There is a serious debate among knowledgeable people about a very important question: What is the best baseball movie of all time? In my experience the choices often come down to Field of Dreams (starring Kevin Costner and featuring an immortal monologue by James Earl Jones that is guaranteed to bring the hardest-edged person to tears) and Bull Durham (also starring Kevin Costner—I know, I know—and featuring an immortal dialogue with Tim Robbins about the effective use of platitudes in press conferences).

In my own humble opinion, both of these views are misguided. The best baseball movie of all time, hands down, is The Natural, a 1984 adaptation (well, a transformation) of Bernard Malamud’s 1952 debut novel of the same name, starring Robert Redford as the aging wunderkind Roy Hobbs, with an incredible orchestral score by Randy Newman.

My family got our first VCR (that’s video cassette recorder for those who may not remember or never heard of it) when I was seven years old, and I watched The Natural many, many, many times. I probably don’t really need to watch the movie anymore, because the whole thing seems like it lives in my memory. I can see young Roy playing catch at home with his father on their family farm, with Newman’s Coplandesque clarinet playing underneath them. I can visualize the scene in the hospital where Roy tells his childhood sweetheart Iris (Glenn Close) that he’s glad she never sold their family farm down the road from........

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