Baseball Movie Index

Finally, baseball season has started. And thankfully without that butt-piercing, steroid-swilling, bat-throwing, foul-mouthed moron poisoning our national pasttime. Oh, wait, Clemens is still pitching for the Yankees. Never mind!

Tell me again why nobody’ll hire Barry Bonds?

Anyway, for all you baseball fans out there, here’s a movie index to tell you what kind of season you can expect from your favorite team.

AL East: Mammoth Pictures – big-budget blockbusters and proud of it
Yankees: Titanic. The most expensive team of their time, masterminded by an egomaniac, and still doomed to hit an iceberg and sink short of their goal. Consider yourselves blessed to live to bear witness to the spectacle.
Blue Jays: La Vie en Rose. Yeah, I don’t know what it means either. Nor do I know why Toronto still has a baseball team, unless it’s so MLB can get cheaper meds for their players. That, I could understand.
Red Sox: The Godfather Trilogy. In their quest to overcome the hated Yankees, they’ve turned into them. And the third Godfather movie sucked, just like the third time the Red Sox win the World Series will suck mightily as well. I hope they win 172 games in a row then choke away the World Series.
Orioles: A Beautiful Mind. Not only was John Nash way more sane than Peter Angelos, but I hear Russell Crowe swings a mean bat, too. Or at least a mean telephone.
Rays: Friday the 13th Part 10: Jason Goes to Boy Scout Camp. Just as pointless as the previous seasons, but without the thrill of being new.

AL Central: Miracle Studios. If it’s a hit, it’s a Miracle!
White Sox: 10,000 BC. Which coincidentally is the era when Ozzie Guillen formed his opinions about women, gays, and the right way to play the game.
Indians: Birth of a Nation. Come on, Cleveland, there’s a plot in the mascot graveyard next to Chief Knockahoma for Chief Wahoo. All you gotta do is throw him in.
Twins: Quiz Show. Because at least when a crooked game show fools you, you don’t get levied for a giant new tax to aggrandize a tight-fisted billionaire who sells off your best players.
Royals: Halloween 9: Michael Myers Retires. Because no matter how many fading stars and new young talent you collect, some projects are doomed to failure before they even begin.
Tigers: Thank You for Smoking. Jim Leyland: guaranteeing profits for Altria in the greater Detroit area since 2006.

AL West: Indy Movies: Doing it our way even when it fails.
Angels: Shakespeare in Love. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. But a team that claims to be in two cities at once is not so sweet. I believe the residents of this region know which city the team stadium is in. Do the players?
Mariners: No Country for Old Men. The award-winning film beloved by critics that nobody sees and few fans feel passionately about.
Athletics: Sliding Doors. Is anybody besides me starting to think that the whole Moneyball thing is way oversold, Billy Beane isn’t a genius, and the A’s don’t know something about winning the World Series? Or is that a minority opinion? It sure seems like pure random chance might explain their (now long-past) successes.
Rangers: My Left Foot. Let’s just say Rangers pitchers can really empathize with a guy who doesn’t have the use of his arms. Unfortunately, so can Rangers defenders, who are used to watching the ball sail overhead.

NL East: Corporate Pictures, a division of Starched Shirt International
Braves: Raging Bull. I tell you, they could’ve been a contender. But they weren’t.
Mets: Star Wars Episodes I-III. Big budget? Check. Top stars? Check. Great expectations? Check. Inexplicable collapse when it matters? Check. Hated by fans more than Jar-Jar? You better believe that’s a check.
Phillies: Cloverfield. But are the Phillies the monster or the plucky hipsters trying to escape New York without being killed? Trick question! Of course they’re the Statue of Liberty.
Marlins: 300. How can a team that knows it’ll be cut to pieces at season’s end win the World Series over and over again? No, really, this fascinates me. They know they’ll be chopped up like a neighbor at Hannibal Lecter’s dinner party, but they still beat teams with twice the payroll. How do they do it?
Nationals: Child’s Play 12: Bride of Chucky Returns for Vengeance. You know why congress is so up-in-arms about baseball steroids? Because they’ve been going to Nationals games and haven’t seen any evidence of them from the home team.

NL Central: Blue Collar Films: Beer, Babes, and Brawls
Cardinals: All the Right Moves. When I was nine our hippie neighbors took my older brother, me, and their three children to this movie. Afterwards we accidentally left the 7-year-old behind at the theater because we were all in a daze after seeing Lea Thompson’s tits. She was the first naked woman I had ever seen, and I knew from that moment on that I was firmly heterosexual despite Tom Cruise’s best efforts waving his little dingle at me. What does this have to do with the Cardinals? Nothing; I just wanted an excuse to tell that anecdote.
Brewers: 2 Fast 2 Furious 2. They still play baseball in Milwaukee? Get out! I thought they just had sausage races and cheep beer.
Reds: In the Valley of Elah. Just like the obligatory Hollywood anti-war movie, the Reds are essentially unwatchable. And also like the obligatory Hollywood anti-war movie gets an Oscar nod, they are guaranteed an all-star. Nobody said life was fair.
Cubs: Basic Instinct. If any team is preparing to stab their beloved fans to death with an ice pick, it’s this one.
Astros: Dumb and Dumberer. I know it saves a syllable when sportscasters say stros instead of ass-troes. But it makes them sound like ass-hoes when they do it. And not ho in the “Elliot Spitzer jonesing for one in detox” way, but in the “I hope you fall in one and never climb back out way” way.
Pirates: Leprechaun 5: Leprechaun in Space. To get people to buy Pirates tickets, you can’t just kiss the Blarney stone; you have to take a Blarney enema.

NL West: Arthouse Crap: because you only watch to score with goth chicks
Rockies: Lady in the Water. You know how every M. Knight Shamalyan film has the stupid twist ending that makes you want to hunt him down and give him a wedgie until he refunds your money for wasting your time? I’m sure Rockies fans felt that way after the World Series.
Diamondbacks: The Mummy. The ancient curse once again rears his ugly head and takes aim at all that is dear to you. Yes, Randy Johnson was aiming at your crotch.
Giants: Waiting for Godot. Baseball season is interminably long, they’ll spend the whole time talking about somebody who isn’t there, and attendees will feel ripped off when it’s all over.
Dodgers: The Shootist. You think that the old man is finished? You wouldn’t be the first person to make that mistake.
Padres: Man without a Face. Not only are they a faceless team, they’re way down here at the end of the list and I’m tired. So this is what they get. What, you expected a big finish?

[Update: I fixed the title of 21 to Quiz Show, because I'm an idiot and misremembered the name and didn't double-check it. I didn't bother to come up with anything better for the Padres, though, since nobody reads this far into my mammoth posts anyways.]