Recasting nine seminal Nicolas Cage movies with MLB players

Nicolas Cage is a man of many characters and even more hairstyles. While many modern actors are worried more about their #brand, Cage is an actor looking only to bring the most out of the roles he plays -- whether that's through a terrible hairpiece ... 

... or perhaps a bizarre character trait, like ... doing whatever this is and saying "Let's ride."  

Thanks to his many varied styles and traits (but mostly hairstyles), the actor is a perfect double for a number of MLB ballplayers. Which, of course means that, with Hollywood's ever-changing ways of recasting and rebooting movies, well, there's a good chance that will actually happen.

Here are nine of our suggestions: 

deGrom Air

Log line: Jacob deGrom plays Cameron Poe, a Major League hurler only looking to travel with the rest of his Mets teammates to their next destination. The only problem: The flight is doubling as a prisoner transport vehicle because, I dunno, America ran out of planes or something. When the cons take over the flight, it's up to deGrom and his baseball teammates to fight back and secure the plane -- so they can play the Dodgers the next evening. 

Sample dialogue:  "Put ... the ... baseball ... back ... in the box." 

The Knuckleball's Apprentice

Logline: Master knuckleballer R.A. Dickey must find and train Merlin's descendent (after all, Merlin was the first to ever throw a knuckleball) to help defeat the dark sorcereress: Morgan La Fastball. 

Sample dialogue:  "This is the Merlin Circle. Or 'pitching mound.' It focuses your energy. Helps you master new pitches. It is where you will learn the Art .. of pitching. Step inside, you leave everything else behind. Once you enter, there is no going back."

Raising Arizona

Logline: Desperate for new talent to join the Blue Jays farm system, Jack Murphy kidnaps one of the Arizona D-backs' prospects -- oddly enough, named Todd Arizona -- to place into the Toronto system. It's a wacky comedy of errors as Blue Jays fans and prospect hounds fall in love with the new farmhand despite a cadre of scouts, GMs and, yes, the police hot on their trail. 

Sample dialogue: "This whole dream, was it wishful thinking? Was I just fleeing reality like I know I'm liable to do? But me and the Blue Jays, we can be good. And it seemed real. It seemed like us and it seemed like, well, our home at the Rogers Centre. If not Toronto, then a land not too far away. Where all baseball players are strong and wise and capable and all prospects are happy and beloved. I don't know. Maybe it was Montreal."

Pitch Angry

Sample dialogue: "I don't pitch. I pitch ... angry." (I don't know if this was actually in the film or not. I imagine it must have been though, right?) 

The Rock

Logline: OK, so know how "The Rock" was about Nicolas Cage's character, Dr. Stanley Goodspeed, being a chemical weapons specialist who, for some reason, has to fight military insurgents? Well, in this one, Alcatraz Island has been overtaken by an army of baseball traditionalists and Billy Beane must storm in with his bevy of advanced analytics and interesting ways to assemble winning baseball teams by exploiting inefficiencies. With the militants bunting like crazy and yelling about the importance of RBIs, Beane easily sweeps them aside. 

Sample dialogue: "Look, I'm just a general manager. Most of the time, I work in a little office and lead a very uneventful life -- except around July 31. Then I'm very busy. I drive a Volvo, a beige one. But what I'm dealing with here is one of the most deadly substances the earth has ever known, so what say you cut me some FRIGGIN' SLACK?"

Adapitchtation

"Adapitchtation" follows the struggles of Matt Cain as he's been tasked with turning Susan Orlean's "The Orchid Thief" into a breaking ball. Struggling to figure out which finger grip to use, or how one turns a novel into a pitch, Cain's twin brother (who none of us ever knew about) shows up and seems to have no problem doing it. It causes the Giants hurler a great amount of stress. 

Sample dialogue: "We open on Matt Cain. Tall, lanky, strong, standing on a San Francisco pitcher's mound, across from Giancarlo Stanton, a hulking, statuesque slugger. Cain, trying to get a starting assignment, wanting to strike him out, sweats profusely. The tall, lanky Cain paces furiously around the field. He speaks into his handheld tape recorder, and he says: 'Matt Cain. Tall, lanky, veteran, stands on a mound opposite Giancarlo Stanton.'"

The Wicker Man

Logline: Brian McCann, by virtue of already owning a catcher's mask, gets sent to some island where he's tortured with bees, I guess? I'm not going to lie -- I've never seen this one. Something tells me that even if I had, I wouldn't really understand it.

Sample dialogue: "OH, NO! NOT THE BEES! NOT THE BEES! AAAAAHHHHH! OH, THEY'RE IN MY EYES! MY EYES! AAAAHHHHH! AAAAAGGHHH!" 

The Weather Man

Logline: Playing against type, Mike Trout stars as beleaguered weatherman Dave Spritz. But while the original film dealt with Spritz's need to choose between success in personal and professional life, here Trout simply suceeds at everything and becomes the first ever weatherman-turned-president. After all, this is Mike Trout we're talking about. 

Sample dialogue: "I remember once imagining what my life would be like, what I'd be like. I pictured having all these qualities, strong positive qualities that people could pick up on from across the room. But as time passed, they all became qualities that I had. And I was the best at each of those qualities. That's who I am -- the weather man/president of the world." 

Every Other Nic Cage Movie

Whether it's "Vampire's Kiss," about a publishing executive losing his sanity following a vampire bite, "National Treasure," following one man's search for treasure promised on the back of the U.S. Constitution or "City of Angels," about an actual angel falling in love, there is only one man who can handle that kind of range, passion and bizarre takes on character: Hunter Pence.  

Plus, he's got the hair/face combo down, too.