Top Five Sports Films

I was listening to Waddle and Silvy this morning on ESPN1000 and Waddle mentioned that his favorite sports film of all time was Hoosiers, which apparently was aired twice on Tuesday night on the Versus network (where you can also find NHL hockey). It made me think - what are my favorite sports-themed films?

I haven't seen a whole bunch of recent movies, or even some older ones like Remember The Titans, so I have to go back a bit. But not too far. I've also not seen some of the old movies like the one about Lou Gehrig or the one about Jimmy Piersall. Anyway, here are my top five:

1. Bull Durham


2. The Natural


3. Hoosiers


4. Slap Shot


5. A League Of Their Own

It's heavy on the baseball movies; if I was to go further, I'd have included Field Of Dreams next, and then probably Breaking Away (the movie about bike racing). I don't know if I could make a list of 10 sports movies, though maybe if I thought about it long enough I could come up with more.

My guilty pleasure is a movie I haven't seen in years: Fast Break. It was a basketball movie starring Gabe Kaplan and a few pro basketball players. It also starred Michael Warren, who was, I believe, a point guard for UCLA and went on to TV stardom in Hill Street Blues. It was silly and probably not particularly well made, but something about it really resonated with me.

I'm purposely avoiding writing about the Black Hawks - after tonight's game perhaps I'll relax a bit about their quest for the cup...