Time to get back to the sports classics

Upon arriving home last week, I was devastated to find that while my family and friends were all happy and healthy, the cable was out.

I eventually moved through the five stages of grief — everyone particularly enjoyed the anger phase — and came to understand that I would have to find other forms of entertainment over the next four to five business days.

Not wanting to leave the couch, my options were limited. I tried network television during the day, but quickly lost interest. I'm not sure if it's constitutionally legal, but the judiciary branch seems to have bought out daytime television and has given every judge in America a TV show. It's high quality programming, but it just gets redundant.

I thus moved to our family's DVD collection and was ecstatic to find three sports classics from my childhood — "The Little Giants", "The Sandlot" and "The Mighty Ducks".

As I watched said movies over the next six hours, I realized that nostalgia aside, they just don't make sports movies like that anymore.

To me, this is a shame. Films such as these certainly left an indelible mark on an entire generation of young sports fans, and in doing so greatly boosted interest in recreational sports.

Hollywood, however, doesn't seem to have an interest in making such movies anymore. Most of the blame goes to DreamWorks and Pixar, who now dominate the youth-film market with computer-animated movies involving adorable animals coupled with celebrity voices.

Such films are good, of course, and do often succeed in entertaining both children and adults, but there's no reason why a real-life sports flick can't do the same thing.

Besides, after watching the aforementioned three films, I realized that they're really easy to make.

The premise is essentially the same for all such films. It's the classic tale of David versus Goliath, as the little rejects band together to topple a seemingly indestructible, and considerably more talented, team of kids. Thus we're taught that if you work hard and stay true to yourself, anything is possible.

But that's just the beginning — the major theme, if you will. Beyond that, each film is stocked full of its own unique positive messages.

For example, in "The Little Giants", Becky "The Icebox" O'Shea hits hard enough to make Ray Lewis proud. In doing so, she proved what Title IX has been telling us since 1972 — that girls can play sports just as well as boys can. The fact that despite her husky build, she still gets to date the dreamboat quarterback — who could forget Devon Sawa as Junior Floyd — makes it even better.

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"The Mighty Ducks", besides giving Emilio Esteves his third and final shot at being taken seriously as an actor, taught us that no matter what size or age advantage they may have, we must — and will — always beat evil Scandinavians, even if their black jerseys are really intimidating.

"The Sandlot" went even further and took on the serious issue of drugs in America, especially as pertaining to 12-year-olds. The scene in which the squad loads up on Red Man chewing tobacco and hops on the Octopus is not only graphic, but startlingly realistic. This disturbing, vomit-filled sequence was effective, and dissuaded me from trying chew until I was at least 15.

Besides the mother-approved life lessons, such films are also a source of innovation for their respective sports. The "Flying V," for example, was quickly added to the playbook by nearly every NHL team and rumor has it that Mark Messier spent much of 1993 trying to unlock the secret physics behind the "Knucklepuck".

As for "The Little Giants", if John Madden could coach just one more game in the NFL, and if the "fumblerooski" were still legal, I guarantee his first playcall would be the vaunted "Annexation of Puerto Rico." And I guarantee it would end in a touchdown.

Nearly every American kid fondly remembers these movies from the mid-1990s, as well as other gems such as "Angels in the Outfield", and to a certain extent, "The Big Green".

I think Hollywood would be doing this nation's youth a great service by reincorporating children's sports-based films into their current solely-computer-animated repertoire. Interest in recreational, youth-based sports would surely increase, and finally, after over 10 years, there would yet again be a hapless coach role for Rick Moranis to play.