ESPN.com - Readers: Best sports movie quotes

ESPN.com: Page 2

Wednesday, November 28, 2001
Updated: December 4, 7:30 PM ET
Readers: Best sports movie quotes

From the Page 2 mailbag

Continuing our movie theme of the past couple of weeks, Page 2 asked reaaders to send us the best quotes from sports movies.

OUR TOP 10

Here's how Page 2 editors ranked the all-time best sports movie quotes:

1. Crash Davis (Kevin Costner) in "Bull Durham"
2. Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) in "On The Waterfront"
3. Carl Spackler (Bill Murray) in "Caddyshack"
4. The Voice in "Field of Dreams"
5. Tanner Boyle (Chris Barnes) in "Bad News Bears"
6. Roy "Tin Cup" McAvoy (Kevin Costner) in "Tin Cup"
7. Reggie Dunlop (Paul Newman) in "Slap Shot"
8. Tony D'Amato (Al Pacino) in "Any Given Sunday"
9. Sidney Deane (Wesley Snipes) "White Men Can't Jump"
10. Mickey (Burgess Meredith) in "Rocky"

Honorable mentions: Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford) in "The Natural," Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) in "Rocky," Clubber Lang (Mr. T) in "Rocky III," Jake La Motta (Robert De Niro) in "Raging Bull," "Fast" Eddie Felson (Paul Newman) in "Color of Money," Haywood (Pete Vuckovich) in "Major League"

After going through nearly 2,000 e-mails, we've listed Page 2 readers' top 10 choices below. Be sure to vote in the poll at right to crown the all-time best speech from a sports movie.

Here's the readers' list:

1. Terrence Mann (James Earl Jones) in "Field of Dreams" (190 letters)
"The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and that could be again. Oh, people will come, Ray. People will most definitely come."

2. Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks) in "A League of Their Own" (96 letters)
Jimmy Dugan: "Evelyn, could you come here for a second? Which team do you play for?"

Evelyn Gardner: "Well, I'm a Peach."

Dugan: "Well, I was just wonderin' why you would throw home when we got a two-run lead! You let the tying run get on second base and we lost the lead because of you! Start using your head. That's the lump that's three feet above your ass!

[Evelyn starts to cry.]

Are you crying? Are you crying? Are you crying? There's no crying, there's no crying in baseball! Rogers Hornsby was my manager, and he called me a talking pile of pigs---! And that was when my parents drove all the way down from Michigan to see me play the game! And did I cry? NO! NO! And do you know why?"

Evelyn: "No, no, no."

Dugan: "Because there's no crying in baseball!"

3. Harry Doyle (Bob Uecker) in "Major League" (82 letters)
"Juuuuuuust a bit outside."

4. Jimmy Chitwood (Maris Valainis) in "Hoosiers" (69 letters)
"I'll make it."


	Adam Sandler couldn't get the best of Bob Barker in "Happy Gilmore."

5. Shane Falco (Keanu Reeves) in "The Replacements" (62 letters)
"Pain heals. Chicks dig scars. Glory lasts forever."

6. Happy Gilmore (Adam Sandler) in "Happy Gilmore" (58 letters)
"The price is wrong, bitch."

7. Fortune (Charles Dutton) in "Rudy" (47 letters)
"You're five foot nothin', 100 and nothin', and you have nearly a speck of athletic ability. And you hung in there with the best college footbal team in the land for two years. And you're getting a degree from the University of Notre Dame. In this life, you don't have to prove nothin' to nobody but yourself."

8. Clubber Lang (Mr. T) in "Rocky III" (43 letters)
Interviewer: "What's your prediction for the fight?"

Clubber Lang: "My prediction? Pain."


	There's not much chance of a veteran like Crash Davis getting sent all the way down to Class A ball.

9. Crash Davis (Kevin Costner) in "Bull Durham" (32 letters)
"I believe in the soul ... the small of a woman's back, the hanging curveball, high fiber, good scotch, that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft-core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve, and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days."

10. Lou Brown (James Gammon) in "Major League" (31 letters)
Willie Mays Hayes: "I'm Willie Mays Hayes. I hit like Mays, and I run like Hayes."

Lou Brown: "Well, you may run like Mays, but you hit like s---."

Honorable mentions
Carl Spackler (Bill Murray) in "Caddyshack" -- "So I jump ship in Hong Kong and make my way over to Tibet, and I get on as a looper at a course over in the Himalayas. A looper, you know, a caddy, a looper, a jock. So, I tell them I'm a pro jock, and who do you think they give me? The Dalai Lama, himself. Twelfth son of the Lama. The flowing robes, the grace, bald... striking. So I'm on the first tee with him. I give him the driver. He hauls off and whacks one -- big hitter, the Lama -- long, into a 10,000-foot crevasse, right at the base of this glacier. Do you know what the Lama says? Gunga galunga... gunga, gunga-galunga. So we finish the eighteenth and he's gonna stiff me. And I say, 'Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know.' And he says, 'Oh, uh, there won't be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consiousness.' So I got that goin' for me, which is nice."

Pedro Cerrano (Dennis Haysbert) and Eddie Harris (Ross Chelcie) in "Major League" -- Cerrano: "Bats, they are sick. I cannot hit curveball. Straightball, I hit it very much. Curveball, bats are afraid. I ask Jobu to come, take fear from bats. I offer him cigar, rum. He will come."

Harris: "You know you might think about taking Jesus Christ as your savior instead of fooling around with all this stuff."

Jake Taylor: "Harris!"

Cerrano: "Jesus, I like him very much, but he no help with curveball."

Harris: "You trying to say Jesus Christ can't hit a curveball?"

Nuke LaLoosh (Tim Robbins) in "Bull Durham" -- "A good friend of mine used to say, 'This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains.' Think about that for a while."

Jake Taylor (Tom Berenger) in "Major League" -- "Hell of a situation we got here. Two on, two out, your team down a run and you've got the chance to be the hero on national television ... if you don't blow it. Saw your wife last night. Great little dancer. That guy she was with? I'm sure he's a close personal friend, but tell me, what was he doing with her panties on his head?

[Rexman pops the ball straight up.]

Oh, I don't think it's got the distance."

Knute Rockne (Pat O'Brien) in "Knute Rockne, All American" -- "Now I'm going to tell you something I've kept to myself for years. (pause) None of you ever knew George Gipp. (pause) He was long before your time, but you all know what a tradition he is at Notre Dame. (pause) And the last thing he said to me, 'Rock,' he said, 'sometime when the team is up against it and the breaks are beating the boys, tell them to go out there with all they've got and win just one for the Gipper. (pause) I don't know where I'll be then, Rock,' he said, 'but I'll know about it and I'll be happy.' "