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Every year, most teams hold some sort of team bonding, social event during spring training. The specifics of the event vary from team to team, but frequently they include renting out a movie theater and showing some cloying, inspirational movie like The Blind Side, Cool Runnings, Rudy, or better yet, a documentary like Free Solo. Regardless of the team’s outlook on the year, the goal is to get the players amped up for the season and ready to compete on the field, even if the competition in question is for fourth place in the division.
But what if instead of taking the clichéd route, teams actually tried to select a movie that fits their current vibe, one that’s thematically on brand with the state of their franchise? They won’t do this because spring training is a time for hope merchants to peddle their wares, even if they’re selling snake oil to sub-.500 teams. But spring training is over now, the regular season has begun, and it’s time to get real. So here are my movie selections for each National League team, sorted by release date from oldest to newest.
If you’re interested in which movies I selected for the American League teams, you can find those picks here.
St. Louis Cardinals: Sixteen Candles (1984)
Even teams and fans coming off of a rough season enter Opening Day with some amount of hope that, with a fresh start, things will go better this time around. That’s certainly Sam Baker’s hope as her birthday dawns in Sixteen Candles. But her family forgets her birthday entirely, and she’s left to wallow alone in her misery. What Sam in her youthful ignorance fails to understand is that turning the page on the calendar doesn’t magically erase your problems. They follow you from one year to the next until you do something to fix them. The Cardinals, however, should know better. And yet, they’re coming off one of the slowest offseasons imaginable. Their biggest moves were the departures of Paul Goldschmidt, Kyle Gibson and Lance Lynn. Had they not added reliever Phil Maton on March 13, they would have gone the entire offseason without signing a free agent to a major league contract.
Now, here we are in 2025, and the Cardinals still have a bunch of the same problems, and probably a couple of new ones as well, and turning the page to a new season won’t wipe them away. Maybe they’re hoping they have Molly Ringwald’s je ne sais quoi, and that all they need to do is make eye contact with their crush and within 24 hours he’ll dump his girlfriend, get their underwear back from that nerdy kid, and show up uninvited to a family wedding in order to profess his feelings. I don’t even know what that would look like in baseball terms, but it doesn’t matter because the Cardinals aren’t playing their season in a John Hughes movie, where the laws of science seem to work a little differently. They’re stuck out here in the real world with the rest of us.
Los Angeles Dodgers: Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)
First, I will acknowledge that the excellent adventure Bill and Ted go on in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure is only necessary because they slacked off all year; as a result, they need to nail the final presentation in their history class in order to pass and keep Ted out of military school. The Dodgers, of course, would never put themselves in such a position. Nevertheless, the Dodgers smack of a team getting help from some futuristic fairy godmother to assemble more and more powerful super teams in order to prevent calamity in the future. What calamity, I’m not sure, but in the case of Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves), George Carlin from the future explains that the music made by Bill and Ted’s band will, in the year 2688, form the philosophical basis of a utopian society, so it’s crucial that Ted isn’t sent away to military school. Thus, Rufus (Carlin) loans them a time machine that looks like a phone booth, so that they can go round up key figures from history to pump up their presentation. Bill and Ted use the time machine to put together a powerhouse lineup of Billy the Kid, Socrates, Sigmund Freud, Genghis Khan, Joan of Arc, Abraham Lincoln, and Ludwig van Beethoven.
The Dodgers, on the other hand, don’t need a time machine, but the front office must feel as though they’ve been gifted a super strong programmable magnet set specifically to attract all the best players, and instead of designing it to look like a phone booth, it’s probably concealed like a microchip in Shohei Ohtani’s dog Decoy.
San Francisco Giants: Ghost (1990)
Buster Posey retired after the 2021 season, but post-career life, let’s call it the afterlife, didn’t appear to sit well with him. He seemed to want to reconnect with his former life, so he joined the Giants’ front office as the president of baseball operations. The afterlife didn’t sit well with Patrick Swayze’s character in Ghost either, and he too attempted to reconnect with his old life. Sam Wheat (Swayze) sticks around to protect his lover (Demi Moore) and thwart his former coworker’s attempt to launder drug money, while Posey’s return aims to lead the Giants back to the World Series. As Wheat adjusts to having less of a direct impact on the world he inhabits, he enlists the help of Oda Mae Brown, a psychic medium played by Whoopi Goldberg, who is, in theory, well-positioned to help him continue to have a meaningful impact even though he’s on the outside looking in. I have no idea who Posey may have recruited to be his Oda Mae Brown, if anyone, but I really hope it is the Giants’ special advisor to baseball operations, Dusty Baker.
It’s not clear yet whether Posey’s efforts will help the Giants, so for now I leave you with the image of ghost-Posey, squatting behind Patrick Bailey, guiding his hand as he receives a pitch.
Miami Marlins: Scream (1996)
When Scream was first released, the trailer and marketing materials for the movie led viewers to believe that Drew Barrymore was the lead actress. At the time, Barrymore was the biggest star in the movie, cast alongside a bunch of up-and-comers. Spoiler: She dies in the first scene. Sandy Alcantara is the Marlins’ Drew Barrymore. He’s not going to die, but he is probably going to get traded, and it might not be at the beginning of the season, but he’s likely to be one of the first moved once the trade deadline starts closing in. After that, it’ll be all about the up-and-comers. Who can survive on the roster and become a mainstay for several sequels to come, and who will suffer death by doggie door? And as with the Scream movies, the Ghostface axing players from the roster and putting everyone on edge is an ever-changing cast of characters. At times it’s the front office swapping big leaguers for prospects, but other villains such as injury, stymied development, or the spirit of a spurned home run sculpture can don the mask as well. Let’s just hope the Marlins don’t stretch this rebuild out for too many sequels.
Arizona Diamondbacks: Ocean’s Eleven (2001)
Toppling the Dodgers in the NL West is roughly equivalent to an attempted heist of three Las Vegas casinos, but the Diamondbacks have better odds of success than any other team in the division. And while this pick might feel too aspirational for this list, since Danny Ocean (George Clooney) and his crew do successfully complete the heist, Ocean’s Eleven expertly highlights just how easily a minor setback can send the whole carefully crafted plan careening off the rails. The power company might unexpectedly reinforce the grid (the Dodgers trade for Luis Robert Jr.), a member of the crew might get injured before the heist (Jordan Montgomery needs Tommy John surgery), maybe the tethers meant to reach to the bottom of the elevator shaft aren’t long enough (starters aren’t going deep enough in games), a bandage might snag and almost get a member of the crew blown up (someone trips while jumping over the dugout railing to celebrate a walk-off win), or maybe the casino redoes the floor of the vault to add a Bellagio logo (a starter tips his pitches during a crucial September series). So while the Diamondbacks have carefully compiled a team with a few big names who are among the best at what they do, and filled in the rest with highly skilled role players, things could still very easily go awry. But it’s worth keeping an eye on their high-wire act just in case they pull it off.
Chicago Cubs: A Walk To Remember (2002)
In recent years, the Cubs have been easy to classify as one of those young teams, going through some growing pains and settling into a new team identity as the last members of the 2016 title roster departed. But they aren’t that young anymore. They’ve hit the point where it’s reasonable to start expecting more. Likewise, at the beginning of A Walk to Remember, Landon Carter (Shane West) is around 17, and it’s reasonable to expect that he’d stop acting like such a selfish idiot. But Landon isn’t able to free himself from the self-pity pit of despair he’s flung himself into; he needs help. That’s where Jamie (Mandy Moore) comes in. Jamie is described on the movie’s Wikipedia page as someone “who wears modest dresses and owns only one sweater. She makes no attempt to wear make-up or otherwise improve her looks or attract attention to herself.” Meanwhile for the Cubs, this is where Kyle Tucker comes in. Tucker, like Jamie, is an unassuming force for good, but in a baseball context. Jamie gives Landon the boost he needs to go from brooding jerk to someone who cares for others. Comparatively, Tucker’s job with the Cubs is much simpler. He just needs to boost the Cubs from pretty OK to pretty dang good. Now, for both the Cubs and Landon, their time with Tucker and Jamie is brief. The good news is, Tucker isn’t dying of leukemia, he’s just a pending free agent after this season, so the Cubs better make the most of his presence while it lasts.
Cincinnati Reds: Mean Girls (2004)
The Reds aren’t just watching a movie at this event, they’re crunching film. They’re taking the opportunity to study how best to position themselves within a group of highly flawed individuals. In the NL Central, Cincinnati is up against a group of teams that are each vulnerable in their own way. All five teams are projected to win 77 to 84 games. It’s not a strong field, but it is pretty evenly matched. And just as these five teams struggle for dominance in the division, the five power players in Mean Girls struggle for dominance over the junior class. Some teams in the division have clear analogs in the film. Janis Ian (Lizzy Caplan) is an outsider and, as such, has a clearer picture of how everything works. She’s given up trying to do what everyone else does and instead leans into her strengths. She’s the easiest to root for as a neutral observer, even if her retaliation against Regina (Rachel McAdams) goes a bit too far. Janis is the Brewers. Karen (Amanda Seyfried), who famously uses her boobs to predict the weather, is highly entertaining but also the weakest contender, so she’s the Pirates. Regina has spent plenty of time atop the throne, and in that time, has amassed a group of loud and loyal devotees, but is roundly hated otherwise, making her the Cardinals.
Which leaves the Reds in a battle with the Cubs for the final two options. And this is why the Reds need to do their homework. Because the first option is Gretchen Wieners (Lacey Chabert), whose father invented Toaster Strudel, which comes with a certain cachet but only takes her so far. She’s crafty, but still susceptible to getting pushed around by those with more power. The other option is Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan), who has to rely on her raw abilities and learn as she goes because she’s attending public school for the first time. Though she’s new to the game, Cady has a higher ceiling than Gretchen, and as we see in the movie, Cady does eventually get what she wants despite several errors along the way. If the Reds can leverage the raw ability of players like Elly De La Cruz and Hunter Greene, and new manager Terry Francona can step into the Tina Fey/math teacher role to help the young players learn on the fly, they have a chance to finish 2025 as the Cady Heron of the NL Central.
Washington Nationals: School of Rock (2004)
Spoiler alert for School of Rock: The band composed largely of 10-year-old children sent to compete against actual adult musicians in a Battle of the Bands doesn’t win. And the Washington Nationals, who at times feel like they’re sending out a team of 10-year-olds to face grown men, probably won’t win much either, but that’s not the point of the 2025 Nats, and it’s not the point of School of Rock either. The band of fifth graders known as The School of Rock come to be after Dewey Finn (Jack Black), a washed up rock guitarist, impersonates his roommate as a substitute teacher and discovers the students possess a wealth of raw musical talent. Though Dewey sets unreasonably high expectations for these kids that they can’t ultimately meet, they put together a strong performance, and the movie still feels like a win because of how the kids develop their skills and work through internal barriers that had previously been holding them back. And though the Nationals are also fielding a team with a bunch of young talent that might not be all the way ready for such a big stage, their season can still feel like a win if those young players are able to look like they belong when competing against big league talent and continue to progress in their development.
Milwaukee Brewers: Top Gun: Maverick (2022)
The Brewers tend to follow a simple, yet reliable formula for constructing a successful roster, as does Top Gun: Maverick with respect to making a successful action movie. For both the baseball team and the movie, the formula is nothing particularly innovative or complex, but it’s executed so well that nothing extra is really needed. Top Gun: Maverick anchors its cast with a couple of big names, like Tom Cruise, Val Kilmer, and Jennifer Connelly, then sprinkles in a few potential breakout stars, like Miles Teller, Glen Powell, and Monica Barbaro. The Brewers similarly pair their big names, Christian Yelich and William Contreras, with young stars on the rise like Jackson Chourio, Joey Ortiz, and Brice Turang. Once the people are in place, it’s just about not messing up the basic components. For an action movie, that means telling a story with emotional stakes in addition to the life and death ones, setting up a final act with a mission that’s all but guaranteed to fail, making things explode in a way that looks and sounds exquisite, and then, at the last second, crafting a satisfying conclusion in which the good guys come out on top.
For a baseball team, that means drafting and developing well, evaluating players accurately, making trades that prepare for the future without upending the present outlook, and putting players in situations that give them the best chance to succeed. Some thought the Brewers might struggle to replicate the formula following the departures of president of baseball operations David Stearns and manager Craig Counsell, but they made the playoffs last year without their two former leaders, and even managed to execute a trade of ace pitcher Corbin Burnes without succumbing to a full teardown. But the downside to simply following a well-known formula is that it’s hard to gain an advantage over competitors who live at the cutting edge. It works fine for winning the NL Central, but makes playing deep into October more of a dice roll. If the Brewers don’t want to become synonymous with an early playoff exit, they might want to mix in a screening of Kill Bill or something from time to time.
Colorado Rockies: The First 90 Minutes of Godzilla Minus One (2023)
When I watch the first 90 minutes of Godzilla Minus One, every time they attempt to fight back against Godzilla, my mind screams, “OH NO! DISASTER! WHAT A BAD IDEA!” because, generally speaking, they’re concocting nothing but ill-advised, chaotic strategies that grow wilder and less likely to succeed with each successive attempt. And that is how the Rockies attempt to field a competitive baseball team. Sometimes they’re fighting regular Godzilla, which is just figuring out how to play baseball at an elevation of 5,000 feet. Other times they’re fighting super mutant Godzilla, which for the Rockies is existing in the same division as a super team and with two or three other contending clubs, too. It’s not an enviable challenge, and yet Colorado’s strategies are things like “trade Nolan Arenado” or “a four-man rotation made up of guys who throw only 75 pitches per outing” or “give big contracts to a bunch of aging relievers.” The Rockies are sending in tanks and getting entire districts wiped out by Godzilla’s heat ray. Eventually, the Japanese concoct a scheme just wild enough to bring down Godzilla, and if there’s justice in this world, the Rockies should also have that chance. I can’t wait to see their version of crashing a plane into Godzilla’s mouth, even if theirs doesn’t ultimately succeed. Fortunately, people’s lives aren’t depending on whether the Rockies can pull this off.
New York Mets: Snack Shack (2024)
In Snack Shack, A.J. Carter (Conor Sherry) and Moose Miller (Gabriel LaBelle) are business-savvy, 14-year-old besties, running a variety of money-making schemes that vary in legality but keep the cash flowing in at a rate not usually accessible to teenagers. As someone well-versed in having way more money than his peers, Steve Cohen probably finds these guys pretty relatable. After they get caught betting on horse races and brewing their own beer, the boys need a more conventional job for the summer, so they throw their money at fixing up the ramshackle snack shack at the public pool. Cohen doesn’t necessarily need a summer business consideration, but he has decided to take one on and fix up the ramshackle Mets. Once the snack shack is up and running, the movie shifts into a stream of stunts, antics, escapades, and gimmicks, the sort of shenanigans that can only happen in the lives of teenagers. But the spirit of these shenanigans are what truly aligns this movie with the current vibe of the Mets.
After looking sluggish to begin last season, the Mets capitalized on a more care-free, roll-with-the-punches approach, transforming the absurdities of a baseball season into rallying cries, among them: “OMG” and Grimace, Hawk Tuah girl and Seymour Weiner, the playoff pumpkin and The Temptations. And whether we’re talking baseball teams or teenage boys, it doesn’t change the fact that some hijinks lead to triumph, while others end in heartbreak, but as Snack Shack reminds us, as long as you have your bros — or, in the Mets’ case, Pete Alonso, Francisco Lindor, and now Juan Soto — it’ll all turn out fine.
Philadelphia Phillies: The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (2024)
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is a fictionalized telling of a black-ops mission run by the British during World War II to prevent the Nazis from re-arming their fleet of U-boats. While this story could be adapted into a self-important war movie, filmmaker Guy Ritchie went with a more Ocean’s Eleven meets Pirates of the Caribbean vibe. The heist crew assembled to pull off the mission is highly skilled and has military experience, but it lacks military decorum. The crew has a charismatic leader in Gus March-Phillips (Henry Cavill), with carefully coiffed hair, a Bryce Harper type, if you will. Geoffrey Appleyard (Alex Pettyfer), the brains behind the operation, must first be rescued from the Canary Islands, where he’s being held captive by the Gestapo — and “sprung from a prison on the beach” is certainly one way to describe the Phillies’ 2019 trade with the Marlins to acquire J.T. Realmuto. Anders Lassen (Alan Ritchson) primarily brings brute-force violence to the squad, but in a lovable way, not unlike Kyle Schwarber, who demolishes baseballs, but also has a Wawa energy drink named in his honor. Marjorie Stewart (Eiza González) uses her wit and wiles to distract the Nazi in charge of the harbor so he doesn’t notice his arms shipment sailing away, which sure sounds like a job for Nick Castellanos. Then there’s Freddy Alvarez (Henry Golding), your standard “likes to blow stuff up” guy, which matches the chaotic energy of Brandon Marsh. Henry Hayes (Hero Fiennes Tiffin) is a young sailor that March-Phillips has taken under his wing, not unlike the way Harper has taken on a mentorship role with fellow Las Vegas native, Bryson Stott.
The Phillies are setting sail for their fourth heist attempt with this crew, and whether or not they pull it off remains to be seen, but it should be an entertaining watch either way.
Atlanta Braves: The Fall Guy (2024)
Like Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) in The Fall Guy, the Braves are attempting to bounce back after a season sabotaged by injuries to key players, such as Ronald Acuña Jr. and Spencer Strider. For Seavers, a stunt man for leading actor Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), the sabotage was very much of the literal variety, whereas the Braves were sabotaged in a more figurative sense by some angry baseball god or the sadistic hand of fate. As a result of the sabotage, Seavers is left with a broken back and has a difficult road to recovery, both emotionally and physically. At the beginning of the movie, he doesn’t know he was sabotaged by Ryder and thinks the accident was his fault, leading to a period of isolation and depression. So when he returns to work, he’s looking to regain his confidence and rekindle an old flame with the movie’s director (Emily Blunt).
As the Braves return to work in 2025, they’ll be looking to regain the confidence they had at the plate in 2023, when they led the league in offense, and rekindle the flames on Strider’s fastball on the mound. But the return isn’t easy for Seavers, and it won’t be easy for the Braves either. As Seavers works to help his love interest get her movie made and the Braves work to win a World Series, they’ll face off with familiar foes. Ryder and his producer Gail (Hannah Waddingham) seek to bring about Seaver’s demise as a means to their own end, while the Phillies and Mets plan to (figuratively) set the Braves on fire, fling them out of a helicopter, and train an attack dog to bite them in the balls in order to prevent their run at the postseason.
Pittsburgh Pirates: Hit Man (2024)
This one is more of a thematic comparison than a direct connection to specific characters or events. In Hit Man, Glen Powell plays a psychology and philosophy professor named Gary, who has two cats named Id and Ego and spends his free time birdwatching. Or, at least the free time that he doesn’t spend volunteering with the local police department, where he poses as a hitman and meets with prospective clients with the intent of bringing them in before they act on their murderous intentions. Gary says he enjoys the work for the practical insight it provides into human nature, which leads him to ruminate throughout the movie on the concept of “self” and a human’s aptitude for meaningful change. Early on, he’s of the opinion that one’s core self is largely immutable, that growth and evolution are possible, but radical alterations are not. Over time, though, he starts to believe that not only is one’s core self not hardwired within each individual, the “self” may not exist at all. And by the movie’s end, Gary has fully transformed himself from bookish liberal arts professor to a debonair undercover agent.
Meanwhile, the Pirates are banking on the possibility of meaningful transformations for several players on their roster. They’re hoping Oneil Cruz can transform from a clunky shortstop into a smooth center fielder, that Ke’Bryan Hayes can transform from a player with recurring back problems into a lineup mainstay who hits even half as well as he defends, and that Joey Bart’s transformation into a viable big league catcher last year carries over into 2025. If they hope to contend at all, the Pirates have to believe in the potential for transformation within the individual, because this group of individuals hasn’t changed much compared to last season’s 76-win squad.
As Gary transforms and starts to believe that the sense of self is open to interpretation and change, it expands his view of morality, leading him to the conclusion that one’s morals needn’t be quite so fixed and immutable either. For instance, Gary accepts that sometimes, in certain situations … murder is OK. The Pirates clearly agree here as well, since they plan to let Paul Skenes keep murdering hitters. After all, it is so very entertaining to watch.
San Diego Padres: Conclave (2024)
Ever since the team’s owner Peter Seidler passed away, his brothers have been maneuvering behind closed doors to determine who will take control of the Padres. That’s literally the plot of Conclave: A bunch of stuffy old guys get together to pick a new Pope to lead the Padres and the rest of the Catholic church. There’s barely even a metaphor here! The only way this could be more on the nose is if for some reason the St. Louis Cardinals were allowed to decide which of the Seidlers got to be in charge. And because of all this closed-door maneuvering, Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller has been limited in what he can do to improve the roster. So the Padres are running it back this year, but without Blake Snell and Jurickson Profar, while Preller stands idly by, praying that team ownership releases him from transactional purgatory soon.
I just hope that, like one of the Cardinals in Conclave, one of the Seidler brothers vapes.
