25 greatest sports movies based on a true story

By the end of Martin Scorsese’s masterful “Raging Bull,” you feel like you’ve gone a full fifteen rounds with its pugilist protagonist, Jake LaMotta. The former middleweight champion is a brawler in and out of the ring; he beats his wife, his brother and anyone who triggers his violent temper. It’s a bruising portrait of a monster that’s all the more disturbing because Robert De Niro, in the performance of a lifetime, resists caricature. This beast exists (still, in 2017, at the age of ninety-six).

No list like this one would be complete without "Hoosiers." Prior to 1986, you’d have to be an Indiana native to know the story of Milan High School’s David-vs-Goliath upset of Muncie Central in the 1954 state basketball championship. Now everyone knows at least a semi-fictionalized version of the tale thanks to David Anspaugh’s rousing “Hoosiers.” Gene Hackman is at his no-nonsense best as Norman Dale, the new coach of Hickory High’s undersized, undermanned and unathletic basketball team. By preaching fundamentals (“Four passes!”) and winning over the town’s recalcitrant best player (Jimmy Chitwood), Dale guides the Huskers to glory.

John Sayles’s account of the 1919 Black Sox scandal –wherein members of the Chicago White Sox conspired with mobsters to throw the World Series – is a multi-layered tale of greed, revenge, gullibility and tragic ignorance. The players went along with the scheme for a variety of personal reasons, but they were all united in their hatred of cheapskate owner Charles Comiskey. The plight of Shoeless Joe Jackson (played here by D.B. Sweeney), one of the era’s greatest players until he was banned, was later exploited in the fantastical tear-jerker “Field of Dreams.”

The ultimate male weepie. Though Gayle Sayers and Brian Piccolo competed for the same running back position on the Chicago Bears, the men became the best of friends. That bond only grew stronger when Piccolo was diagnosed with cancer. Billy Dee Williams and James Caan are perfectly cast as Sayers and Piccolo in this classic TV movie. If you’re not an emotional sobbing mess by the end of the film, you are an insensate monster.

James J. Braddock was on his way to heavyweight boxing glory before he broke his hand in a 1929 fight against Tommy Loughran. The timing couldn’t have been worse: the country had just been hit by the Great Depression, leaving the otherwise unskilled Braddock working long hours as a longshoreman to support his family. Years later, with the country still struggling, Braddock made an improbable comeback that inspired many a down-on-their-luck American. Russell Crowe plays Braddock as a loveable lug, and is plenty convincing as a hard-hitting heavyweight.

This 2004 film has been overshadowed by the critically acclaimed television show, which is a shame because it’s a terrific, more fact-based adaptation of Buzz Bissinger’s nonfiction account of the 1988 Permian Panthers’ high school football season, which ended in a dramatic defeat to the Dallas Carter Cowboys. The movie embellishes some details for dramatic effect, but it’s a fascinating, infuriating and ultimately heartbreaking portrayal of a decaying Texas town’s unhealthy obsession with a high school sports team.

“Hoosiers” filmmaker David Anspaugh returned to his native Indiana for another underdog story, this one centered on young Rudy Ruettiger’s tenacious efforts to play for his favorite college football team, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. As played by Sean Astin, Rudy’s journey from junior college to Notre Dame is an inspiring story of self-improvement. But it’ll all feel like a hollow victory if he never gets to suit up for one game in a Notre Dame uniform. He gets his wish, and with a little Hollywood embellishment, your living room gets awfully dusty in the movie’s final minutes.

Jimmy Piersall came into the Boston Red Sox organization as a brash young outfielder with a prodigious gift for hitting the baseball. When he began hitting other players (and, in one troubling incident, spanking the four-year-old son of a teammate), his career appeared to be over. Piersall’s struggles with bipolar disorder are given a fairly reductive treatment in Robert Mulligan’s “Fear Strikes Out,” but Anthony Perkins’s portrayal of Piersall is phenomenal (though Piersall later disowned the movie).

Everyone loves a good comeback story, so what could be better than a story about a racehorse that always ran from behind? Based on Laura Hillenbrand’s nonfiction bestseller, “Seabiscuit” is an uplifting tale of overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds to not just win a race, but to rebuild one’s life. As Seabiscuit wins race after race, the horse becomes a symbol of hope for people devastated by the Great Depression.

When the United States Men’s olympic hockey team knocked off the Soviet Union’s highly favored squad, the upset transcended sports. America had just endured a rough decade that included the Vietnam War, stagflation and, stretching into early 1980, the Iran Hostage Crisis. Out of nowhere, a bunch of scrappy college kids came together to topple one of the greatest hockey teams ever assembled. The film is pretty standard inspirational fare, but Kurt Russell’s performance as coach Herb Brooks gives it a loveable hard-nosed kick.

“Today… I consider myself… the luckiest man… on the face of the Earth.” Lou Gehrig’s emotional farewell speech at Yankee Stadium came at the abrupt end of a brilliant sixteen-year career. The New York baseball legend is brought to aw-shucks life by Gary Cooper in this sports movie classic, which celebrates the Iron Horse’s talent, durability and kindness (including Gehrig’s promise, subsequently fulfilled, to smack two homers for a sick child). It’s earnest, corny stuff, but it works.

The 1961 pursuit of Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record gets an entertaining and sentimental revisit by director (and Yankee fan) Billy Crystal in "*61." It’s a surprisingly dramatic story: Mickey Mantle was the fan favorite and heir-apparent to Ruth’s power-hitting pinstripe legacy, while Roger Maris was the low-key opposite of the gregarious, fun-loving Mantle. Maris, of course, broke the record, but the disdain heaped upon him by MLB fans made his historic season a living hell.

Jerry Bruckheimer first applied his glossy commercial aesthetic to inspirational sports dramas with this 2000 film, which stars Denzel Washington as real-life high school football coach Herman Boone. The film leaves no sports movie cliché unused as it depicts Boone’s efforts to integrate the T.C. Williams High School football team. There are no surprises here, but you won’t find an actor better equipped to rattle off a motivational speech than Denzel.

Two different men run for very different reasons. Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross) is a Jewish athlete is out to combat anti-Semitism; Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson) is a devout Christian who runs at God’s “pleasure.” This very British film, set around the 1924 Summer Olympics, was a surprise winner for Best Picture in 1981, and is probably best remembered for Vangelis’ inspirational main theme. It’s a polite crowd pleaser.

Moonshine runner Junior Johnson was headed for a life spent in and out of a jail cell before he found the natural – and legal – outlet for his driving talents in stock car racing. This charmer of a film stars a young Jeff Bridges as a fictionalized version of Junior, but while the biographical details don’t always jibe, the basic contours of Johnson’s rise to racing stardom are accurately depicted. Jim Croce’s “I Got a Name” was written for the film, and subsequently became a hit single.

Michael Mann’s "Ali" goes toe-to-toe with “Raging Bull” as the greatest sports biopic of all time, and, as in boxing, it comes down to a preference of style. “Ali” reflects the personality of its subject: it’s exuberant, meditative, punishing, hilarious, defiant and proud. The film begins with Ali’s improbable defeat of Sonny Liston in 1964 and concludes with his impossible knockout of George Foreman ten years later in Zaire. It’s pure cinema all the way through.

Oakland Athletics’ general manager Billy Beane revolutionized MLB scouting by adopting sabermetrics (i.e. advanced statistics) to measure a player’s potential and value. He also cheesed off a lot of people in the process. Beane’s unconventional approach was the subject of Michael Lewis’s bestseller “Moneyball,” which loosely forms the basis for this hugely entertaining film starring Brad Pitt as Beane and Jonah Hill as his stat-crunching assistant (based on John DePodesta).

Ty Cobb was one of MLB’s greatest and most loathed players. His hitting prowess was unmatched, as was the ferocity with which he attacked the game (and occasionally teammates and, in one unfortunate case, a disabled spectator). Ron Shelton’s biopic couldn’t be more different than his minor league masterpiece “Bull Durham.” It stars Tommy Lee Jones as a late-in-life Cobb attempting to bully his biographer into writing a hagiographic take on his life. It’s a fierce and unsettling film, a corrosive spiritual companion to Scorsese’s “Raging Bull.”

Paul Newman stars in this conventionally told biopic about the rags-to-prison-to-riches life of middleweight champion Rocky Graziano. Graziano overcomes standard boxer adversity (an abusive dad and a youth wasted committing petty crimes) to become a successful prize fighter, but when he is blackmailed into ducking a fight, he loses his license. Robert Wise’s film ends on a triumphant note with Graziano avenging a loss to his rival Tony Hale (and regaining the middleweight title in the process).

In the late 1990s, the studios got Steve Prefontaine fever. Dueling projects about the long-distance runner were greenlit: “Prefontaine” starring Jared Leto, and “Without Limits” with Billy Crudup. The latter is by far the better film, a keenly observed character study of a supremely talented athlete and a visionary track coach, Bill Bowerman (Donald Sutherland), who would go on to co-found Nike. The film concludes with Prefontaine’s fatal 1975 automobile accident, but leaves you with a deep understanding of this one-of-a-kind athlete’s impact on the sport.

Formula 1 racing is a much bigger deal internationally than it is in the United States, so it’s no surprise that this Ron Howard-directed film about the rivalry between drivers James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) and Niki Lauda (Daniel Bruhl) stalled out at the box office. It’s too bad because this is the racing movie “Days of Thunder” tried to be: an exhilarating battle of wills between two men who like to drive really freaking fast.

They don’t come any cornier than this tribute to the coaching genius of Knute Rockne, who turned Notre Dame’s football team into a national powerhouse. Pat O’Brien stars as Rockne, but the film is best remembered for starring Ronald Reagan as Fighting Irish halfback George Gipp. Gipp’s deathbed exhortation to “win just one for the Gipper” sets the stage for maybe the greatest rallying speech in film history.

This 1996 made-for-HBO film remains the only attempt at a fact-based take on Negro League baseball, and works quite well as both entertainment and a primer on the legacy left (and, in too many cases, forgotten) by these players. “Soul of the Game” focuses on Brooklyn Dodgers owner Branch Rickey’s scouting of a black player to break Major League Baseball’s color barrier. Blair Underwood is solid as Jackie Robinson, but the movie belongs to Delroy Lindo as the aging pitcher Satchel Paige and Mykelti Williamson as the boundlessly talented but troubled Josh Gibson.

Bonnie Bedelia stars in this biopic about Shirley Muldowney, the “First Lady of Drag Racing.” It’s a fascinating look into the funny car subculture, which didn’t exactly welcome the ambitious housewife into the sport with open arms. Muldowney overcomes sexism and unwanted sexual advances from competitors and supposed backers on her way to becoming a world champion driver.

Jim Morris was a happily married high school baseball coach who’d long ago given up on his childhood dream of playing in MLB when, after a series of arm surgeries, he discovered he could throw a 98-mph fastball. Morris made a deal with his players: if the team wins their conference, he’ll try out for the majors. Dennis Quaid plays Morris, who impresses enough in the minors to earn a brief stint as a relief pitcher with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. It’s a by-the-numbers inspirational drama, but it hits those numbers with plenty of heart.