The annual commingling of Oscar and Opening Day fevers puts us in the mood for baseball movies. Unfortunately, we haven't had a really good one for several years -- the genre may have been killed off by (choose one): Ed, The Scout or Angels In The Outfield. But if Brewers fans can keep hoping year after year, so can we. The next Bull Durham may be right around the corner ... wait, that's the kind of thinking that produced For Love of the Game.

For now, let's just content ourselves with remembrance of swings past. We're not here to rank baseball movies. That's too easy. (The movie Bang The Drum Slowly is bested only by the 1956 TV version starring Paul Newman as Henry Wiggen.)

No, we're here to assemble an all-star team of thespians who actually looked like they belonged on a baseball field. This is no simple thing. Have you ever seen Clint Eastwood throw? Well, it's not pretty.

So here they are, the Oscar Zamoras. (Real ballplayers like Babe Ruth and Joe Charboneau are ineligible.)

PITCHER: Okay, he's not likely to smell another real Oscar nomination anytime soon. But for my money, the best pitcher in the history of cinema was Charlie Sheen, Rickie "Wild Thing" Vaughn in Major League. Even Doc Edwards, the manager of the real Cleveland Indians at the time, said he liked Sheen's arm action so much he would have signed him. Honorable mention: Michael Moriarity (Bang...), Tatum O'Neal (Bad News Bears), Joe E. Brown (Alibi Ike). Fuhgeddaboudit: Tim Robbins (Bull Durham), Brendan Fraser (The Scout), Tony Danza (Angels In The Outfield), Ronald Reagan (The Winning Team).

CATCHER: Has to be Kevin Costner as Crash Davis in Bull Durham. He had the requisite physical gifts, but more importantly, he carried himself like a backstop. Those same athletic talents were far less convincing when he was on the mound in For Love of the Game. Honorable mention: James Earl Jones (Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars, Geena Davis (A League Of Their Own). Fuhgeddaboudit: Tom Berenger (Major League),

FIRST BASE: Tom Selleck. Mr. Baseball was an underrated movie to begin with, and Selleck, a famed Tiger groupie, never got the credit he deserved for playing a gaijin ballplayer in Japan. Honorable mention: Timothy Busfield (Little Big League). Fuhgeddaboudit: Gary Cooper (Pride Of The Yankees), Michael Rooker (Eight Men Out).

SECOND BASE: The pickings are kind of slim up the middle. So here's a curve (no pun intended ... alright, maybe it was): Robyn Barto in Blue Skies Again (1983), a little-seen movie about a woman breaking the grass ceiling to play second base for the Denver Devils. Honorable mention: Frank Sinatra (Take Me Out To The Ballgame). Fuhgeddaboudit: Bill Irwin, the gifted physical comedian, couldn't play ball, much less Eddie Collins, in Eight Men Out.

SHORTSTOP: Gene Kelly as Eddie O'Brien, who starts the O'Brien-to-Ryan-to-Goldberg double play in the musical Take Me Out To The Ballgame. Dennis Ryan was played by Sinatra, Nat Goldberg by Jules Munshin. Fuhgeddaboudit: Don Harvey as Swede Risberg in Eight Men Out.

THIRD BASE: As Buck Weaver in Eight Men Out, John Cusack brought both skills and stature. Reminiscent of the young Cal Ripken. Oddly enough, John Sayles' film about the Black Sox scandal had several very good ballplayers -- Cusack, D.B. Sweeney (Joe Jackson), Sheen (Hap Felsch) -- and some who spent a little too much time in drama class: Rooker (Chick Gandil), Irwin (Collins), Harvey and David Strathairn (Eddie Cicotte). Honorable mention: Ed (Ed). Fuhgeddaboudit: Corbin Bernsen (Major League).

OUTFIELD: Some very tough choices here. Gotta go with Robert Redford as Roy Hobbs (The Natural). It's tempting to pick Wesley Snipes for his Willie Mays Hayes in Major League, but the better ballplayer in that one was Dennis Haysbert as Pedro Serrano. (Haysbert was also pretty good in Mr. Baseball.) Many have played Babe Ruth -- William Bendix, John Goodman, Steven Lang -- but the closest thing to the Bambino was Joe Don Baker as The Whammer in The Natural. Honorable mention: Sweeney, Sheen, Snipes. Fuhgeddaboudit: Tony Perkins (Fear Strikes Out), Goodman (The Babe), Tab Hunter (Damn Yankees).

MANAGER: Buster Keaton. Though he never actually played a skipper in one of his movies, Keaton was one in real life. The comic genius loved baseball so much that he hired crew members based on their ability to play, and he would start pickup games with them whenever he felt the need for a creative break.

UMPIRE: Leslie Nielsen as Lieutenant Frank Drebin in Naked Gun. Pity if you have to ask why.

Play ball. And roll 'em.

Steve Wulf is executive editor of ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at steve.wulf@espnmag.com.