Joe E. Brown loved baseball and he was a very good athletic baseball actor. His son, Joe L. Brown, also later served as General Manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1955 to 1976.
As an avid baseball movie fan, I am moved from time to time to put together some kind of thought collection on the subject. I’ve done a thing or two in the past on the worst actor/athletes in the history of baseball movies. In my book, the three worst are: (1) Anthony Perkins; (2) Ray Milland, and (3) Gary Cooper.
Today I’m simply presenting my 25-man roster for a team based on actors and the positions they played in the movies also noted here. There wasn’t a lot to choose from on the clearly talented side. Please note too that all three of the actors who made my ‘worst athletes” list here also made my 25-man roster. It just goes to show you how deep this problem really is.
On the bright side, my picks for best three actor/athletes are: (1) Kevin Costner; (2) Dennis Quaid; and (3) Charley Sheen. All three of these guys also made the team too.
If you would like to check out the film credits for any of these actor/athletes, or if you would just like to look up anything that has anything to do with any movie ever made, just follow this link to the Internet Movie Data Base and pig out on all the reference facts available there. And if you put together your own player or baseball movie list, it is my hope that you will also post it here as a comment on this subject,
Now here’s my roster for the BASEBALL MOVIE HOLLYWOOD STARS:
C: Kevin Costner (Bull Durham, 1988)
C: James Earl Jones (Bing Long, etc., 1976)
C: Paul Douglas (It Happens Every Spring, 1949)
P: Ray Milland (It Happens Every Spring, 1949)
P: James Stewart (The Stratton Story, 1949)
P: Ronald Reagan (The Winning Team, 1952)
P: Louis Gossett, Jr. (Don’t Look Back, etc. 1981)
P: Dennis Quaid (The Rookie, 2002)
P: Dan Dailey (The Spirit of St. Louis, 1952)
P: Joe E. Brown (Elmer the Great, 1933)
P: Tim Robbins (Bull Durham, 1988)
P: Billy Dee Williams (Bingo Long, etc., 1976)
P: Charley Sheen (Major League, 1989)
1B: Gary Cooper (Pride of the Yankees, 1942)
2B: Frank Lovejoy (The Winning Team, 1952)
3B: John Cusack (Eight Men Out, 1988)
SS: Don Harvey (Eight Men Out, 1988)
INF: Corbin Bernsen (Major League, 1989)
IF/OF: Anthony Perkins (Fear Strikes Out, 1957)
IF/OF: Wesley Snipes (Major League, 1989)
LF: William Bendix (The Babe Ruth Story, 1948)
CF: Tommy Lee Jones (Cobb, 1994)
RF: Robert Redford (The Natural, 1984)
OF: Ray Liotta (Field of Dreams, 1989)
OF: Burt Lancaster (Field of Dreams, 1989)
Manager: Walter Matthau (The Bad News Bears, 1976)
3rd Base Coach: Tom Hanks (A League of Their Own, 1992)
1st Base Coach: John Mahoney (Eight Men Out, 1988)
Bench Coach: William Frawley (Alibi Ike, 1935)
Bull Pen Coach: Rosie O’Donnell (A League of Their Own, 1992)
The Pecan Park Eagle 
April 6, 2012 at 1:15 am |
For manager, I’d go with Vincent Gardenia from Bang the Drum Slowly. I didn’t think much of DeNiro as a catcher, though.