The Babe

The Babe (1992) is Arthur Hiller's biographical drama you can watch online on iFILM, with John Goodman filling out the larger-than-life shape of George Herman "Babe" Ruth.

The story opens in a Baltimore orphanage, where a rowdy kid with no future learns to swing a bat harder than anyone alive. From there it's the Yankees, sold-out ballparks, home-run records and a fame baseball had never seen. Two marriages shape the man off the field — first wife Helen, played by Trini Alvarado, then actress Claire, played by Kelly McGillis. The film doesn't sand down the rest: the drinking, the suspensions, the brawls with managers. Goodman plays him as a giant child who never learned to stop, on the diamond or anywhere else.

This is a one-man picture, and Goodman carries every frame of it, from his first towering swing to a quiet, deflating exit that's harder to watch than any loss. A sports biography with the gloss stripped off, it asks what national adoration actually costs. Stream The Babe (1992) online on iFILM.