Movie Talk - My Favorite Baseball Movie Quotes

Baseball movies, although often filled with an overdose of nostalgia, are the greatest tools for bringing the game to new dimensions. From the sad and deep thinking Field of Dreams to the light hearted Americana of The Sandlot, throughout the years these movies have helped flame the American spirit. Here are a few of my favorite quotes from my favorite movies.

Bull Durham

“Yeah I was in the Show, I was in the Show for 21 days once” - Crash Davis (played by Kevin Costner)

Kevin Costner is the king of the baseball movie. Although Bull Durham is filled with some amazing soliloquies, this quote sticks out for one reason - how it affected one of baseball’s most favorite heroes - the blond kid from Oklahoma, Mickey Mantle. Mantle, long past his playing days when he saw the movie, was once asked on a late night show if he had seen the newly released Bull Durham and what he thought of it. The late night host, like probably every person who saw it, thought it was a great insight into the minors, clever, and funny. Mantle took something else from the flick - he said it made him sad. When asked why on earth it made him sad, Mantle said “it made me sad because that guy could really hit, and he never got his shot, there was always someone in front of him, but he could really play”. That story tells you so much about the character of Mickey Mantle. I am thankful to Ron Shelton (writer of BD), not only for giving me one of my favorite movies, but for making me love one of my all time favorites of the game even a little bit more.

Field of Dreams

“The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good and that could be again. Oh...people will come Ray. People will most definitely come.” - Terrance Mann (played by James Earl Jones)

America’s game - through ever changing times, baseball has always been the constant. I think this quote is amazingly relevant given the current climate of the country. With opening day postponed, and the future of the upcoming season hanging on a thread, there is no doubt there will be a void come this spring. The game will persevere, just as America will and always has. We are too strong. One in the same.

“We just don't recognize life's most significant moments while they're happening. Back then I thought, "Well, there'll be other days". I didn't realize that that was the only day.” - Archie “Moonlight” Graham (played by Burt Lancaster)

“This is my most favorite place in all the world, and once a place touches you like this, the wind never blows so cold again. You feel for it, like it was your child. I was born here, I’ll live here, I’ll die here, with no regrets” - Archie “Moonlight” Graham (played by Burt Lancaster)

How cool is Moonlight Graham? There may not be any better moment in any movie, let alone baseball movie, then the midnight office chat between Ray Kinsela and Moonlight Graham. An old man telling a young man about a moment that never came true, and although he may have missed that moment, the way he lived his life since then and the joy he has found in the place he was born and raised has more than made up for it.

“Man, I did love this game. I'd have played for food money. It was the game... The sounds, the smells. Did you ever hold a ball or a glove to your face? I used to love travelling on the trains from town to town. The hotels... brass spittoons in the lobbies, brass beds in the rooms. It was the crowd, rising to their feet when the ball was hit deep. Shoot, I woulda played for nothing” - Shoeless Joe Jackson (played by Ray Liotta)

The American tragedy that is Shoeless Joe could make you cry. A man who played the game like none other, swindled due a combination of his shallow intellect and bully teammates. Joe Jackson hit .375 in the compromised 1919 World Series, and yet after, he was banned from baseball forever, returning to his hometown of Greenville, South Carolina where he died in obscurity. A giant of his time, think Mike Trout, banished from participating in the one and only thing he knew how to do - play baseball. An American tragedy.

The Sandlot

“Remember kid, there’s heroes and there’s legends. Heroes get remembered but legends never die; follow your heart kid, and you’ll never go wrong.” - The Babe

What else can you say? Heroes and Legends - we all strive to be both.

Pride of The Yankees

“Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth” - Lou Gehrig (played by Garry Cooper)

If you don’t know this one, shame on you. Lou Gehrig, the iron horse, a man who was just as gutsy and steadfast in the face of death as he was within the white lines, crippled by an awful disease. Here he delivers his famous farewell, his eulogy, thanking the fans for what they had given him, and they they cried because he gave them so much. Gary Cooper was the only man who could do him justice.

-J.H