Best Baseball Movies

Back in 2000 Baseball America chose its top 10 baseball movies of all time. Two important criteria for choosing the movies (developed with the help of film critic Gene Shalit) was that a movie had to be worth watching ten years after its release, and its characters had to be interesting enough to be enjoyed by people who knew nothing about baseball. Its top ten are:

1. Bull Durham (1988)
2. Field of Dreams (1989)
3. Bang the Drum Slowly (1973)
4. Eight Men Out (1988)
5. The Pride of the Yankees (1942)
6. The Bad News Bears (1976)
7. The Natural (1984)
8. A League of Their Own (1992)
9. The Sandlot (1993)
10. Major League (1989)

I don't think there is too much to argue about this list although I'd probably rearrange it a bit -- I'd switch "Field of Dreams" and "Bull Durham," move "The Pride of the Yankees" up to #3, "The Natural" to #4 and "Major League" to #5. I'd also add "The Rookie" (2002) and "Damn Yankees" (1958) to the list, and I'm tempted to drop "The Sandlot" because it never did much for me, but because everyone else seems to like it, I'll keep it in my list. So I guess I'm stuck with a top 12, rather than a top 10. Here's how it looks, but, what do I know?