Morning Briefing: And the best sports movie is...

Well, after thousands of votes through several rounds of voting, asking readers to sift through 195 sports movies, we have a winner in our poll of best sports movie of all time. There were five movies voted through to the final round, and this is how it turned out after receiving 31,544 votes:

Fifth place

“Rocky,” starring Sylvester Stallone, receiving 14.7% of the vote.

Fourth place

“Bull Durham,” starring Kevin Costner, receiving 15.1% of the vote.

Third place

“A League of Their Own,” starring Geena Davis, receiving 15.6% of the vote.

Second place

“Hoosiers,” starring Gene Hackman, receiving 24.8% of the vote.

Winner

“Field of Dreams,” starring Kevin Costner, receiving 29.8% of the vote.

The key thing to learn here is that if you want a successful sports movie, try to get Kevin Costner to star in it, especially if it’s about baseball.

Next they’ll say she throws like a girl

Marie Marcum, 9, was recently spending the day at Chuck E. Cheese’s (where a kid can be a kid and an adult can get a migraine) when she spotted a baseball pitching game where you are scored on accuracy. Seemed like a cinch. Marcum had played softball for about five years by that point. And the game was licensed by Major League Baseball, so that was cool.

Then, in the middle of a game, she missed the target on a throw. Suddenly, the game shouted out, “Well, there’s always softball.”

Whoops. Big mistake.

“I was mad because it made me feel like softball is a bad sport or it’s not good enough,” Marie told Yahoo.

Instead of just getting angry about it, she decided to do something about it.

She wrote a letter to MLB expressing her disappointment that a game sponsored by it would use softball as an insult. Her mom put it on her Instagram account and ESPNW picked it up, causing it to go viral.

MLB noticed.

“MLB does not support the message conveyed in the game and we are reaching out to the company to share our concerns about it,” MLB said in a statement. “We love Marie’s passion for softball and her view that softball is just as great as baseball. Through our PLAY BALL program, growing youth softball has remained a priority for MLB, equally as important as growing youth baseball.”

Chuck E. Cheese has since muted the sound on the games in many of their restaurants and the game manufacturer, Innovative Concepts in Entertainment (ICE) said the audio clip could be removed from the games if requested.

Don’t bet on Pitino

Rumors are swirling in Las Vegas that UNLV men’s basketball coach Marvin Menzies is on the hot seat and might not last much longer. He used to be an assistant coach for Rick Pitino, who last coached in Greece after being fired by Louisville in 2017 after a pay for play scandal there. So who better to replace Menzies?

Not Pitino.

“I root for UNLV every game,” Pitino told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “I have been a big fan since the Tark days. But now I root for them every game because of Marvin Menzies, a younger brother to me. I, nor my agent, haven’t had any discussions with UNLV about coaching there. I will continue to root for my ex-assistant coach every game. Go, Marvin.”