Top 7 Sports Movie Moments

The Top 7 has never done an overall “best sports movie” list.  It’s probably one of the things that people feel most passionate about.  For the record, Hoosiers would be #1, and Bull Durham wouldn’t come close to sniffing the list.  And “The Sandlot” might, especially if you could chop off that ending. 

Since my taste in movies is a bit off (watch the same 30 movies hundreds of times each), I’d rather stick with related topics, like sports movies that have animals as a main character, for instance.   Ed, for one, featured Matt Leblanc and a monkey playing baseball.  Outstanding, outstanding motion picture.  However, for this week, I’ll give the “best moments in sports movies” a shot.  These moments have to be ones that give you chills.  It can’t go to a moment that’s funny or simply meaningful.  They have to be ones that get you hyped up.  Realism gives it a bit more meaning too.  Here goes the shot.

7. Jimmy comes back, Hoosiers

When vengeance is involved, it increases a moment’s value exponentially.  And since Coach Dale had to deal with dozens of d-bag locals in Hickory who then thought that Jimmy was only going to play if “they got rid of him,” it made it even sweeter that if Dale goes, Jimmy goes.  If you haven’t stood up and cheered at least once in your life after the votes are torn up and it is announced that “coach stays!,” you possibly do not have a soul. 

The closest this has come to in real-life is probably Jordan sending in the “I’m back” fax in 1995.  At my high school the next day there was a guy running up and down the main hallway waving a Jordan jersey screaming “He’s back!  He’s back!”

6. Rudy’s sack, Rudy

OK, the moment was cool and does give you chills.  But Rudy is the most overrated sports movie of all-time.  First off, the chick from the Notre Dame booster club is one of the most annoying people in movie history.  She finds out that Rudy isn’t a Notre Dame student at a party and boots him from the boosters on the spot? 

Rudy has the least supportive family in history.  Why in the world would his dad so adamantly refuse to attend Notre Dame games in person when he can?  And why is his brother talking so much trash about Rudy going back to school?  What’s wrong with these people? 

And in the final scene, right after the sack, when they show Rudy’s dad and brother, they aren’t even looking in the same direction.  Was one of them looking at something else?  Not a good movie.  A real-life comparison would be J-Mac’s six threes, except that was way cooler, especially within the first month after it happened.

5. Rocky beats Drago, Rocky IV

Anytime that a sports movie doubles up as a patriotic moment at the expense America’s enemy, it’s cracking the top 7.  A real-life moment, if you would consider counting wrestling moments as real life, is any time that Hulk Hogan defeated a foreign wrestler and proceeded to wave around the American flag for the next 20 minutes.  You can watch Rocky IV 6,000 times and still be convinced that Rocky isn’t going to pull out the final fight.  Perhaps that’s not a good thing.

4. Daniel’s crane kick, Karate Kid

If there is a current cause to take to the streets for, it has to be to get the re-make of the Karate Kid from happening.  Why even take the chance of messing with perfection?  What if it ruins the original (a genuine concern)?  You wouldn’t think of re-making Mmm Bop, would you? 

Some things need to remain in their original form forever, and Karate Kid is one of them.  It is a crime against humanity that this is going to happen.  As far as a real-life equivalent, there isn’t one to this ending.  Nothing this improbable has ever occurred.

3. Roy Hobbs’ homer, The Natural

Of course, you could have said that about Hobbs’s bomb before Kirk Gibson basically did the exact same thing in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series.  Only that Hobbs didn’t hit his off of possibly the most unhittable guy of the last 25 years.

2. Jimmy’s last shot, Hoosiers

How much of a letdown would it have been if they would have run Coach Dale’s alternate play and Earl would have taken the final shot?  In cases like that, he probably misses, and South Bend ends up winning in overtime by seven points, five of them by Boyle. 

A real-life case for that situation would be Scottie Pippen sitting out after Phil Jackson called Toni Kukoc’s number against the Knicks.  For Jimmy’s shot, it would have to be any of Michael Jordan’s game-winners—every single person knew who was getting the ball, and that he was going to make the shot, it was just a matter of where he took it from, whose face it was in, and whether it would rattle around the rim first.  Chalk it up in the Least Surprising News section with Sammy Sosa’s positive steroids test in 2003.

1. The last play of Major League

You could almost extend it to the entire last game of Major League because Pedro Cerrano’s home run was pretty awesome too.  Everything about the last play was perfect though—a great, real announcer calling it in Bob Uecker, a realistic looking runner in Wesley Snipes/Willie Mays Hayes, and a perfectly executed slide-and-tag combo.  The celebration afterwards was very realistic too.  Last year in Colorado, Albert Pujols was stealing third with one out and Rick Ankiel grounded out to second.  Pujols scored the eventual game-winning run after the out at first was recorded thanks to a great slide.  It was the most eerily Major Leaguey moment of all-time.  It always comes back to Pujols.

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