Tirico Suave

Every blogger has one. Here’s mine. Before we get things rolling, here’s some criteria:
1. Most importantly, this is MY list. This isn’t IMDb’s list or some list voted on by an expert panel. This is strictly my personal taste. Not only is Rocky not the top movie on here, it’s not even in my top five. That doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s a bad movie or even worse than the one’s I listed ahead of it. In fact, I can’t really even explain why I prefer some of these movies over other ones.
2. There are handful of popular sports movies that I’ve never seen in there entirety. I’ll probably get around to watching them someday, but until then I obviously can’t include them on here. Some of these include: Brian’s Song, the first The Longest Yard, When We Were Kings, Tin Cup or Pride Of the Yankees.
3. As far as what’s a sport and what’s not, guess who has the final call on that as well? If I’d like to liberally stretch the sports movie genre to include movies about poker or documentaries about Donkey Kong players, then I will (and I have).
4. You came to wrong site if you’re looking for a list that includes any movie about a 4′11” linebacker from Notre Dame who recorded one sack on the last play of the game.
5. To me baseball translates the best on to the silver screen. Expect a lot of it on here. Ten of the 25 to be exact.

Now without any further ado:

25. The Scout
Sometimes you end up enjoying a movie for no other reason than it always seemed to be on. Bonus points for a cameo by George Steinbrenner in where he spends an exorbitant amount of money on a pitcher he’s never really seen. How prophetic.

24. Blue Chips
Not only does Blue Chips give us Shaq acting, Matt Nover in a starring role, Al Bundy as an investigative sports journalist and Bobby Hurley in an Indiana uniform, it also makes great material for a video mashup.

23. Eight Men Out
Shakespeare DiMaggio asked me to include one movie starring his favorite actor D.B. Sweeney on this list, so it was either this or the Cutting Edge. After thirteen hard hours of deliberation where I watched each film three times, I went with the baseball flick.

22. Necessary Roughness
This movie is pretty much a time capsule for 1991: Scott Bakula, Kathy Ireland, Sinbad, not to mention guest appearances by Jim Kelly, Jerry Rice, Evander Holyfield and Herschel Walker. It doesn’t really hold up to well, but needs to be included somewhere on here.

21. Any Given Sunday
Although this movie a little too long, a little unrealistic and contains a truly unhealthy amount full frontal male nudity, it also is responsible for one of the greatest speeches in sports movie history. Bonus points for John McGinley’s Jim Rome-esque character Jack Rose.

20. Miracle
Hockey players swear by two movies, Slap Shot (a little further down) and Miracle. Despite having really no big name actors outside of Kurt Russell and a storyline that everyone knows the ending to, Miracle is still pretty enjoyable.

19. The Program
Bobby Collins?!? Bobby Collins?!? He loves anything in a skirt! The Program was similar to Blue Chips only the Program has many more memorable scenes. Plus, it was responsible for sending six players to the NFL in our movie character mock draft.

18. Bull Durham
This probably seems a little low, and while it definitely has it’s memorable scenes and quotes, I’m one of the people who subscribe to the notion that Bull Durham is essentially a chick flick disguised as a baseball movie. That said, it still deserves a spot.

17. Hoop Dreams
Hoop Dreams is one of only two documentaries to make the list and enough can’t be said about it. When it was originally released in 1994, it appeared on more critics’ top ten lists than Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, and the Shawshank Redemption.

16. Bad News Bears
Another sports movie that I don’t like as much as others do, probably because I never got around to seeing until college and by then it seemed fairly tame and dated. Terrible sequels and remakes, for whatever reason in my head, don’t help its case either.

15. Remember The Titans
I enjoyed Remember The Titans but to me, it could have been a much better film if it a) wasn’t made by
Disney b) wasn’t produced by Jerry Bruckheimer or c) didn’t have one of the most preposterous endings that a sports movie has ever seen.

14. Friday Night Lights
Deliberately placed one spot higher than RTT. I’ve had this debate for a few years now and I’m definitely in the minority on this one, but FNL is by far the superior movie. And when I say ‘by far’, I mean by one spot on the list.

13. Rounders
I don’t enjoy playing poker, watching poker, or listening to over-the-top fake Russian accents for two hours, yet Rounders is still one of my favorite movies. If this was just a regular list of movies, it would be much higher, but poker isn’t really sport, so #13 seems about right.

12. The King Of Kong
Speaking of not really a sport, the King of Kong is a documentary about two guys competing for the all time high score in Donkey Kong. I’m not exaggerating when I say it’s easily one of the best movies I’ve watched in the last five years, regardless of genre.

11. The Sandlot
As many times as I’ve watched this movie, I can’t believe it’s not higher than 11. In fact, there’s only one real way to make the Sandlot a more quotable movie than it already is: mash it up so there’s a whole bunch of gratuitous swearing in the challenge scene.

10. Rocky
I’m trying to keep these write ups succinct, so for the sake of avoiding the same argument I’ve been having for the last 20 years, I’ve got Rocky at #10, but just let it be known, I feel it’s an enjoyable movie but I can think of about 328 other movies I’d rather watch.

9. The Natural
If it wasn’t for the unnecessary Barbara Hershey subplot, the Natural would be top five. Between the Natural, Hoosiers and Beaches, it could be argued that Hershey’s performances have done less for the movie going experiences of men than any other actress.

8. Slap Shot
Here’s the best assessment I can give for Slap Shot: I don’t think one sports movie is as beloved to the people that play their sport as Slap Shot is to hockey. Not one hockey player dislikes this movie. It is to hockey community what Spinal Tap is to rock stars.

7. Hoosiers
If you were a white kid who grew up playing basketball, Hoosiers was instilled in you. In my case, literally. My freshman year coach was such a fanatic that we had to watch the movie together as a team and even take a test afterward. I scored a 97.

6. A League Of Their Own
Yes, this is my 6th favorite sports movie. I have no shame about that. I’ve seen it many times, can recite most of the lines from memory and have even played a LOTO drinking game. It’s borderline obsessive. Where do you think the name Harvey Bars came from?

5. White Man Can’t Jump
Simply put, the best basketball movie ever made. It also made it ok for everyone of all races to openly acknowledge the fact that white people just aren’t all that athletic. This also established Wesley Snipes as the go to guy for sports films in the 90’s. Speaking of…

4. Major League
In case you haven’t picked up on the pattern yet, sometimes in our spare time, the staff here at Tirico Suave likes to take sports movies and mash them up with footage that wasn’t originally in said movie for your entertainment.

3. Raging Bull
Raging Bull not winning an Oscar for best picture or best director might be one of the bigger travesties in Academy Award history. And sometimes just for fun, when Roger Dorn writes a subpar post, I show up to his house unexpectedly and re-enact this scene.

2. Caddyshack
Three sentences aren’t nearly enough to cover Caddyshack so here’s the whole movie summed up in one minute. Sports related or not, it’s the greatest comedy of all time. Look here for a post in the near future of the 795 greatest Caddyshack quotes.

1. Field Of Dreams
There’s a handful of movies that whenever they come on tv, there’s absolutely no chance I’m changing the channel, and Field Of Dreams is one of those films. It’s what I measure all other sports movies by, and there wasn’t a time I considered putting anything else at #1.