Baseball Player-Actors

By Raymond Lockley

One of my favorite things in life is baseball. Baseball is America's Pastime. And because it is, baseball creates celebrities. And (many) celebrities end up in movies or TV. Just like there are sometimes player-coaches, so there are also sometimes player-actors. So, strictly for entertainment, I've tracked down as many of these as I could into a little curated list...

There are lots of entertainments, both fictional and documentary, where players play themselves, which one could argue is not really acting; it's just playing baseball and being recorded (which happens in every game). So I have narrowed down my list with the following arbitrary criteria:

  • played in the Majors
  • appeared in a theatrically-released movie
  • has an entry in IMDB (not just an extra)
  • did not play himself
These criteria might end up excluding some really interesting examples, such as someone who did lots of acting on TV but never in a movie, but one has to start somewhere, and it's my list. Now that said, I realize that just like there are starters and role players in baseball, there are guys who earned a bit of a living acting and guys who just played a baseball player in a baseball movie; so I'm giving you two lists. Here, then, is what I came up with...

Starters:

Role players:

To index of lists


Updated 7/5/20