For their new film, Sugar, writer-directors Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden cast an actual Dominican baseball player for the lead role of Miguel ‘Sugar’ Santos, a … Dominican baseball player. This employment of a non-actor with appropriate skill of course adds credibility to scenes depicting the sport while also qualifying Sugar as part of the current “neo-neorealism” trend. But Algenis Perez Soto is not the first real athlete to play a fictional athlete onscreen. Recall that before Shaquille O’Neal did his worst playing a genie and then a superhero, the NBA star played a college basketball player in Blue Chips.

Typically, though, casting a real player as a fictional player isn’t necessarily for authenticity; many pros end up starring in films as fantastical as Space Jam and Like Mike, and often they take a back seat to a Hollywood star in the lead sportsman role, whether that actor can truly play the game or not. If he or she can’t, it’s likely they’ll be made to look like they have the moves, and in many cases such an attempt at faking it fails. To illustrate why it might always be best for filmmakers to do as Fleck and Boden have done, we’ve selected five of the most unconvincing sports moments on film.
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