Top One-Liners from Non-Sports Movies

Sadly, when the Boston Red Sox won the 2004 World Series, a slice of Americana passed away. Namely, those of us loyal (or somewhat loyal…or bandwagon loyal) to the “Red Sox Nation” now have nothing to moan about because the team ended the dreaded “Curse of the Bambino” over five years ago. And it will be long before we hear talk of the poor Red Sox fans who have gone their whole lives without seeing their team win. Hell, there are fourteen and seventeen-year old kids right here in Pittsburgh who haven’t experienced a winning season, yet alone a play-off race as fans of our Pirates!

The sad reality is that a great one-liner from a movie is now null and void. Well, at least to sports fans it might have been a great line. You see, sports like art reflects life, reflects sports, reflects art, reflects life...whatever. But, seriously, many of our films remind us about how we feel as a people. Our American conscious is revealed through the films we watch, those we love and hate, and those we choose to quote. (If it happens to be Monty Python, the ones we quote ad nauseam until we are kicked out of a friend’s apartment while viewing, but that is another story.)

Now, as thoughts of baseball return and the Red Sox’ Championship banner flies high over Fenway Park, let’s take a look at great sports lines from non-sports movies, and end it with a Requiem for the Greatest Sports One-Liner From a Non-Sports Movie Ever...as now registered dead by those same Red Sox.

The precept is simple – the general story-line of the film is not along the lines of Bull Durham, Slapshot or Remember the Titans, but rather just any variety of subjects in which a sports one-liner works its way into the film, and those one-liners deserve mentioning.

In shameless self-promotion mode, allow me to mention that I recently wondered about my own writing and came across this idea. In a play I wrote a few years back, a grumpy old man is asked “Isn’t it a glorious day?” on a given New Years Day in the 20th Century. The play is set in Baltimore, MD, and for better or worse is entitled, West of Hell. (And is available for production or for movie rights, by the way!) The old man’s response is what got me thinking about great sports commentaries found in films not about sports. To that question, “Isn’t it a glorious day?”, he replies to his erstwhile pseudo-niece, “There hasn’t been a glorious day in Baltimore since the Colts left!” Ravens fans who choose to unite against me, be damned! Onto the list!

If movies are a collective reflection of our culture, then maybe we can learn something from movies that make up a fun (or stupid) list. After all, this is the only list left to be made for a top-100 or top-10 of anything. However, in devotion to football, we’ll go for a touchdown (plus the assumed point after) equivalent of the Top Ten Format. So here goes...the Top SEVEN Greatest Sports One-Liners From Non-Sports Movies:

Strange Brew (Honorable Mention) – In this early 1980s Canadian caper, the McKenzie Brothers find themselves suited up in a good-versus-evil game of ice hockey at one point in the film. The one-liner deserves mention because it is a great line from a sports moment in a non-sports film. (Talk about your hierarchy!) One brother in black as goalie approaches the other in white as a shooter and breathes through his dark, empirical mask, stating, “Luke, I am your father. Give into the dark side, you knob.” A beer lover’s movie with hockey and a Star Wars reference deserves at least an honorable mention – the proverbial two-point conversion on our touchdown scale.

7) Catch Me if You Can – This one gets bottom-billing because it even dares to mention the Yankees. Christopher Walken plays father to son Leonardo DiCaprio as Frank William Avignale Sr. and Jr., respectively. Walken asks his son, “Do you know why the Yankees always win?” The son answers, “Because they have Mickey Mantle.” Dad rebuts his claim, “No, it’s the pinstripes. The other teams are so stunned by how good they look that they are in awe before they even play the game.” Frank Jr. buys the false logic entirely in admiration of his father’s scheming ways, and later invokes the phrase in an attempt to one-up Tom Hanks as FBI man Carl Hanratty. DiCaprio poses, “Do you know why the Yankees win all the time?” “No, Frank, I don’t. Why?” utters Hanks in a Bronx dialect we haven’t heard often enough from him. “Because of their pinstripes.” The telephone silence is given pause by Hanks who quips, “You are wrong – the Yankees win because they have Mickey Mantle.”

6) Coming to America – Eddie Murphy playing multiple characters offers a great one-liner for our list. In the Barber Shop scene, the old men, mostly played by Murphy in a make-up and costume frenzy, are arguing over who is the greatest boxer of all-time. One man proclaims it is the original and real Rocky, to which another replies, “Rocky Marciano, Rocky Marciano! Every time you talk about boxing a white man’s gotta bring up Rocky Marciano!” Very subtly, an older barber shop patron reminds us about Marciano: “He beat Joe Louis’ ass!” While the hilarity of the moment in particular and the barber shop banter in general make the film what it is, that line is a guaranteed laugh every time.

5) Dragnet – We offer Tom Hanks again, this time earlier in his career as a new detective in Los Angeles who must deal with an anal-retentive partner, Agent Friday played by Dan Akroyd. Upon taking his job more seriously, Hanks avows: “I’m gonna clean up this town – better schools, safer streets, a good hockey team!” While it doesn’t target sports, per se, it sure makes for a great line; and the Kings made the Stanley Cup Finals a few years later back in 1993. Hmmmm...Besides, who can pass on Akroyd and Hanks dressed as pagan love partners in a later scene?

4) City Slickers – This one requires a visual reminder. Billy Crystal and the boys are sitting around a campfire, the sun just setting in the vast open west; they are sipping coffee and discussing who was a better right fielder, Roberto Clemente or Hank Aaron. (Obviously it was Clemente, but I digress.) The woman in the film says, “You guys and your sports! I mean who cares who played – third base – for Pittsburgh – in 1960?” She asks this effortlessly, portraying quite well the “I am just searching blindly for crap no one would ever know” attitude to suggest the randomness of the possibilities. The men, of course, race each other to the answer and without missing a beat, they immediately claim, “Don Hoak.” And each argues that they said it first! This one gets a special “moving up the charts with a bullet” designation for referencing our beloved Pirates not once, but twice.

3) Heathers – A GREAT movie, seriously. Just top dollar entertainment, dark comedy for the deeply cynical and outright hilarity for those who hated high school. After Christian Slater’s character has shot two football players dead and staged it as a gay-love-suicide pact, Heather, played by Wynona Ryder, ponders the believability of football players being gay. Slater replies, “Come on, this is OHIO! If you’re not playing football, you might as well be wearing a dress!” It speaks for itself.

2) Good Morning Vietnam – In a very close play at second, Robin Williams and his sergeant cohort just miss the top spot with this clever baseball reference. Set in Vietnam, Adrian Cronauer is subjected to the whims of an over-aggressive sergeant. After Cronauer has pushed the limits of insubordination, the "Sarge" points to the stripes on his uniform and says to Williams, “Does three up, three down mean anything to you?” Williams, playing the sharp-mouthed wisecrack character whom he made famous in the film based on the real Cronauer replies, “End of an Inning?”

1) Malice – Rounding third to head for home, the single greatest sports one-liner ever, at least from a non-sports movie. It invokes all things men hope for, epitomizes all great sarcasm, and volleys up the ultimate answer about what a man wants rather than what a woman expects upon rebuttal to a rejection. And the Red Sox went and ruined it for all of us! In a film with a bizarre plot about wronged love, a staged hysterectomy and a psychotic Alec Baldwin (which of his roles aren’t?) drawing Nicole Kidman into a love tryst that leaves Bill Pullman reeling, the scene is nearly perfect. The couple meets at a restaurant after all things have unraveled in their once happy lives. Their marriage is ruined, his life is in disrepair, and she is attempting to justify this other-worldly scenario that she has created in order to be with her lover, Baldwin, instead of her husband. Pullman, playing the jilted husband, boils over in a quiet, concentrated rage that lets her know he won’t be had. Kidman attempts with all heart in her intentions to save their friendship and part ways amicably. She asks him, “What is it you want?” Pullman’s character poses a classic Brando-esque pause, considers the question and retorts: “I want what all men want – I want the Red Sox to win the World Series!”

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And with that, a Requiem. Farewell great one-liner from a movie of little substance that no one will remember beyond these words. Bon voyage, Curse of the Bambino. Perhaps in a few years we’ll have reason to celebrate as the Pirates toast a Championship season and Barry Bonds has retired with only an asterisk after having past Hank Aaron on baseball’s all-time home run list. Unlike Malice, Aaron may be safe atop that list for years to come after all.

So, for what is worth we now have a touchdown’s worth of one-liners from non-sports movies to keep our interest piqued. I wonder if it is possible to conjure up a top-ten list of great one-liners about rock and roll in movies that are not about music...