In honor of the World Series, here’s a list of the top five baseball films. Since the dawn of film, America’s past-time has gone hand-in-hand with the media, creating some of the best films in the past ninety years. Here’s five worth your time.

The Pride of the Yankees

 Based on the true story of the Iron Horse, Lou Gehrig, “The Pride of the Yankees” recounts the story of his legendary career and his legendary love.  It’s a film that manages to blend the heart of the game with the heart of a man who never let life break him. The clip below is the famous “Luckiest man alive” speech, recounted in the film (which features appearances by his Yankee teammates), filmed only three years after his death.

A League of Their Own

In “A League of Their Own,” Tom Hanks plays a drunken, washed-up curmudgeon coaching an all girl baseball team, which took ahold of the baseball world while the men went and fought during World War II. A fictional story, based on real events, follows the story of two sisters as they enter the All Girl Baseball League. Also starring Madonna, Geena Davis and Rosie O’Donnell, the film combines comedy and drama with a flourish and never looses sight of the amazing story that was almost forgotten.

The Natural

Robert Redford and his magical bat team up in “The Natural,” which tells the ’life-story’ of Roy Hobbs, a man of integrity who battles through failure to finally achieve success in one short season when he is thirty-five.  The film is a triumphant story, characterized by the ups and downs that epitomizes the best in sports films.

 Damn Yankees

Baseball and musicals aren’t, at face value, two things that go together. Yet “Damn Yankees,” a musical-comedy, tackles baseball. The film tells the Faustian tale of Joe Boyd, a huge fan of the Washington Senators, who makes a pact with the devil to sell his soul and leave wife his wife, in order to become Joe Hardy, the young slugger for the Washington Senators and beat the dominating Yankees. 

61*

In the 1961 baseball season, Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris entered into a heated battle to break the Babe’s home run record. “61*” tells the behind the scenes story of the the outsider,  Maris, and the fan-favorite, Mantle. Backlogged by inner demons, personal battles, fan friction and politics, the HBO film delves inside the diamond, to explore the truth behind the legend.