A shortstop/second baseman love story and 9 other baseball movies we're anxiously anticipating

By Mike Bertha

November 21, 2014

Now that everyone on the planet has seen the new Hunger Games (twice, probably), we can call turn our attention toward anxiously anticipating the theatrical release of other upcoming blockbusters. And, since this is the offseason and we'll take our baseball fix wherever we can get it, we turned to IMDB to learn about the baseball movies waiting on the horizon and whoo boy are there some gems.

Slider

Due out next month, Slider stars Jack Falahee (Connor from How to Get Away With Murder, if you're into that sort of thing) as a high school baseball star who has to face reality when his older brother is paroled from prison.

The Sons of Summer

Rupland is a fictional mining town in middle America where the blue collar citizens play on the diamond as hard as they work beneath the surface.

Three brothers battle through death, decline and war in the baseball-obsessed town of Rupland.

World Series Champion pitcher Steve Edlefsen (2012 Giants) and Hall of Famer Edgar Martinez are "sports coordinators" on the film and Scott Patterson aka Mike McGreavy from Little Big League stars as "Coach." Sons of Summer is due out in September of 2015.

Keeper of the Pinstripes

Much like Yankee Stadium in the film itself, it seems that production of Keeper of the Pinstripes in haunted. Way back in 2009, Josh Lucas reportedly signed on to play the late Thurmon Munson to Jeff Garlin's Babe Ruth in a story about a 13-year-old boy who trespasses onto the hallowed grounds in the Bronx to discover Yankees legends emerging from an office in the stadium.

A group of investors filed a lawsuit claiming they were defrauded out of the money they sank into the project. The Yankees were on board way back in 2008 and YES ran a short segment previewing the film. It's currently listed as being "in development" on IMDB.

The Magic Season

If Keeper of the Pinstripes didn't have you all giddy about a return to '90s baseball movie greatness, maybe you'll hop on that badwagon for The Magic Season. Set to star a youngster named Wyatt Turner, The Magic Season is the tale of a struggling semi-pro baseball team that finds an old equipment bag filled with stuff used by the 1927 Yankees. Suddenly, their season turns around because of course it does. It sounds like a cross between Disney's The Jersey and Major League. So, yeah, we're more than a little excited about this project.

The Dreyfus Affair

This is the actual plot description listed on IMDB:

During the race for the World Series, Randy Drefyus [sic] - the handsome, married, spectacularly talented shortstop for the Los Angeles Valley Vikings - discovers he's fallen in love with the team's second baseman.

The film is actually an adaptation of the 1993 Peter Lefcourt novel of the same name. It too has struggled in the development stage as a number of A-list celebrities -- including Garth Brooks (for real) -- were all interested in adapting it for the screen.

The Dreyfus affair began with the publication of Lefcourt's novel - a laugh-out-loud tale about a ballplayer named Randy Dreyfus who is caught smooching his teammate in a Neiman-Marcus dressing room. Among the Hollywood heavy hitters who called about optioning the book were Streisand, Jodie Foster, and most bizarre of all, country star Garth Brooks. ''He wanted to change the whole story,'' says Lefcourt. ''He wanted Randy to be heterosexual but have great compassion for gay ballplayers. I politely passed on that.'' (Brooks' producing partner Lisa Sanderson explains: ''Garth felt it made the message even stronger.'')

Disney reportedly went back and forth on the project a few times before it began collecting dust in someone's drawer.