MOVIE RANT: For Love of the Game

Despite serving as a secondary plot to the love story, the baseball aspects of For Love of the Game are pretty accurate. It's the little things, like the Tigers having home and away hats and the time Billy Chapel spends on the bike at Spring Training- that stuff is authentic. Costner's a baseball guy- he knows it's in the details.

One of the most ridiculous, yet usually overlooked, scenes shows John C. Reilly wearing his New Era 59/50 Tigers hat up to Costner's hotel room. You're a Big League catcher and you wear your game hat struttin' around New York City? I stopped wearing my team's game hat in public in Little League, and even then people gave me crap for it. Hey, better the hat than his catcher's helmet forward I guess. (Kinda ridiculous he's even in a movie where he's not screaming "Shake'n'Bake!" or wearing a Chewbacca mask.)

Baseball Movie All-Star Game: Starting Lineups

With all the baseball movies that are out there, I have always wondered which characters are the cream of the fictional crop. Now Ray Kinsella might look up at me and sarcastically ask, “What’s a crop?” – but I digress. Baseball movies often tell the story of an entire team, but each team has their usual cast of superstars, and now is their time to be recognized among baseball’s fictional elite.

I have broken up the All-Stars into two teams, American League and National League- groundbreaking stuff, I know. There is no rhyme or reason behind which team a guy ends up on- there are even teammates that find themselves on opposing sides. I was trying to model a competitive game, and these are the players that I felt gave their squad the best chance to win. Now I must warn you, there will be some snubs, along with some head-scratchers, but that is merely a consequence of baseball movies featuring mainly catchers, pitchers, and outfielders as their stars and main characters- essentially zero middle-infield love.

Also, this list consists of all fictional characters, although I was tempted to place the two main characters from *61 in each team’s cleanup spot.

So without further ado, here are your starting lineups. (We will assume the game is being played at an NL park: no DH's.)