25 best sports movies, ranked by the dust in your eye

14. Hardball (2001)

Directed by Brian Robbins
Starring Keanu Reeves, Diane Lane, and John Hawkes

To reiterate, this list is not comprised entirely of sports movies that are generally considered to be great, or even good. It’s a rundown of sports movies that have the effect bring with you to tears. For that reason, undeniable classics of the genre like Bull Durham, Major League, Ali, Caddyshack, and Slapshot are absent. And why films like the critically mauled and financially unsuccessful weepie Hardball merit inclusion.

In one of the more baffling casting choices in recent Hollywood history, the film stars Keanu Reeves as a degenerate gambler who is forced to coach an underperforming inner-city baseball team. To say that Reeves feels out of place in significant understatement. The cognitive dissonance that permeates the film is worsened by the fact that the team Reeves coaches are full of children who seem impossibly precocious given the conditions. And despite having a premise that has been used effectively in dozens of other better films, Hardball’s plot is needlessly complicated by a series of ridiculous third act contrivances.

Still, in spite of its many flaws, the film contains one of the more effective gut punches in sports movie history. Predictably, Reeves’ coach molds his ragtag group into a team capable of contending for a regional championship. However, in the run-up to the big game, the team’s mascot, a likable and obnoxious kid named G-Baby (DeWayne Warren) is killed in a drive-by shooting. The suddenness and inexplicable tragedy of the character’s death is both totally unearned and irrefutably effective at getting the viewer to start blinking back tears.