It’s rare that a sports movie is just a sports movie.

Through the prism of athletics, sports movies are love stories and tales of the underdog, opportunities to process war and addiction and immigration and euthanasia and economic inequality. They’re showcases for our biggest stars, our pluckiest protagonists, our most virtuoso directors, and even the occasional golden retriever allowed on the court by a rule-book loophole. They reflect our complicated past and predict our dystopian future. They speak a language understood around the globe.

For the purposes of this list, a panel of six THR critics started with an initial field of roughly 100 movies, whittling that number to 25 and then ranking them. Like sports themselves, the process provoked much passion and a bit of heartbreak.

Baseball is our most represented sport, landing six spots on the list. Boxing and basketball had good showings, with five and four entries, respectively. Track, tennis, hockey, cheerleading, pool, cycling and skateboarding feature in our selections, too. A lone auteur, Ron Shelton, scored two slots — not entirely surprising given that he’s a former minor-league infielder.

As for the wealth of quality sports programming made for television — the likes of Pitch, Friday Night Lights and Welcome to Wrexham will have to wait for a list of their own.