Yankees Vs. Phillies In The World Series? Give Me The Best Fictional Baseball Teams In Movie History!

I'm a Mets fan, so these days I prefer to consume my baseball in fictional terms rather than deal with the reality that my boys are a bunch of overpaid, oft-injured embarrassments to the triumphant – if drug scandal-tinged – legacy of Strawberry, Hernandez and Gooden.

Confronted with the choice to root for the Yankees or the Phillies in this year's World Series – or even the option to watch the action – I plan to opt for nearly anything else. My girlfriend wants to take in the last couple episodes of "The Rachel Zoe Project" on TiVo? Sign me up! My elderly neighbor needs me to wash her hosiery? I'm there! And if I get the chance, I'm going to pop in a DVD and take in some of the great fictional baseball teams in movie history to forget about this season. Here are my picks:

The New York Knights in "The Natural": Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford) coulda been the greatest there ever was until a silver bullet to the gut sidetracked his career. He catches up years later as a homerun-clocking slugger with the Knights, a downtrodden pro team whose ragtag players are in need of a reason to keep lacing up their spikes. In steps Hobbs and his Wonderboy, the bat he crafted from a tree as a kid. It's a rags-to-superstar transformation until that pesky stomach wound resurfaces and he splinters his trusty piece of lumber. But he still gets one shot to win the pennant and he knocks it outta the park. Sparks literally fly from the floodlights as Hobbs rounds the bases in super-slow-mo and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

The Hackensack Bulls in "Brewster's Millions": Richard Pryor and John Candy on a baseball team together — that's basically all that needs to be said. I'd leave it there if the premise weren't so much darn fun as Pryor's jelly-armed journeyman pitcher tries to blow $30 million in 30 days so he can get $300 million from his loony great-grandfather. The minor league Bulls get their moment in the big league sun when Pryor arranges an exhibition game against the Yanks. Total crap that the Bulls don't win!

The Bears in "The Bad News Bears": Walter Matthau drinks brewskies and smokes stogies. Tatum O'Neal throws some serious heat from the mound. Jackie Earle Haley rides a motorcycle. Sadly, my own youth baseball team was never this cool. The rest of the Bears, much like my own crew, were some of the sorriest misfits to ever play America's pastime. Yeah, they eventually turned it around – as we did not – but give me a bunch of dirt-throwing brawlers over some polished winners any day.

The Miami Gators in "Back to the Future Part II: Okay fine, so you never actually see the team, a player, a single pitch in a baseball game. But it's the Gators' loss to the Chicago Cubs in 2015 that sets off the main action in the best time-travel/sports gambling movie ever made. Michael J. Fox's Marty McFly hears that the Cubbies win and decides to purchase a sports almanac to place a couple wagers when he gets back to 1985. Shizz goes wrong real quick. But come on, if you had a flux capacitor-outfitted DeLorean, you wouldn't do the same thing?

The Baseball Furies in "The Warriors": Pinstripes have never looked so freaky, even when on a rotund George Costanza. The Furies are face-painted, thunder stick-wielding hoodlums who do their dirty work not on the diamond but in the streets. In this '79 classic, the gang goes bat-to-fist with the titular crew and come out on the losing end. "I'll shove that bat up your a-- and turn you into a popsicle!" threatens one of the Warriors, and then pretty much does it. Wholesome family entertainment this ain't.

Tags Brewster's Millions, The Bad News Bears, The Natural, the warriors