This List Isn’t Exactly the Greatest of All Time

Sports Illustrated turns 50 in 2004, and the magazine is so excited about the prospect, it has started the party a year early. SI is 49 and counting, but 50 is the number in play here, which helps explain the magazine’s weekly tributes to the top sporting figures from each state -- coincidentally, there are 50 -- and last week’s staff-selected “50 Greatest Sports Movies of All Time.”

Really. The greatest sports movies of all time. Fifty of them. Before you can turn the page, you realize what an exercise in futility this is, kind of like trying to rank the 50 greatest Tampa Bay Devil Rays, or the 50 greatest Cincinnati Bengal quarterbacks.

The dictionary defines “great” as being “remarkable in magnitude, degree or effectiveness ... markedly superior in character or quality.” As in better than OK. As in better than pretty good. I would place the number of truly “great” sports movies closer to 10 than 50, but “Raging Bull” and “When We Were Kings” hadn’t been filmed when Sports Illustrated turned 10 in 1964, so the magazine waited four decades and decided to pad.

“Any Given Sunday” made SI’s list. Need I say more? All right: So did “Remember the Titans.” SI acknowledged the corn syrup that clogs the veins of “Field of Dreams,” but still propped it up at No. 38 because, well, somehow we have to get to 50.

The whole assignment reminded me of Gene Mauch’s line about spring training cut-down day. Some of the teams Mauch managed were so short of major league talent, he said the hard part wasn’t cutting the squad down to size -- that was easy, actually. The hard part, according to Mauch, was trying to get the roster up to 25.

In order to flesh out a full 50, SI ends its list with “Best In Show.” I’d never thought to categorize Christopher Guest’s hilarious take on dog shows as a sports movie, but USA network does cover the Westminster Kennel Club dog show, and ESPN airs the highlights. By that measuring stick, I guess “Best In Show” qualifies ... so where is “Bowling For Columbine” on this list?

Taking it a step further, if “Best In Show” qualifies for inclusion in your poll, and your poll has “Bull Durham” first and “Best In Show” 50th, you might want to consider a recount. Or a quick 180. I’d rather watch Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara -- anywhere, anytime, doing anything -- than Kevin Costner swinging at baseballs, but maybe that’s just me.

So I put it to a friend, a big baseball fan, and he shot back faster than a Nuke LaLoosh heater, “The DVD outtakes of ‘Best In Show’ are funnier than anything in ‘Bull Durham.’ ” I checked it out. He’s absolutely right.

A simpler task would be rounding up the worst sports movies of all time, as that’s a mother lode that keeps on giving. SI takes a stab at it but only scratches 10 deep, topping the list with a solid choice most fans can enthusiastically get behind, “Space Jam.”

I beg to differ. “Space Jam” might be a crass waste of time and animators’ ink, but is it really the worst sports movie of all time?

Not as long as “Fever Pitch” holds fort inside the video cabinet.

This is not the Colin Firth “Fever Pitch,” which takes Nick Hornby’s classic book about soccer fanaticism and the meaning of life and grinds it down to a run-of-the-mill romantic comedy.

This is the surreal 1985 movie featuring Ryan O’Neal as a Los Angeles sportswriter assigned to write an “expose” about gambling, who arrives in Las Vegas to get an inside look at “the industry” only to become hopelessly addicted to the dice, the cards and the ponies, ruining his life, his career and 95 minutes’ worth of celluloid in the process.

“You could live a long time,” Janet Maslin wrote in her New York Times review, “and not see anything as awful as ‘Fever Pitch.’ ” What’s it been, 18 years on? Maslin’s succinct and precise lead sentence remains watertight.

“Fever Pitch” is so bad it hurts. The unintended laughs never end -- stomach muscles weren’t made to absorb such violent abuse. It is so bad, it inspired drinking games, usually pegged to a solitary ground rule -- take a swig every time someone says “gamble,” “gambler” or “gambling.”

If the hack dialogue and stiff acting don’t wipe you out before the closing credits, the hops and barley surely will.

I used to mention these games to the late Allan Malamud, who, along with several other local sportswriters, appeared in the movie. Allan didn’t like to hear it. He was proud of his performance and, in fairness, it needs to be said: Allan and the other sportswriters portraying sportswriters turned in the most convincing performances in “Fever Pitch.”

O’Neal played a writer who worked at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner.

Several scenes were filmed at the Herald Examiner office.

Within four years of the theatrical release of “Fever Pitch,” the Herald Examiner folded.

Coincidence? I think not.

Similarly, Richard Brooks, whose list of credits includes “In Cold Blood,” “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and “Looking for Mr. Goodbar,” never directed again after “Fever Pitch.”

Thomas Dolby had a few MTV hits in the early 1980s, but his career was never the same after he’d scored “Fever Pitch.”

In the movie, as he researches his story, O’Neal asks a Vegas casino waitress to describe the feeling when you’re at the table and you know you’ve “got it.”

“Happens suddenly,” she tells him. “Suddenly you know it. Deep down. Gut feeling. This is the day! This time I’m gonna hit it big! I can’t lose!

“Horses! Casinos! Slots! Blackjack! Craps! Football! Give the points! Take the points! Overlays! Underdogs! Bust the bookies! Nothin’ like it, right? Power, right? Damn right! I got it! I am it! A winner! I am the one!”

So is “Fever Pitch.” If you searched long enough, you might find a more hilariously dreadful sports movie.

But I wouldn’t bet on it.