Amateur hours: The best films about non-professional and semi-professional athletes

Okay, so we’ll just come out of the gate with the movie that had us trying to finagle a definition of “semi-professional” that could include “Slap Shot.” This is, perhaps, the best sports movie ever made. The Charleston Chiefs are a minor league hockey team, but the team is barely hanging on, the players are not raking in the cash by any means, and the entire town is mired in Rust Belt economic depression. The guy running the team even takes to selling equipment to bring in a few bucks. “Slap Shot” is a dark, cynical comedy focused on what it is to be an athlete on the margins. It’s great, and it’s so much more than just the Hanson brothers.

How can you be semi-professional when you are playing in the fictional equivalent of the NFL? When you’re replacement players. “The Replacements” is a sports film inspired by when NFL teams used replacement players when NFL players were on strike. That includes Keanu Reeves as Shane “Footsteps” Falco. This is the most feel-good movie ever made about scabs we can recall.

Obviously, movies about youth sports are about non-professionals almost all of the time. Many of them aren’t very good, though (shout out to “Ladybugs”). The original “The Bad News Bears” is worth mentioning for quality and for being a different take on the kids’ sports movie. After all, it’s foul-mouthed, mean-spirited, and doesn’t end on any real note of triumph.

“Breaking Away” is a very good coming-of-age film, but it’s also in a large way a sports movie. Sure, it’s about a cycling race that is really only of note to the city of Bloomington, Indiana, but it’s huge to them! Based around Indiana University’s real Little 500, our protagonists are a group of “townies” who are allowed to enter the race and face collegiate competition.

This movie is half-professional, half-amateur. The premise of “Mystery, Alaska” is that the New York Rangers come to the titular town in a promotional stunt to face a group of local hockey players. Unsurprisingly for a sports dramedy, the amateurs give the pros all they can handle on the ice. The premise calls to mind when the Stanley Cup-holding Ottawa Silver Seven hosted the Dawson City Nuggets. In real life, though, Ottawa won the first game 9-2 and the second game 23-2.

Paul Crewe was a pro. He was a star quarterback in the NFL. When we meet him, though, he’s done as a pro and in the process of getting himself arrested and sent to prison. This gives the vicious, football-crazed warden an idea. What if a team of convicts played a team of prison guards? Well, comedy and violence will ensue, and then there will be a remake starring Adam Sandler decades later.

Hustling at streetball can be lucrative, but it’s certainly not without its perils. One of the seminal sports movies, “White Men Can’t Jump,” features a hustler hustling a hustler, as Woody Harrelson’s Billy puts one over on Wesley Snipes’ Sidney. This gives Sidney the idea that the two should join forces to hustle all over Los Angeles, and the strapped-for-cash Billy agrees. Which probably worked out well for Sidney, because Snipes’ actual basketball abilities were clearly limited.

“Bend It Beckham” managed to be a worldwide sensation, perhaps helped by the fact David Beckham was one of the only soccer players most Americans could name in 2002. A young Keira Knightley plays one of two girls who become friends as they dream of professional soccer careers. The meat of the story is more centered on Jess Bhamra, as she is a British-Indian dealing with the disapproval of her parents.

We believe “A League of Their Own” counts. The women of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League are pros, but during the events of the film they find out that this was a one-off thing to fill the void because of the threat of MLB shutting down while World War II raged on. Thus, the women aren’t really able to make a true career out of playing baseball. That’s our justification. The reason why we wanted “A League of Their Own” on this list is because it’s really good and one of the best sports films ever made.

Well, if we’re talking about non-professional athletes, we have to include “The Mighty Ducks.” This movie, and its sequels, helped popularize hockey with kids of the ‘90s. It also led them to believe the “knuckle puck” was a viable thing to try. The first film is your classic underdog story, but even in the second film Team USA ends up underdogs against the vaunted hockey juggernaut that is Iceland.

In terms of high school sports, “Hoosiers” is often cited as the best of the bunch. Gene Hackman makes a memorable turn as Norman Dale, who takes over as the head coach at Hickory High. Dale helps reenergize the team, as well as the small Indiana town, in leading the team through the season and to the title game in Indianapolis. Although, the bulk of what he did was get Jimmy Chitwood to agree to rejoin the team.

Movies about amateur golfers are few and far between. “Caddyshack” stands tall as one of the most-popular sports comedies full stop, though, so we have that going for us. The slobs vs. snobs comedy may feature a lot of hijinks and raunchy activities, not to mention attempted gophercide, but the climax is a big golf match, and that makes this a sports comedy.

Given that “Miracle” chronicles the most-famous Olympic moment in American history, you likely know the logistics related to how the “Miracle on Ice” came to be. The Soviet Union’s Red Army team was a de facto professional team, but NHLers were not allowed to play in the Olympics in 1980, a fact that would remain true until 1998. Joe Mullen even passed up a chance to play for the U.S. at Lake Placid to sign with the Blues. The Americans were heavy underdogs in the semis when they faced the Soviets. You know the rest.

Is dodgeball a sport? Well, it can be. It’s close enough! It lets us get another fun comedy on this list and spread the sporting love a bit. Plus, the two teams squaring off in “Dodgeball” take it quite seriously. That’s especially true of Ben Stiller’s villainous White Goodman, who of course gets his comeuppance in the end.

Sure, what Diana Nyad did was far from the most-compelling sporting act, but it was impressive. “Nyad” is a biopic that chronicles her lifelong goal of swimming the 110 miles from Cuba to Florida. She finally did it in 2013, at the age of 64. “Nyad” flew under the radar on Netflix for a while, but then both Annette Bening and Jodie Foster both got Oscar nominations for the movie.

The latest addition to this genre is “Eephus.” Named for the famed pitch, it’s a low-key movie about a true love of the game. A bunch of aging baseball lovers have been playing in a league in New England for years, but their stadium is going to be demolished. That leads to reflection, frustration, a desire to go out on a high note, and so much more. It’s the kind of movie in which Bill “Spaceman” Lee has a role. “Eephus” was nominated for best first feature film at Cannes, and reviews have been almost universally positive.