
INTERSTELLAR
Wait, this isn’t a baseball movie?! No, no it’s not. Interstellar is a time-bending, science-fiction drama, directed by Christopher Nolan. But if you watch closely, you’ll see some baseball also made the cut.
The 2014 film, starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain, is a compelling and thought-provoking journey, and one that requires your full attention throughout the movie.
Interstellar received five Oscar nominations and won the 2015 Academy Award for best achievement in visual effects. Some of those visuals came straight from southern Alberta, where Seaman Stadium – home of the Okotoks Dawgs – was used to film several baseball scenes. Film production, which also took place in Nanton, Longview and Lethbridge, brought Nolan, McConaughey and actor John Lithgow to the province, along with other members of the movie’s cast and crew.
JACK OF ALL TRADES
We love our baseball cards at Alberta Dugout Stories, and this documentary explored the wax-pack era of cards while following Ontario director Stu Stone as he attempted to connect with his estranged father.
There’s all kinds of pack-cracking fun and even an appearance from Jose Canseco in this one.
Jack of All Trades was featured at the Calgary Underground Film Festival in 2018.
Tales of Baseball 