The Ultimate Book of Sports Movies

Let’s start with the observation that the two guys who wrote this book, Ray Didinger and Glen Macnow, are nuts. I base this conclusion on their failure to recognize Slapshot as the best of the sports-related movies. They’ve got it sixth, behind Hoosiers and Rocky, among others.

They’ve also got Caddyshack ahead of Million Dollar Baby and Downhill Racer ahead of The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings, which is just stupid.

On the other hand, they recognize that Raging Bull should be ranked very high – they’ve got it 3rd – and that no movie that deals with the America’s Cup should be rated better than 95th or so.

I suppose that Didinger and Macnow wrote this book to inspire arguments. It certainly will do that. Since they also wrote about a hundred people to ask them to name their favorite sports movies, Didinger and Macnow have some things to tell you about said people, such as that Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb found The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh inspiring. Unless he was putting the authors on…which I certainly hope he was.