Sylvester Stallone’s Driven is the easy winner for Worst Sports Movie - Auto Racing Division in my book. It was supposed to be a Formula One movie but ended up being based in American IndyCar world instead.
Indeed– I had to see it with my brother one time, and it’s one picture I’ll never have on physical media.
You are quite welcome! Glad I could introduce you to a little-known film that deserves more recognition than it typically gets in North America.
There is also the 1996 chimp baseball film Ed. That does not involve an actual chimp.
John Goodman’s Babe Ruth movie was pretty terrible.
It was– at one point, IIRC, Goodman’s Ruth character, as a pitcher, cracks to the HP ump something like “You better get your _____ checked”; the ump asked him what he said, Ruth repeated it verbatim, and the ump threw Ruth out of the ballgame (that’s how I remember it going).
Surprisingly, IMDB doesn’t seem to list any real American sports movies in its 100 worst films ever.
#43 is the 2007 Lil’ Wayne vehicle, Who’s Your Caddy?, but that appears to be a slobs vs. snobs comedy set at a country club, not primarily a movie about golf.
#46 is the 2002 remake of Rollerball. There are also multiple “Hunger Games” parodies.
#49, Jiu Jitsu, is one of several martial arts films on the list, but none of them focus on actual organized martial arts competitions. (This one’s got aliens!)
#53, Kazaam, isn’t a sports movie, but certainly in the running for worst movie ever starring a RL athlete.
#69, Liger, is a Bollywood film about MMA.
#84, Goal! 3:Taking On The World, set at the 2006 World Cup, was the last and, apparently, least, in a British trilogy about three pro footballer friends.
Babe Ruth was a larger than life character, and that scene actually reflects a crazy real story.
On June 23, 1917, while starting for the Red Sox, Ruth walked the first batter.
Enter reliever Ernie Shore. Morgan, the guy Ruth walked, gets thrown out trying to steal second base.
Then Shore retires the next 27 batters.
A perfect game. Except for Ruth’s walk.
So, in reality, a combined no hitter. One where Babe Ruth contributed a walk and a fight with the umpire.
The problem with John Goodman’s Babe movie was that Goodman - god love him - was a fat man, and not young, and he was playing a big strong athlete, and a guy in his teens and 20s.
Plus, he wasn’t left handed, so his swing was very awkward and weak.
I’ve personally always thought that the 1920s Yankees (obviously featuring Ruth, along with Lou Gehrig) would make for a really interesting Netflix type series.
I have no idea who’d play Ruth. He was a large man - Ruth was 6’2” and listed about 215 pounds. Granted, he had his benders, and probably got well above that weight, but it’s not fair to portray him as merely overweight.
A great story, but one nit: 26 batters.
Yup. The guy whom Ruth had walked was then thrown out trying to steal second base.
The thing about Ruth that would be hard to recreate are his legs. Ruth had exceptionally skinny legs, which looked at times like they couldn’t support his body weight. Ruth’s accomplishments as a ballplayer are even more astounding when you consider how awkward a physique he had.
Best of the Best. I say it counts as a sports movie as they are competing in a sanctioned international tournament. Sure, it’s a tournament where people can kill other people, lose an eye, and still compete, but hey, Ahmad Rashad is the announcer, so it’s all cool.
I maybe watched the first 15 minutes of BASEketball before I got up and went to go fold laundry or something, leaving my then boyfriend to laugh at all the idiotic jokes by himself.
I liked it. 66% on Rotten Tomatoes, which seems about right, and Sandra Bullock won Best Actress (maybe a stretch). Certainly some truth bending to the real story (not unexpected), but some kernals of truth to the real thing, though, had some legit feel-good elements.
Lots of Hollywood actors are that big. Chris Pratt is easily that big, and of course he actually did play a professional ballplayer (whom he really does resemble.) He’d have to gain some fat. I can think of a zillion big, tall Hollywood actors. John Krasinski’s a big guy. Joel Kinnaman is a big guy. Chris Hemsworth. LIAM Hemsworth. David Harbour. All those guys are too old to play an MLB player now but you get the idea.
The problem is that Babe Ruth was, well, ugly, which can be a little harder to find. You can see why they picked John Goodman, even though Goodman was way too old and fat; his face fits Babe Ruth’s very distinctive appearance. Then you need to find someone who actually can look like they know how to throw a ball and swing a bat, both lefthanded. It wouldn’t be easy to cast.
In The Sandlot, he was played by character actor Art LaFleur, who wasn’t a bad likeness:
To pile on about The Babe:
One of the most interesting things about Babe Ruth was that he, perhaps the most iconic slugger in baseball history, started as a pitcher. Not as in he pitched a few games in the minors, but as in he was one of the best pitchers in Major League Baseball, won games in the World Series, and if he hadn’t switched, likely could have made the Hall of Fame as a pitcher.
The movie all but ignores that–if memory serves, in the only scene where he pitches, he doesn’t pitch because he gets in a fight with the umpire.
I can handle when Hollywood bowdlerizes a story to make it more interesting, but not when they deliberately make it less interesting.
They also showed him at about 10 years old not knowing how to play baseball.
At that point in his life he was playing against kids who were 12-14 and beating the hell out of them.
As should be entirely unsurprising, he was an elite player from the get go, which of course is what you would expect. Almost all MLB players are exceptional from a very young age.