Baseball in America: Films

History was made in 1947, when Jackie Robinson broke the professional baseball race barrier to become the first African American MLB player of the modern era. 42 tells the life story of Robinson and his history-making signing with the Brooklyn Dodgers under the guidance of team executive Branch Rickey.

Based on the real-life scandal of 1919, the film tells the story of eight baseball players who plan to throw games for money, and the scorn and anger the scheme earned them.

A dramatization of the life of Jackie Robinson, the African American baseball great whose debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers ended a nearly-sixty year era of segregation in professional baseball, from childhood to his major league baseball career.

It is an epic overflowing with heroes and hopefuls, scoundrels and screwballs. It is a saga spanning the quest for racial justice, the clash of labor and management, the transformation of popular culture, and the unfolding of the national pastime. Here is the story of a nation at work and play. Experience it in ten thrilling "innings" from master storyteller and award-winning filmmaker Ken Burns.

The game of baseball continues to reflect the complicated country that created it. Players and owners wage a battle over money and power; Cal Ripken becomes the game's new Iron Man; sluggers Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds do things that have never been done before; the Yankees build a dynasty, while their arch rivals, the Red Sox, stage the greatest comeback in history. In September of 2001, baseball offers the hope that things will one day return to normal.

Tells of the story of Jack Roosevelt Robinson, a sharecropper's son who elevated an entire race and country when he broke Major League Baseball's color barrier in 1947. The film illuminates Robinson's place as a leader and icon of the civil rights movement whose exemplary life and aspirational message of equality continues to inspire generations of Americans. Includes interviews with family members and rarely-seen photographs and film footage.

A look at the life and career of baseball player Hank Greenberg, the first Jewish superstar in American professional sports.

The history of the Negro Leagues is often a forgotten part of baseball history, and despite its popularity and wealth of talent was not well documented. The film sheds light on this period and shows how it laid the groundwork for today's African-American players in Major League Baseball. Includes footage from the 1920 through the 1950s.

Pays tribute to the many topflight players from the Negro Leagues in baseball when players were denied stardom by the color line.

A complex and entertaining portrait of Ted Williams who was as obsessive as he was talented, the documentary reveals his complicated relationships with family and friends and explores the impact he has had on the current generation of MLB stars. Features Bob Costas, Wade Boggs, Roger Angell and Joey Votto. Narrated by Jon Hamm.

The California Angels are a struggling baseball team praying to win a pennant. Their luck changes as their biggest fan, 11-year-old Roger, begins giving the coach tips from a real live angel. The team not only climbs back into the pennant race, but learns to believe in themselves.

Starring the original Broadway cast, this is the musical adaptation of the novel 'The Year The Yankees Won The Pennant'. A Washington Senators fan sells his soul to the devil to become a great baseball player and to help his favorite team win the pennant.

Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) hears a voice, followed by a brief vision of a baseball field. He believes that if he builds a baseball diamond in his cornfield, Shoeless Joe Jackson from the infamous 1919 Chicago "Black" Sox will return to play baseball. By being willing to take a chance, Ray gets a second time up at bat in life.

An aging baseball pitcher, faced with the breakup of a relationship with his girlfriend, makes the most important decision of his life during the course of his last game.

In 1943, a washed-up ballplayer is hired to coach in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League while the male pros are at war. Reluctant at first, he finds himself drawn back into the game by the heart and heroics of his team. Based on a true story.

Minor league baseball team South Carolina Buzz consisting of likable misfits is preparing for the match with the arrogant champions the Minnesota Twins.

A once-promising baseball player on his way to stardom in the big leagues, finds his dreams shattered when a mysterious woman and a silver bullet end his career prematurely. Sixteen years later, armed with his childhood bat "Wonderboy," he comes back to baseball, joins the roster of the lowly New York Knights to see if he can overcome physical pain and the nefarious forces around him to lead his team to the pennant.

When the cast is removed from his severely broken arm, a clumsy 12-year-old is shocked to find his arm has become a 100 mile-per-hour thunderbolt, and is signed as ace pitcher for the Chicago Cubs.

Fifth-grader Scotty Smalls has just moved into town with his parents. The local kids call him a Dork because he can't even throw a baseball. That changes when the leader of the neighborhood gang recruits him to play on the nearby sandlot field. It's the beginning of a magical summer of baseball, wild adventures, first kisses, and fearsome confrontations with the dreaded Beast and its owner who live behind the left field fence.

Miguel 'Sugar' Santos is a talented Dominican baseball player who longs to break into the American big league and earn the money needed to support his impoverished family. He is a talented pitcher who might just have what it takes to earn a prized spot on a Major League Baseball team. Before that happens he'll have to prove his worth in the minor leagues.