“Hey, Yankees! You can take your apology and your trophy and shove ‘em straight up your ass!”
“I just wanna say one thing to my wife who’s home: Yo, Adrian! I did it!”
“Hey, everybody, we’re all gonna get laid!”
Those are three memorable lines from three of our favorite films dealing with sports; we really don’t have to name them, do we? (in order: The Bad News Bears, Rocky II and Caddyshack)
We’ve checked out SB Nation’s list of 20 films to ease your boredom and Swish Appeal’s list of 5 basketball movies to watch during quarantine. And at the suggestion of contributor Karleigh Webb, three of us at Outsports put together our own list of our top movies related to sports.
Contributor Ken Schultz’s selections were heavy on comedy, baseball history and baseball comedy, certainly an on-brand selection from our resident MLB expert, stand-up comic and host of the 3 Strikes You’re Out podcast.
Both Karleigh and I could not be more different (you can hear how different if you listen to the Outsports podcast we co-host: The Trans Sporter Room), but we do have a lot in common when it comes to entertainment. We both chose the original versions of The Bad News Bears and Rollerball, as well as Rocky II, for our top films. But while Karleigh’s list includes auto-racing flicks, my sports films get your heart racing. My favorites mix athletics with romance, drama and comedy.
The three of us think every one of these is worthy of your time. These are movies that will help you get through the days ahead. as we stay home, shelter in place, and try to flatten the curve to make it to the other side of the coronavirus crisis.
So here goes: 23 sports-themed films, split by author, and listed in alphabetical order; our duplicate choices are marked with an *. Click the title of each film and you can view its trailer (except for “Pride of the Yankees;” instead, you get a clip of the most memorable line in all of movie sports, even if how Gary Cooper said it was not exactly how Lou Gehrig said it).
Be sure to scroll to the bottom to see them all, and in the comments below, tell us which films are your favorites, especially if you think we missed some.
Dawn’s top 11 picks:
The Bad News Bears* (1976)
Rocky II* (actually, I recommend all of the Rocky movies, including Rocky Balboa and the Creed films, except for one: Skip Rocky V)
Rollerball* (1975)
Ken Schultz’s top 6 picks
Ken Burns’s Baseball (now streaming free on PBS.org)
Karleigh Webb’s top 10 picks
The Bad News Bears* (1976)
Rollerball* (1975)
The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh
Did we miss yours? Tell us your favorite sports-themed film in the comments below!
